Website Designs

All of these websites have very different interface designs. They are not only different from each other, but also from what is expected and typical on the internet. Amazon is an example of a typical online website experience, but if it were combined with some of the interfaces used on the other sites I explored, it would be a very different shopping experience. It is hard to say if it would be better or worse because that is based on the used or the shopper, in this case. Even flickr is relatively simple to navigate and standard. Both Amazon and flickr utilize the search tool, but flickr also had some other, more experimental options.

I found the interface design on flickr, which was centered on the color of the images, to be a little unusual, and I could not understand how that could be practical and a superior means of searching for an image. This style of interface would not really be able to translate well into a website such as Amazon, where it is product based and not color based. I found the flickr map interface to be more useful in comparison to the color-based interface. This would allow the user to find whatever he is looking for based on its country, which is a valid interface design. In fact, this could even be used on another website, such as a news website, where the user could look up the latest news based on the country. I also enjoyed the cover art interface design, but I think it would only make a website more complicated and confusing.

I found the three other websites to be very interesting, but not necessarily useful interface designs. I enjoyed clicking through all of the screens on transbuddha.com. I must admit that I went through the whole sequence because I could not stop clicking, but once it started over again, I stopped. I did not particularly enjoy the one where even when you didn't click anything, the gun automatically shot the dog. I don't understand how that could be useful. On the last website that was looked at, the use was not allowed to click the mouse. I understand how this interface could be easily translated to other types of websites, but it was hard for me to adjust because the act of clicking the mouse was a type of control. After exploring that website for a little bit, I was able to get used to not clicking my mouse. In the end, all of the different interface designs were very fun to explore, but not all of them had practical applications.