Hello all,

 

Finishing up a new site for an organization at my university (University of Nevada Las Vegas) called the AIAS (American Institute of Architecture Students). There are still some loose ends that need to be tied up... i.e. optimization, pages filled out, few more things in the sidebar, etc... For the most part though, the site is complete.

 

Let me know what you think. Likes/dislikes. Comments/criticisms, etc...

 

Thanks all! Look forward to hearing from you.

 

www.aiasunlv.com

hmm... undecided on this one. There are some cool touches and a nice colour scheme... but I feel it kinda lacks coherency and structure, which can be confusing when it comes to navigation as you are making the user work hard to explore your site. The header images are also unnecessarily big when weighed against their importance to the site. On the whole, quite nice, but you should definitely pay more more attention to user flows

Hi Brett,

 

I didn't find it too hard to navigate. I think it's sometimes refreshing to find well-thought sites without the usual horizontal menu bar. Although my basic 15,4 inch laptop has the screen height of 800 px so on the front page I can see the three menu buttons (who we are, blog, toolpanel) without scrolling BUT on the other pages I have to scroll to find the menu buttons.

 

Valid XHTML also, although my validator throws warnings like:

 

line 188 column 50 - Varoitus: <img> attribute "width" has invalid value "170px"

 

So it should probably be without the "px" like width="170"

 

Nice and beautiful work in my opinion!

It's pretty nice. Like that it is different, and I don't find navigation that hard either. I do not like the colors, however.

Maybe I should have offered a suggestion to fix what was bugging me! How about floating your toolbar section at the top of the screen? That way when a user finishes reading a long page, they don't need to scroll all the way back to the top of the screen or to the right nav. Or just include a 'back to top' anchor?

Oh man! I didn't know there were replies... I guess I didn't enable the option to receive email notifications.

 

First, thanks for all the responses, I'll address each of you individually.

 

iisakki: Thank you for the compliments! I think sometimes I, and maybe other designers, forget about screen heights and focus on widths. Are you talking about the three buttons in the sidebar on the other pages? If so, maybe I will move the "Twitter Updates" lower on the sidebar and move those buttons up. That might solve the problem. Thanks again!

 

stillwell: Thanks! Sorry you don't like the colors! I'll explain why they were chosen though. The client originally wanted to reference Vegas in the design somewhere, and originally had talked about doing a skyline. I thought it was kind of cheesy to to the typical city skyline so decided to abstract that idea a little. You'll notice that regardless of what random banner appears (there are three) that all of them contain the same bright neon colors. These colors were inspired by the colors typically found in Las Vegas neon lights. By using these colors, I was hoping to tie the site into its place while not being to typical. Maybe it's a little too abstracted?

 

LYKC: I appreciate your constructive reply. The comment you made that concerns me the most is the lack of coherency and structure. Is the only element that is lacking to have structure the navigation issue you mentioned? Can you expand on this a little? I really like your idea of having anchor links at the bottom of the posts and may include that in a later update. I agree that the banner size is quite big (especially the abstract whisps layout). Maybe I should look at decreasing the height or adding some sort of element into the banner that makes it relevant.

 

 

Thanks again for all the replies everyone. Really appreciated. Keep it coming!

I dont like it at all. Its confusing to navigate, its purpose is not clear within 10 seconds, and its very dark. Sorry but you need to rethink it from the ground up I would suggest.

hi...

 

i think u made website like ur proffesion....

 

but its not gud....

hi...

 

i think u made website like ur proffesion....

 

but its not gud....

 

Right...

 

@thefandango: Thanks for the response. I'm sorry you don't like it. Well, as far as it being dark, that was purposeful. I don't think it being dark is a bad thing - I guess it's just a matter of personal taste. What does concern me is you mentioned it's 'confusing to navigate.' Can you expand? Many people have been able to navigate just fine.

 

If I added a quick blurb on the home page would that help to understand the purpose within 10 seconds? Unlike many sites, people that are coming to this site would normally already know what the AIAS is. I also have a logo that states it's the American Institute of Architecture Students. What else could be done to 'understand the purpose' quickly.

 

Thansk for the response.