Wiki+Review

Description of Review:
Going back to Redish's concept of knowing the audience, I wanted to gather information from multiple people with differing levels of web experience for my review. I have a feeling that the Fitness Sports web site draws visitors from a wide spectrum and with very different levels of web experience. As such, I solicited input from four different people: a former co-worker at IBM, an electronics engineer who is quite savvy, a lawyer (who also happens to be my brother), and my mother.

I sent each potential reviewer an e-mail on Monday evening, explaining the re-design assignment, letting them know that I was to make the Fitness Sports site more usable (and user friendly) while accounting for all the information on the original page in one way or another. I also included a special note stating that the re-design was a static page, with no active links. I told the reviewers that I'd appreciate feedback on my re-design if they had the time to provide it, so no one felt like they were forced to put in the review effort. If they were able to provide input, I asked that they do so by the end-of-day Thursday, so that I could use Friday to pull all the information together and post it here by the deadline.

I asked the reviewers for feedback on how my re-design compared to the original site: what they liked about the re-design, what they didn't like, and any suggestions they might have about how the re-design could be made better with respect to, layout, content (graphics or text), etc.

I received responses from three of my four potential reviewers, and as such, I considered the review to be a success.

I have a long history of formal reviews based on my past work experience, but I took all of Redish's discussion to heart for this part of the project:
 * I was constantly reviewing and editing my own work.
 * The review itself was an exercise in asking others to read and comment.
 * I looked at the comments and suggestions of my reviewers as constructive and meant to improve my re-design of the Fitness Sports web site.
 * I worked with my reviewers throughout the process.

Even with all my review experience, I found this to be an enlightening exercise.

Helpful Information Obtained During Review:
The first thing that all three reviewers mentioned was that the Fitness Sports site is a cluttered, chaotic mess. They also said if they had run across it in the course of their normal web browsing, they would most likely not bother using it at all because if is so unorganized and so difficult to find what they might be looking for. My re-design has been changed a bit since the review, but all of my reviewers approved of what I had done with the site. The main reason they gave was that it was much easier on the eyes, and that I had made it clear where they needed to navigate to in order the find the content they might be looking for. That was my main intent when I started this particular assignment; make the Fitness Sports web site more usable and user friendly so visitors were more inclined to stay with it rather than going to a different site to find the information they were looking for.

Other helpful information I received over the course of the review:
 * My original re-design of the site had the tabs at the top, and a list in the middle of the page describing the content that would be found on each of those tabs. One of the suggestions that came out of the review was to provide links in the list as well. I have since changed the list to a table, but I took the reviewers advice and put links to the different content areas in the table.
 * I re-arranged the order of the links in the tabs and the table to list the "Runner's Store" and "Swimmer's Store" first, since the site is for a sports apparel store.
 * Originally, I had used the actual Fitness Sports logo in my re-design, but had to re-size it in order to arrange it the way I wanted it on the page. One of the reviewers commented that the information was hard to read as a result. In my final design, I re-did the logo in order to make the information easier to read. I also took the color-blindness issue into account with the new logo by removing the red text.
 * I have also separated the tag line from the rest of the information it was associated with and re-designed it. I made a note that the functionality for scheduling races can now be found on the "Upcoming Races" page.
 * Per a suggestion from one of the reviewers, I've made the links in the tabs and the table stand out by using bold text and slightly increasing the point size.
 * Another reviewer suggestion was to add slightly more space between the "Home", "Store Locator", "About Us", and "Contact Us" links at the top of the page. I've done every thing I can think of to heed that suggestion, but I can't figure out how to do it. I"ll keep trying, but they may end up with less space between them than I'd like.
 * One last suggestion was to separate the weather information instead of burying it under one of the content links. I heeded that suggestion by putting a weather graphic near the top of the page and adding a link to weather sites along with it.

All in all, I felt my reviewers had a lot of good suggestions and constructive feedback concerning my re-design of the Fitness Sports web site. I appreciate the time they took to do the review, and I have incorporated several of their suggestions into my final re-design.