Search Engines

Search engines on the web sites.

Today almost every person on our planet uses Internet. The vast amount of web sites give us a great opportunity to find any information we need, but sometimes it is hard to approach a desired goal. Majority of the Internet users in order to avoid long time surfing on the web site start looking for the search field that helps to find particular and concrete information consuming time of the visitors and patience. In order to make the information searching process more convenient, the search engine should be located at the accurate place on the web site and designed in the proper way. I have researched some web sites and found a great amount of interesting examples of inaccurate design and location of search engines on the web pages. After the detailed analysis, based on academic rules, knowledge and my own creativity I have made some corrections in order to improve the quality and design of this search engines. Here I offer some examples and detailed explanations for them.
Web site of The Royal Mail.

www.royalmail.com

On the button “Go” the arrow that is always used as conventional sign meaning, “click here”, dericted not towards the button, but towards blank space next to it. This combination shows us the object that starts searching process located somewhere next to the arrow. Moreover, the word “search” unnecessarily dublicated in the searching field and that causes undesirable visual noise for the web site. It is enough to make some little changes and the searching engine looks in an appropriate way.
My variation:

The same situation is with the arrow on the Jobseeker’s web site.

jobseekers.direct.gov.uk

My variation:

One more example of an unnecessary dublication:

www.pwc.com

I removed the word “Search” from the field, and visual noise reduced in double measure:

This is also an example of the wrong designed searching field :

www.deloitte.com
In this case designers of the web site meant that after entering searching keyword, a user should click on the green button in order to begin the searching process. But this combination tells user that to start searching he has to click on the link “Advanced Search”, which practicaly will take him to the page with wide search options.

My variation:

On the Toshiba’s official web site I could not find search engine at all. I think that it is not really ethical for the company and web site with such a big amount of information. But I have found one on the previous version of Toshiba’s web site which looks like this:

http://www.toshiba.co.jp/about/press/cate.htm

This organization of the search could really confuse the visitor with the button location which visually is not related to the searching field.

Now, I want to demonstrate you a few good examples of correctly designed searching elements.

Let’s have a look at the Dell’s web site.

www.dell.co.uk
I think that this searching engine is designed on the appropriate level. While using such well-organized searching engine it could not cause any questions and doubts. Everything is clear and logic.

This is Apple’s web site search:

www.apple.com

This is quite bold solution meant for experienced users, because this contingent after entering the keyword usually straight away press “enter” button, while novice users prefer to use mouse, but they won’t find any button to start search.

This is search engine of The BBC web site, one of the simplest ways.

www.bbc.co.uk
They did not use any additional elements, but left only necessarily ones – keyword field and button with the name of service.

One more example of simplest designs for the searching elements.

Searching Area.
On the web sites with big amout of infomation designers usually attach one more option for the search engine. It is an optional choise for the type of information you want to find. And I want to show you good exmaple of the web site where visitor could use this helpful tool – AllMusic.com

www.allmusic.com
Here user can definetly point out result of search he interested in. Using of this option could help user to avoid huge amount of information to look throug. But to get the one which he really needs. This tool could really save you time and nerves.

When you create search engine it will be also desireble to indicate the area of search. As did developers of the Cnet:

www.cnet.com

All this options could help the web site being used easily. But designers should use this opitons carefully. They should better not to put these elements where it is really necesasarily.

Here I had described a narrow spectrum of the mistakes that web developers make while building the web sites with searching engines. Actually this problem is more complicated and demands more detailed research.
Undoubtedly, even with these mistakes users could use the web site successfully but according to the web usability and grammatical correctness it cause some problems.
Existence of such mistakes could cause some troubles. First of all these mistakes make the web site quite difficult and inconvenient for operation. It can provoke user to doubt about simple things that should be obvious. So such mistakes divert costumer’s attention from the main purpose of the web site – information. Secondly, customer’s confidence is getting worse with this web site, so his confedence gets worse with the web owners and with the goods or service they offer. This could be easily compared with grammatically wrong written brochure that company provides to the customer, in order to make him familiar with the services they offer. If a person gets such a brochure, what he/she will think about this company?
Unfortunately, elements of the web site, which are created in an inappropriate way, are more likely to be seen than correct ones. While surfing the Internet and researching a vast amount of web sites, it can be concluded that the amount of unqualified web designers dominate in today’s Internet world. This is one of the reasons I have chosen to study the course of Design For Digital Media.

Visual Essay.

This is my photo essay for the brief. This essay shows the things I think are important for Animation Discipline.


all the images taken from www.corbis.com

Analysis of my works.

