Critique of a website

This week’s blog assignment is a critique of a website based on feedback and visibility, constraints, mapping, consistency, and affordances. I’m going to use Planet Half-Life for this critique because I’m quite familiar with it, considering I work for the site.

1. Feedback and Visibility: This part refers to what the site is telling you when you perform a certain task, whether it’s an error or you’re doing something correctly. I’ve not encountered errors too often with this site, but when the site itself has an error (for instance, there’s a page missing), it’s usually the internet browser noting the error and generally not the site itself. However, in both instances something appears saying that there’s an error, which is usually a separate page. When you’re doing something right, however, it’s easy to know that you are because you’ll have found the information you’re looking for, or have gotten to the point at which you want to be.

2. Constraints: The site doesn’t really have any constraints to it. It’s designed to give information so users aren’t really blocked from doing or viewing anything because if it’s on the site it’s designed for users to see. Although, the site can be limiting based on the user’s end goal because it doesn’t have all the information available in the universe or even what it’s specifically about.

3. Mapping: The site is quite intuitive as far as usage. The design allows it to act the way one would expect it to.

4. Consistency: The similar objects on the site behave similarly and the dissimilar objects behave differently. However, there isn’t a whole lot in the site is different as far as actions go: it’s mostly links to get to bits of information.

5. Affordances: This refers to how easy is it for people to know how to do things. The site is really intuitive for usage: there’s nothing complex about it, merely a slew of links and text to build the website’s design.