Melody Baker: The College Experience

Former Olathe Northwest student Melody Baker came in and we asked her some philosophical questions to see if college is really what it sounds to be.

1. How is dorm life?
Throughout the 30 or so minutes I got to talk to Melody, I surely did not expect what she was to say next. "Don't have floor sex". While I wasn't exactly associating college with that, I guess it's good advice. She also stated to get along with your roommates, because the last thing you want to do is get in a fight with the people you're living with for the rest of the year, and possibly more upcoming years.

2. How does web design apply to your major?
Melody unfortunately didn't major in web design, but she said the experience really did help her deal with the idiots around campus.

3. What is the overall college atmosphere like?
Melody stated that the classes at Washburn University were overall really small (about 15 people), and you have a lot more freedom but don't try and overuse it because you'll end up regretting it. You also end up having really great one-on-one time with your professors.

4. An average Monday, Wednesday, and Friday looks like this: 9-9:50 class, 10-10:45 nap, 11-1 class, and then she has track practice for the rest of the day.

And repeat!

Krug Ch3

Penny Juice - This website has very extensive background noise because they changed the color every inch of the website and I don't know where my attention is supposed to go.

Being Wicked - This website shows a very low amount of competing noise because they pretty much just chose one color and went through with it for the whole website.

Web Pages That Suck - Okay so I went to this website to find a website that wasn't clickable but it turns out this is one. There's ads in the middle of sentences and the content was all over the place, and there's some images that look like they might be apart of the page but they're actually not and you couldn't click on them at all.

Club Penguin - This is one of my favorite websites design wise because they make it easy to see what's clickable. They put borders around it and it's a bigger font than some of the other text.

Belle De Soto - This site might be the scariest thing ever. I can't even describe it, but I KNOW there is no defined areas whatsoever.

Vanderbilt University - This website does a really good job of dividing up the information that's offered and it's easy to read and find what you need quickly.

Forever 21 - When shopping on this site, it's very easy to just click on the logo (which happens to be in the top left corner!!!) and it'll take you back to your homepage.

What is Blick - This website straight up showed me what it was as soon as the page loaded. It's clear with it's claims and it has great visual hierarchy.

Don't Make Me Think!

My question is what my eye should go to first. In some cases, it's okay to add a picture at the top of the page but only if it's a slideshow, and it had padding at the top. It also makes me question whether my screen is frozen or not. The information and links at the bottom should be bolder or bigger, but I don't really notice them when I first look at the site, even though that's very serious information that needs to be seen by everyone. Also, toward the bottom of the page, there's a live twitter feed and the images are blank and makes me question once again if my computer is frozen.

Is that advertisement? Where's the navigation bar? Can I search for something? I'm gonna be honest, it took a couple of minutes looking at this to find the play button because everything was so big and colorful and it's small compared to the rest of the page. There isn't any information of what Webkinz is, and only thanks to my childhood do I know what to do. Also, my eyes saw the advertisements before anything else. They're in the way of the home page, and if you're going to do advertisements, don't do them in front of everything else.

This picture doesn't serve justice. The cat is actually actively typing on the computer. I'm questioning whether is website is ACTUALLY affiated with Yale University and who let them do this. I don't know what to do when I look at this. My eyes just kinda look into blank space, which is the worst possible sign that this website sucks. Apparently there's links on the sidebar, and I'm kind of scared to click them to we're going to leave that a mystery and do what question marks are known for, leave the website.