Website Critiques

Today for cyberpedagogy class, I will be critiquing the following websites for their content, design, and usability: the Chicago Public Schools, the National Art Education Association, and the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.

I will begin the first critique with the Chicago Public Schools' website. For this site, I am going to give it a "B+" grade. I began looking at this site along with the CPS previous website. After comparing both, this site is definitely more user friendly and the design is aesthetically pleasing. Overall, I felt the content of this site was effectively organized and the information was simply stated on each page. Additionally, I liked how if I wanted to find out more information about an area, the links provided all of the information necessary. My only negative critique is that the site feels altogether sterile; it's kind of boring. The site is suppose to be about schools (children, parents, teachers, learning communities) and it feels like it is geared more towards a business world audience (ugh!).

My next critique is of National Art Education Association's website. Like the CPS site, this new design for their website has changed dramatically from last year and is much more user friendly than it was before. For this site, I am going to give it a solid "A" grade. The reason I enjoyed this site so much was because of it's simple and yet effective design. I enjoyed how the web designers used bright colors for this site along with interesting pictures; very much like an apple website design. You actually kind of feel happy just to be there. The content and the usability of this site is also well done. NAEA last website had many issues before and it wasn't well organized. This one was easy to navigate and I could find the content I was looking for.

My last critique is of the School of Art Institute of Chicago's website. Again, this new design for the website has changed since last year and for the better. For this site, I am going to give it an "A" grade. I gave it a high mark because I really like the new layout of this site; it's easy to navigate. I also love love love the idea of making a site feel more human with pictures of the teachers of the school which rotate on the home page. Nice touch and these teachers really felt interesting to me. Another aspect of the site I enjoyed were the interesting pictures in the backgrounds and the layouts. They kept my interest and I definitely felt that this site was created successfully to reach their creative audience.