User testing 2 and problem solving reflection

After I consolidated with the changes, I managed to user test with a couple of friends of mine. I presented the old and new versions of the site. Same as before, I asked them to perform a certain tasks without assistance. One of the improvements they realised was the quantity of text. They suggested that reducing the text causes the website to feel understandable. They also pointed out there was not enough contrast between the navigation and the main content area. In response to this, I applied a blue background to the navigation area.

Problem solving reflection

One of the disturbing effects that was encountered was the mobile navigation pushing down the graphical elements. This was because I accidentally made the navigation exit the flow of the document. To solve this,  a tutorial was followed that enabled me to enhance the user experience. Generally the Jquery code allowed it to not disturbed the other elements.

The slider was another issue that made the interactive design look unprofessional. Although the images appear normal, there were not large enough for the user to experience vibrant atmosphere. Nivo slider and light-box are Jquery plugins that are simple implement. I placed the JS and theme files into the heading of the document. The scripts were inserted at the end of the document to ensure the sliders upload first.


Accessibility

One of the most common mistakes made by designers is the lack of use of alt tags. Alt tags enable the specialist software to assist deaf people through the website. Without it, specialist software cannot define it as an image. A short description of the image was placed to ensure that my HTML code is validated and the website meets the breif's requirements.


Improvements

Although I am pleased with the website, I felt that the time restraints caused me to come out with other solutions. The navigation bar features nice retro designed icons, I feel that skeleton made my options limited due to its 960px container. There is a method of making the container into percentages but performing this takes would have consumed a lot of time. As mentioned in my technical research, there are still people having large screens. In future, I may use bootstrap to make a 100% and free flowing website.