As I mentioned in my very first post, our first design class was about comparing two websites, which had to do with books. We also had to compare our classmate’s reaction to one of the websites, and be observed in turn.
I will tell you more about what worked and what didn’t on both sites, but first of all, here are their addresses:
The aim of Project Gutenberg is to provide free ebooks. All content is provided by volunteers who digitise and proofread the books. You can then download them, or read them online.
The goal of Open Library, is “to provide a page on the web for every book ever published” (as stated on their website). I had to go to the FAQ part of the website to actually find out what the aim was, as it was pretty unclear to me.
On the Project Gutenberg website, there barely are any images, book covers are very rare, instead you find long lists of book titles. It is visually very unattractive, and makes you want to close the page very fast. Those lists are made of links, so the entire page is basically underlined. The text is black, and the links are red (but for some unknown reason, some other links are also blue). Once you’ve clicked on a link, it becomes black. The blue/purple convention isn’t respected, and it makes it confusing.
The logo isn’t the same on the main page and on the rest of the website, which makes you wonder if you’ve accidentally changed website…
Project Gutenberg works through donations, and yet their donate button is very small. You also have to look for the “Volunteering” link, even though once again it is what keeps the website alive. Both should be made more prominent.
On the main page, there is no link to their social medias, even though they have Facebook and Twitter accounts. You can find those links if you click on “Book Search”, then “Latest”. Both icons appear on the left, among the list of new releases, which isn’t ideal.
The Navigation Bar at the top and the left hand-side of the main page is essentially the same, except the categories aren’t in the same order, and their names are different, even though they bring you to the same page. For example, what’s called “Bookshelf” on the left is called “Book Categories” at the top, while “Report Errors” at the top is called “Contact Info” on the left hand-side. It’s no wonder that “Report Errors” is one of the very few items included in the navigation bar…
So to conclude, this website was judged very confusing by all of us: the fact that the entire page consists of red links, with barely a single image meant none of us downloaded a single free book.
Open Library, on the other hand, is much clearer. The dropdown menu at the top is much better, less clustered, all categories well labelled. The main page has pictures of the book covers, at the very top you can browse by subject, each subject illustrated by an icon. Once you click on a book, it bring you to a page with all its info. You have a “Want to Read” button, which I assume creates a kind of Wish List.
The main drawback of this particular website is that you need to login to do anything, and the main goal of the website is quite confusing too: it allows you to borrow ebooks, showing you the “Recently Returned” books. On their FAQ page, they explain that one patron at a time can borrow certain books, meaning downloading it in PDF or other format, and that each loan will expire after two weeks and be removed from their device. Strange concept but why not!
Speaking of the FAQ page, it does not appear in the footer. I came across it when I went to find out more about Open Library itself, by clicking on “More Info”, you then have a link to it.
If you click at the very top of the website, it brings you to another website (without opening a new tab): Internet Archive, which is a non-profit library. The link between the two is unclear, with no easy way of going back to Open Library. My classmate, whose reactions I was observing, got very confused and frustrated by this.
To conclude, Open Library is much cleared and easier to navigate than Project Gutenberg is. But both websites would have quite a lot to improve (don’t even get me started on their mysterious choice of beige!).
My Journey in Web Design 