Description:

Northwestern University Library is a Online-Library for the university students of Northwestern University. The library provides the students huge amount of resources which help the student either for their assignments or researches. It also provides student a lot of reference materials.

Target Audience & User groups:

The main audience of this web site will be the student within the Northwestern University. Although other groups can also use the resources inside the library, but some of the page need to log in using the student ID, and password, therefore other groups just can have a little bit of information because they don't have the log in and password.

Key Features:

Colors:

The web page designed in very simple way, just use the simple color such as white mainly, also it used a lot of java script in the web page, such as Mouse_Move_Over, when the users move their mouse on some of the  images (.GIF format), the content in the upper banner will change. I like this design because the author of this website is very clever, the author use the java script and turn a simple images into a useful navigation tool.

Animation:

The web site contains a lot of java script instead of animations, these useful java scripts act as a navigator and guide the audience where they want to go, before they go, and give them overall intros for the place they are going to.

Navigation:

The navigation system is quite clear, and users can go to the pages they want to go, after the users have been to the desired pages, with those pages, the author of the web page also provide a menu on the left hand side of those pages, and if the users want to go to somewhere else, it is very easy.

Good Design:

• provide the navigation menu on the left-hand side of the pages, users can navigate in a fast way. The web site also provides the site map which is very useful.

• The layout of the web site is very formal, like using the common color-white,  give users an sense and that is, "well this web site seems is reliable, and must can give me what I want".

Bad Design:

• use the grey color text on the white background, it make the users hard to see, users need to watch very carefully and also need to adjust the font size from their explorer.

• The author use a lot of java scripts inside the web pages, in user consideration view, too many java scripts will slow down the computer, since not all the students are using fast computer, some of them maybe use some slow computers like Pentium I 133.

User considerations:

Besides the java scripts within the page, the author of this web page should considerate about the visual appearance on the web page. It's very important because a user might spend more than 2 hours, some of them might spend more than 6 hours, and their eyes must be hurt by those Hard-To-See-Texts in the pages.

Summary:

This Online-Library is very helpful to students in the university of Northwestern. It's because the library provides a lot of useful resources and references to the students. The main problem is this web page it the color of the text, some of the texts are very hard to see in the pages. This is considerate as a bad design. 

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