Designer News
Where the design community meets.
York University Joined almost 5 years ago
Haven't heard the podcast but I imagine it's because everyone converges towards the same exact art style, making every site look incredibly generic. Here's an article from AIGA that describes the phenomenon: https://eyeondesign.aiga.org/dont-worry-these-gangley-armed-cartoons-are-here-to-protect-you-from-big-tech/
Beautiful! So nice to see writing on the web that's more than a block of paragraphs locked into a templated design.
I got used to the Powerpoint style navigation after a while, and can understand why you chose to use that format. But my initial temptation was to exit the site, due to needing to press a key everytime. And the Bitstrips style character drawings made it feel very 2012-y.
My suggestion would be to use a dark background instead of images, because a) they don't look good on desktop and b) it reduces on-screen clutter, increases contrast and lets the user focus on the content. You can use a background image to introduce a new section maybe, but the content slides should stay minimal.
Finally, please include a Table of Contents so users can quickly navigate to the part of the study they're interested in. Not everyone will want to start from Slide 1.
The same principles apply to Powerpoint design in general.
Is this website intended to be viewed by corporate clients? If so, please do not use a flashing/TV static style background. You don't know whether your audience includes epileptic people or simply those who're sensitive to flashing lights.
I'm fortunately not either, but I couldn't even stay on the site without closing the tab because mouse scroll didn't seem to do anything.
The landing page needs to communicate something about WTF Philip Davis is and why I should learn React from his course when there are far cheaper alternatives on Udemy that are vetted by user reviews.
If you don't have enough customers at this stage to be able to offer reviews, at least include a testimonial from a client or an employer to verify to prospects that you know your stuff.
I always find these "animate when element enters the viewport" style websites hard to navigate, because the animation triggers are always slower than how I scroll. So if the image doesn't load when I reach the trigger point, but does load half a second after, I feel irritated as I have to scroll back up to see the image.
The parallax scroll effect at the start of the page is fine, but use the animate-on-scroll effect sparingly.
Love brutalist designs, and this one is actually pretty neat. Couple of things:
There's way too much content for a single-color palette. Other brutalist websites I've seen (can't think of any examples now)
Don't make any of the content sticky. Right now the home page has 2 sticky sidebar columns AND a sticky top nav header. Again, with a single color palette and tightly-packed content it's hard to scroll without losing your reading position on the page.
Automated video transcription would be amazing, especially for lengthy user testing sessions (~20 min/user).
Designer News
Where the design community meets.
Designer News is a large, global community of people working or interested in design and technology.
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In the "Organize Tasks" row, I can't read the text on the screenshot. If you're using an actual screenshot from the software, you might consider creating a more readable version in Sketch or Photoshop to use on the site.
Same goes for the "Focus your Time" row.
The purple button color lacks contrast against the green background. It's also not a good color mix IMO. Try a palette generator like https://palx.jxnblk.com/ to see if you can find a more complementary color.