I picked Group D to review.
I will start with the first website. My first impression opening it up was that it was simple and not too confusing. There were three paragraphs to read, any more might have been too much, so it was a good length. When I explored some more on the website, the right hand side tabs were not lined up properly within their boxes. The Browse Items/Exhibit section was well done too. It was clear and organized well. They did have contributors listed at the bottom. Overall, this historical project of Nat Turner was simple to use, easy to navigate and understandable for the general public.
Next website, my first impression was there’s a lot of blue, and they need more color. The title of the page repeats. The longer I stared at the first page, it seemed more like a blog, not so much an academic, professional history project. I do understand that this is a museum, so there are the extra tabs along the top for their services. Yet, I didn’t really know where to explore first because there was a lot to look at in every direction. Navigation was fine, but I think it could have been done better, maybe because there are so many tabs. I thought the introduction was good, I liked the bigger font, easier to read and had a picture. Getting into the other tabs, they were fine too. Their collection of images had text that was cut off, so I couldn’t read the whole title. Something strange with the Aftermath section on the right hand side, there is a quote, but not an end quote. Was that intentional? They do have a more information/contact us tab at the very bottom, so you would have to do some digging to find the contributors and publishers. Final impression, I think it was understandable for the general audience and easy enough to explore the site, although there may be things they can work on like the color scheme.
Comparing the two websites, I personally liked the first one, and it seems simple for everyone and more professional for an historical project. The second website wasn’t visually appealing enough for me. The color scheme was the same blue, there should have been less and maybe more pictures to balance it out. There was a lot going on with the second with stuff to look at. Although, I enjoyed the bigger font, and it was much easier to read. They both had some text cut off problems, but also a good amount of text each page with pictures. The second website seemed a little boring with all the blue. For the first website, I thought was more engaging with their exhibit of items, clear and easier to navigate the site.
I really enjoyed reading about your observations and analysis of these two websites! The first one was built using Omeka and I agree that the creator did a good job of laying out the content to include a fair mix of images and text. Since you pointed out all of the blue on the second website, it’s all that I see now! This is actually a really important concern, because there is a rhyme and reason to carefully choose colors for a website. For example, certain colors might not be color-blind friendly, so it creates a bit of an accessibility issue. I’ve heard that blue links can also be a problem depending on the type of color-blindness. As for the quote box on the second website, I think the single quotation mark was intentional and an “artsy” way of alluding to quoted text. My other primary concern about this website was that the images seemed like an afterthought to the text. The text and imagery should work together– viewers shouldn’t have to read a bunch of text and then look through a gallery of images.