Week 3: Aesthetics, Design & Branding Two Websites

I frequent several sites throughout the week for various reasons and always several that provide the same type of service.  To research a subject, product or service, I'll go to Google then Bing.  For the purchase of products, Costco, Amazon, then Craigslist.  On occasion, I'll lump Ebay into that purchase group. 

For news I'll start off with my home page of Yahoo then mix it up with USA Today, Fox, MSN, CNN and UTsandiego.  I used to love reading the newspaper when younger and still do for the Sunday edition but time just seems to be always something I'm always short of these days so I go online for quick, not so in-depth look at today's events. 

If more interested, I'll check other sites for more information or for accuracy as ALL the various news outlet do have a slant on how they word things, be they supposedly on the left, right or so called middle.

So for the most visited sites on a daily basis I'll say they're in the News category

www.Yahoo.com

Why are they effective? 
What specific principles of good design do they include and why?
Effective for me is their Concept & Contrast with good use of font style, color and size to show what's important and where the story begins.  Be it for hard news, entertainment or things in between, hierarchy well balanced with good alignment along with  appropriate headlines (Typography)  and photos with good proximity to one another.  Layout is on a 3 column format with subject items on the left, main stories in the middle and other smaller subjects such as what's trending now, Top 5 today's headlines, local info such as weather, featured videos and the all important Horoscopes.  Going from page, ease of use navigation is ok.  Could be better if they had top of page links as you do scroll down quite a bit in the middle part of the site.  As to why it's laid out the way it is, is because there is a lot of content on this site.  They need to be as organized as possible for the user to churn through all this information without getting lost, losing interest and bouncing out to another site.

What makes you come back again?
From a strictly design aspect Yahoo.com is laid out pretty well with most of the C.R.A.P.H.T.E.D. in place. 

What could be improved?Ease of Use could be a little better when hyperlinking from one place to another.  For instance I'll click on a story, get there but lose the links on the left column  and sometimes the links on the top losing the repetition part of a good web design.  And the depth of content can be better.  Which is why I have to go to other sites should I be more interested to try and get the full story.

 

http://www.utsandiego.com/

Why are they effective? 
What specific principles of good design do they include and why?

Design wise not done as well as Yahoo but still works for me hitting some of the C.R.A.P.H.T.E.D. features.  But for some things they do right such as the repetition regarding the menu bar up top, they go backwards when you lose sight of it when you begin to scroll.  Other items such as typography, hierarchy, proximity, alignment and ease of use are there but again could be better tweaked.  As to why, would be or should be the reason I gave for yahoo.  They try here and works ok but can be much better in most all design aspects.
What makes you come back again?
Most C.R.A.P.H.T.E.D. are in place and work well enough but absolutely could use more improvement. 

What could be improved?
Pretty much all of the C.R.A.P.H.T.E.D. features can be tweaked as mentioned above. Depth of Content is again limited as this inherent with most online news outlet.