A website in which user interaction is critical is www.GarageBand.com For those of you who are not familiar with GarageBand, it is a site for independent musicians to share their music and music lovers in search of new artists. The user is expected to comment on the music provided in order to win contests, have their own music played, etc. I like their concept, but I think their design in some ways inhibits user-friendliness.
For instance, the page displayed up top is reached by clicking on the "musicians only" tab. I find this particular page to be off-putting to the user. The majority of the page is taken over by advertisements. In a small box to the left are all the places a musician will want to go in order to be successful on GarageBand. Located towards the bottom are a couple boxes listing the review of the day and advice from professionals. GarageBand relies mostly on user interaction therefore, they may want to consider hierarchy in their design.
In my opinion, GarageBand is minimal in its design. It has basic organization, a bit of color, easy to find tabs, and is quite easy to navigate. But it is boring. Sometimes the pages look too similar to the advertisements that overwhelm the page. However, their home page is useful. There is a clear sense of hierarchy, organization, and user-friendly interaction displayed. They just didn't convey that throughout the rest of the site.
What do you think? Anyone use GarageBand?
a agree with that the "musicians only tab" can put off a lot of visitors to the website. It kind of makes it sound like you shouldn't bother coming if you're not a musician.
ReplyDeleteThe website overall does not seem inviting at all to me for some reason...The text is rather too boring or too straight-edge that it turns me off from using the website. It also unnecessarily makes the website look a little more complicated than it is...If only the font choice was different...
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