Blog Topic # 1

http://www.guggenheim.com/

There are an amazing amount of cool websites out there, and certainly plenty of not so cool ones. The Guggenheim site really spoke to me for many reasons. I love the intro displaying the different cities around the world and the rollovers for each. The layout is fresh and simple allowing the user’s eye to take in everything on the page quickly and precisely without being blasé or uninspired. Once inside the site, the navigation is simple and intuitive so even users who aren’t particularly computer savvy can find there way around with ease. The color scheme is also simple and easy on the eyes while the red rollover on links pops and makes the text easy to read. Personally, I would have made the font on the links in the center of the page either a little larger or changed the gray text to be a little darker which would make the words just that much easier to read.

The use of hot images is visually stimulating and pulls the user into areas of the site they may not have intended to go upon landing on the page – I know I didn’t! I found myself curious to know what else they had on there site. I also really like the fact that on different pages hot images were used down the left hand column as well instead of always being right across the top. The site is big enough that the change made for a slightly more interactive experience for me.

The two things missing that I thought were not great on their part were a back button on any given page as well as a Home button on any given page. If you are in the “New York” area (for example) it would be nice to have a “New York Home” kind of button to click on. Similarly, if you want to switch to a different location, such as Venice, it would be nice to be able to access that immediately, and I saw no easy way to do that short of going up to browser and re-typing in the home page info to get back to a place I could then choose a different destination.