posted by hotpotmike on September 9, 2008 | 0 comments
I like what you've done. Some great ideas, clean, simplistic design.
Sound wise, I tried a couple of lessons and the individual vocab players. The words in the vocab were a fair bit quieter. Otherwise the audio quality is very good, very clear.
Couple thoughts on the visual aspects.. personally I'd make the lesson graphic/player a little smaller and integrate it into the lesson intro text on the left, with the intro text wrapped around it on the right and bottom. Definitely add some colour to the mp3 player and I'd place the player above the graphic, vertically in line with the lesson intro text. I just think that would improve the visual integration of the page. When I first clicked on a lesson and read the intro text, it just wasn't obvious to me at first where the mp3 was or if it existed. But it took me all of 3-4 seconds to see it on the right. Anyways, just a thought.
Under the lesson intro text, how about a checklist with embedded links, to make sure new users see what's available, as in:
Checklist: Listen to the lesson
Review the vocab
Test yourself
On another note, the create tab doesn't seem to logically fit on the profile page, as it's not a profile creation, but a lesson creation. I can't really suggest what to do with it though.
I like the simplistic, well organized feel of the site. I feel you could use more colour, especially on the lesson page with icons for each type of lesson. Anyways, minor stuff. You've done some amazing work.
Mike
Hi Mike,Thanks for the feedback and welcome to Popup Chinese!I'll look into that difference in audio levels. We're working to get into a routine schedule for recording and have been having issues with one of our recording machines (Vista is giving us some problems with handling audio under Java). We've got a workaround right now and have disabled automatic audio normalization - will get this fixed before we leave beta.I think our designer would probably agree with you on the site aethestics. Our back-and-forth over this sort of thing largely consisted of my proudly handing over greyscale screenshots I'd hacked together the night before in photoshop, and his immediately blurting out, "太难看了" or “单调死了". Say what you will about them, Beijingers are not afraid to call a spade a spade.Now it's all together I think if anything the site probably *is* a bit too greyish and a bit more color would be nice. I also agree about the position of the create lesson functionality. It's in an awkward spot right now -- my concern with putting it in a more prominent position on the Lessons page was out of fear it might confuse first-time visitors. We're trying to be ruthlessly austere in part to help with usability. There aren't really existing precedents for a lot of the UCG features, so they're tucked away at the moment.
beijingboy on September 10, 2008 | reply
Please don't use more color. The website design and selected fonts are excellent.