Brandon+Britto+Critique+HW

=Brandon Britto Critique= [|Greyhound Bus Website]

The Greyhound bus website is a service provided by the greyhound bus company which specializes in providing interstate and inter-country travel.The website is mainly used as a place to buy or reserve tickets for bus trips, but you can also learn about the company, look for deals, get information about the buses and routes, and book hotels and lodging at your destination.

**Low-level items (spelling, fonts, colors, layouts, etc.):**
The fonts and colors used on the website are well chosen. All of the words are in chrome word art over a navy blue background which is the theme of their logo and all of their buses. This gives it a nice consistent look and if you are a repeat customer, it makes it easier to connect the company with the buses and website buy using this consistency. The layout is very simple and straight forward. The most noticeable thing on the screen is the primary use for the website, ticket purchasing, is located right in the middle. Along the top and the sides their are other menus that have other information, laid out in the typical fashion of my websites today. Lastly the background image is always a road, highway, bus, or something that ties into the company which constantly keeps the companies service and goals in your head.

Middle-level aspects (consistency, error handling, writing style, menu design, etc.):
As stated before this site is highly consistent. The top menu generally stays the same no matter where you navigate throughout the website, this give the pages a very static feel. Error-handling seems to be sub-par throughout the forms. It is good in the sense that, for example, on the "tickets" form on the main page if you forget to fill something out, or type in something the server doesn't recognize, it doesn't have to reload the page. It simply highlights the incorrect fields right their on the form so you can correct them. The problem with this error checking is that it only highlights one error at a time and the error message displayed is the same for all errors. Also another error I found is that if you schedule a return date that is before your departure, it will not catch it until the next step of the process, which requires loading the next page. So while the error handling is decent it could use some sophistication.

High-level concepts (information architecture, navigation, audience appeal, privacy protection, credibility, etc.):
The information architecture and navigation on this site are great. Greyhound made the forms highly dynamic so with the click of a radio button some information is hidden and only the relevant information remains. This is also done through collapsible segments of the form, so instead of having one long form to fill out with information, they put all of the relevant items together and you go through it piece by piece. It is also very easy to go back to previous sections, and even if you have to go back a page, the form still hold all of the information you entered, so its never like your starting again from scratch. All of the steps are made into a process which is always being tracked at the top of the screen. This plus the fact that the last step is a confirmation page leads to a very appealing experience for the user.