“Kite”, by Me (2006)

Now I will try to analyse and criticize work I have done by myself and have a look on it from the different angle.

First of all I want to make some attention on the visual characteristics of this work.

This picture was painted with ligth colours. Mainly with different gradations of blue, green and yellow colours. I should mention that this image presented on the screen and this factor makes big contribution on the atmosphere of this piece. When printed version of it would have a little bit dull colours. This image generally drawn with curvy lines, that makes this picture looks more interesting in this context which meaning I will try to open further.

This image has some kind of surrealism. There is the only character on this picture – kite, which has fictional appeareance. As we can see this kite seems to be like a live being having its own face, emotion and facial expression. His face has s sly gaze, looks like he is happy about managing to escape from his master. Or maybe it’s actually master’s dreams or flight of fantasy? Also there are no stropes, without them flight is not possible at all. So this kite could exist only on the emotional and dreaming level of our councesness. Also there is a small element, a red dot on the forehead, that give us a hint on the indian culture which gives me association with its spiritual live. There is one more element which meaning doesn’t clear for me – it is a small octopus drawn in the middle of the kite. Does it mean anything, or just exists like a decoration?

There is no title on this image, so it doesn’t makes anybody to think about this peace in the particular way. It gives a freedom for surveyor’s thoughts. There is no obvious contrasts that could give a focus on something. Picture is well balanced.

I think that the audience of this piece of art could be section of people liking mystics, dreaming and surrealism things. And it doesn’t have any agitation or polictical aims.

I think that time is shown on the picture is about four o’clock at summer time. Because it is still blue sky but there is a moon already.

The technics it was made with called - digital painting. I have selected this way to produce my idea because at that time I had a purpose to learn more about the programm called Corel Painter and using tablet with it.

Mandership

Here you can find lots of interesting information about designer's work.

Mandership is mostly concerned with graphic and industrial design, interface engineering, typography, semiotics, and visualization.

http://www.artlebedev.com/mandership/

Critical analysis.

(A) - "The Uncle Sam Range" by Shumacher & Ettlinger.

(B) - “Dady, what did you do in the Great War?” by Savile Lumley

Now I will try to analyse and compare two illustrations: "The Uncle Sam Range" - published by Shumacher & Ettlinger (further "A") and illustration by Savile Lumley - “Dady, what did you do in the Great War?” (further "B"). And interpret their artistic and semantic sides.

First of all I want to say few words about the style of pictures. There is a text on them. And the way how the font fitted in the pictures are different. On the "A" all the words exist as a part of the whole image. They like drawn on the floor, papers and on the table cover. But what we can see on the "B" is just phrase written above the picture. It looks more separatly. But both textes on the images equally expressive. And siuts the images styles. Colour scheme on the “A” is colder, that giving us sense of official atmosphere. But the colours on the “B” much warmer and creates home cosiness atmosphere. All the people are dressed peculiar to the time they living at. On the “A” there is one fictional character personifying the earth with its habitants. On the “B” there is no fable. Both illiustrations have central composition. I think that this two pieces were produced for a wide audience and were published in a newspaper or in a maganize. Dispite of the target of both pictures the meaning of them are not very relative.

On the piece "A" meaning is more common and advertising, it just appeals people to buy the stoves. But the presence of plenty American symbolics makes attention on the American spirit and creates official atmosphere. This shows us the size of patential market. Seems that Uncle Sam wants his stoves to become the common property of Americans and people from all over the world. When the picture "B" appeals people to think about some global problems, such as war and its after-effects. This piece of art has the national spirit too, even without all those flags and symbolics. But this nationalism has different conext. All its meaning includes phrase on the picture – “Daddy, what did you do in the Great War?”. This words make people thinking about patriotism and wants them to be involved to the actions for the sake of their country and nation. It is very important to put attention on the time when both pictures where produced: A - 1876 year (which is actually before the Great War), B – 1915 year (directly during the war).

If we compare the gestures, facial expressions and gazes on the both images we could see how does things like a war changes the people and their common live. On the "A" all the people seems to be happy with the new stove they got and the only thing they worry about is how they could sell it to the whole world. But on the “B” you could see a little child playing with the toy-army. In this comparison we could see the change of the social values and moods over the time.

My opinion that images has both : strong technical performance and present-day meaning for particular time in the history. I would like to see other works of this authors.

critical studies blog has opened.

Hello Tutors and Collaegues.
The purpose of this blog is to show you my critical and analytical skills and their improvments. And offcourse to hear your feedback them.