Submission,+Ian+King

Ian King

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In the original version of the site, many things felt cramped. The left navigation pane seemed to draw more attention than the Hot Topics section, which was supposed to be the focus of the site. In my updated version, I made the left navigation spacing bigger and made the links italicized to try to encourage users to look at the center section sooner. Along the same lines, I felt that the bolded links in the center were too "blocky", they needed to have more space, and be a regular font face instead of bold.

Overall I think the original site was very encouraging towards a good mental model. The search bar was in the top right corner which is pretty standard, the logo was on the top left corner, there were excellent uses of gradients, and periphery items were kept in the periphery. However, The original site lacked presentation and clarity. Many components felt too big or too cramped and needed more spacing. After changing a few of the font sizes and weights, I feel that the site is much more readable.