world house

this is a really cool blog, interesting stuff, design orientated, but not necessarily graphic design. http://www.worldhouse.ca/
it is a little hard to navigate and at least for me was slow to load, but its still worth looking at.
also, http://www.canuhome.com is a new housing project that is REALLY INTERESTING, it is a green, economical savvy housing project and looks great too.

and another thing..

our customer orders system is set up so you can only print new orders since the last print out once, other wise you have to reprint for the whole day or dates. this means if you mess up, the 1995 9 post printer jams, or you hit the wrong number somewhare-you have to print out a million orders then go back thorugh the ones we already had and find the copies. this is importent because the backers can not waist there time making the same cake twice and we deffintly dont want to not print an order because it will never get made. woulets is too cheap to buy a new printer that jams all the time, or to update thier system that seems to have been programed when that printer was new.

selfish customers

usability issue with work-there is no way to say we are closed until we actually lock the door, and we cant lock the door if someone is in the store, so today, a women could not make up her mind on ordering a cake and she came in around 5:55 and we closes at 6. so she kept asking questions to one employee while the rest of us did closing duties thinking she would leave a couple minutes after 6. well at about 6:15 she is still in there and not interested in leaving and people are starting to come into the store thinking we are still open even though there is nothing left on the shelves-and then complain that there is nothing left. we need an "open close" sign!

a long time

so it has been a while since i have posted a blog, but i need to start to keep this up, so hear it goes.
our re-re-redesign went well, we fixed the hierarchy problems and made some more changes to how the user buys the product. the design mostly stayed the same though. we are pretty much done with our site though. i think it is a major improvement to the original.

oh, and the car wash at the SA in woodberry by Sams Club, the "enter" and the "stop" signs for the person to come into the car wash are hidden behind one of the spinning cleaning things so u don't know, u have to just guess.

Re-Redesign of gov website

Ok, so the first redesign was user tested and the feed back was mostly good, it was easy to use and easy to understand. the few things i did change were to the main nav and the title of the page. the main nav i made darker so it stood out more. it got a little lost, at least in black and white printed. i also made the 'embassy of the united states' at the top more prominent so the 'Dominican republic' made a bit more sense with the USA gov logo next to it. the pics are of the second redesign.

My Redesign of gov web site

the above are my re-dos. >So the things I hated about the site www.usemb.gov.dr/ are that it is un-inviting, hard to navigate and understand, and a lot of real-estate was being used by information not relevant to the porpoise of the site. I chose to take out a fair amount of information off the main page and use that space for news that had barring on visa cases the site and embassy would be processing. I made the sight more inviting, toned down the irritating yellow, made the text a lighter gray that was easy to read and easier on the eyes. i made the language choice bigger and easier to find, and in both languages. I also changed all titles and Link names to more commonly used terms and/or to words that the public uses rather than the embassy. I feel good about my re-design. I have spent a lot of time with this site and the embassy and have found that they really just don't care or in fact like to make things hard and confusing. every time i call them with a question they either don't know what i am talking about or they don't understand the words i say. If i could re-do their entire sight in exchange for my fiancé's visa, i totally would! and i would save some pain for future visa seekers!

usibility test of gov web site

Usability test of www.usemb.gov.do/

Diana:
What is this sight?
A: Bands? Music? Presidents or rulers? Oohh, embassy of US in DR.

Find what you will need to apply for a k-3 visa.
A: what is a k-3 visa…Its in Spanish, she looked around, looked through all drop down menus till she saw the word visa, clicked, looked through all secondary nav: saw k-3, and clicked. Then found out it could be put in English!
Response: I don’t have any governmental knowledge, how do I find anything on this sight? I don’t care about anything on the front page-why does that info need to be there? It needs some kind of obvious direction and nav. “iyik!” and I don’t understand the bottom navigation at all.


Sara:
What is this sight?
A: tries to read some Spanish, ‘Dominican embassy sight, wait, US embassy in the DR”

Find what you will need to apply for a k-3 visa.
A: went through all drop down menus, did not find English version, complained about ‘government wording’, went through secondary nav to find k-3, very excited when she found it.
Response: hard to read when drop down menu falls, embassy highlights not relevant.


Dariel:
What is this sight?
A: I think this sight is pretty biased. .explaining all the good things and great ideas of the American government. Does not really what really is going on. Its designed to give people the impression that all is good...that no war is being waged and that things in the DR are great when it comes to the American mindset of things.

Find what you will need to apply for a k-3 visa
A: I tried finding out the instructions of what I need for a k3 visa and quite frankly the navigations is very simple...there’s nothing uber complex all is simply not titled like it should be. I wonder if its because its an embassy site for a third world country so they have to keep things really simple. but in a matter of 3 or 4 clicks I was the page I needed.