Our first assignment for English 336 Writing for the Web was to critique a website. At first I was nervous about this, because I have never done anything like this before. How could I do this without having any formal training on deciding what makes a website good and bad. Even though I have my opinions on what does work on a website and what doesn't, I was not sure my understanding and opinion was educated enough for this project. Eventually, I relaxed and started to take my opinion and turn it into an analysis.
I decided to critique the Jazz Arts Group website. It is a non-profit organization here in Columbus, Ohio. This organization has many different roles, including increasing education in the community and in the schools. Although I knew this type of organization would have a significant and well put together website, I thought it might be fun to take on the challenge of trying to find something wrong or discovering an area that needed improvement.
At first, everything on the website appeared perfect. The use of color and Flash media was not over done. The website was easy to navigate and each different aspect of the organization had its own different section. Eventually, I noticed an area that might be of concern, the currency of the events that were listed. I was cautious with this though, before I bashed the entire website for this one little error, I took a step back and realized that maintaining a website like this is time consuming. Updating a single event daily may not be possible.
Through this project I learned not only how to judge what makes a good website good, and what makes on bad, I also gained a since of confidence. I do not need to be a professional website critic to make these judgements.
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