RATING 4.5

Cognitive Load

  • Focused and stays on task due to great use of visual hierarchy.
  • Easy to recall the main point of the webpage which is to find out more information about the Digital Design + Development Programs.
  • Easy to understand the directions of the page with the call-to-action button “GET STARTED”. The button draws the eye with its white text on a red background.   
  • Well grouped paragraphs, as there is a lot of information, it is still easy to read, the viewers eye is guided by the use of columns and colour blocks that separate each category in a clean way.
  • Great anchors with the colour blocks and headings. The reader can begin anywhere on the page and will understand the content. 
  • It’s consistent in its design with its use of an underlying grid within the colour-blocked program paragraphs.

Language Usage

  • An understandable and predictive structure, there was more information on this landing page them I expected to see, although all the information was interesting and valid to have on the page.
  • The language use was intelligent and used words that were understandable with no idioms, abbreviations, jargons, homonyms, heteronyms or anything else that the user would have to look up to find out what it meant.
  • The programs were well defined within a short paragraph box with information the reader would want to know more about. I did find it deceiving that when in a desktop browser, if you hover over the program colour boxes, they animate outwards a bit and the expectation after that was to link to the North Island College’s program page, but that did not happen. 

Colour

  • Bright colours, with simplistic pattern and images, makes this web page easy to read and navigate. 
  • The dominance of the colour blue, it creates a sense of honesty, reliability, loyalty with the pop of bright, cheerful, intelligent yellow, passionate red, and the new beginning feel of the green/teal colour, the colour palette chosen here does well at adding mood and evoking emotions. 
  • If this web page was in grayscale, it would still be well laid out and easy to navigate, as it only uses images to enhance the text, as well as the other use of colours around the paragraphs and different sections. 

Typography

  • The typeface used is a Sans Serif “Open Sans” font, with its wide aperture, the text is easy to read with proportionate font sizes for headings and paragraphs .

Perceivable 

The contrast of the dark blue font on the off-white background helps with readability for those with low vision.

One note of improvement I would make for this website to be more perceivable would be to add in alternative text to the image used such as the one with the two students. 

Operable

The first thing I noticed is the lack of a navigation bar. Whether its because it’s only a landing page, adding a navigation bar or a hamburger menu would help the user to find what they are looking for right away. The website is easy to scroll through but the clickable buttons on this site only open up to a contact form. This could deter people who were looking for more information on the programs provided, but not wanting to input their information whether it’s for privacy, accessibility or personal reasons.  As an alternative means to get to the program information the user should be able to click on the paragraph summaries of each program that would take them directly to the NIC website where each program is described in detail. 

Understandable

The website has done a good job at making it understandable in its separation of heavy text with paragraphs, columns and the use of colours. The design is consistent and users understand what they can do next. 

Robust

The website ran smoothly on the 3 desktop browsers I tried it on: Safari, Chrome and Firefox. I actually preferred viewing the landing page from my mobile, the hierarchy worked well and the information was easier to read when it was a singular column to scroll through. I liked the drop-down tables of the programs with the option to click on it and see more of a description. 

Accessibility

On Safari, when checking the accessibility, it gave the webpage a rating of 95 with some room for improvement such as using alternative text for link labels. As I mentioned before, it would be good to also add alternative text to the images as well. The accessibility rating is minor as its technically an issue, but unlikely to cause any problems. The other two browsers didn’t mention these as issues. 

SUMMARY

I gave this webpage a 4.5 out of 5. It was obviously very well thought out with its visual hierarchy, use of colour and contrast, imagery, and the content was valuable and informative. There were just a few areas of improvement which is why it was not a perfect score. By adding a navigation bar or menu, alternative text to images and labels, adding clickable links to the college’s website for the programs (for authenticity) and limiting the contact form pop ups, users will get more information, less frustration and more accessibility.