Design and usability analysis of Kayak and Food Tank websites

¶ … Color, Usability

Design, Color, Usability and Image Basics

The purpose of this paper is to analyze two news and information sites: one related to travel and one is of food. The critical evaluation of both of the websites would help in determining what is likeable about them and what is not. The design, color and usability of both websites would be assessed as well.

Description of the Websites

The first selected website is related to travel naming "Kayak," which is considered as a reliable source for finding deals regarding flights, hotel rooms and car rentals (Kayak, n.d.). It is best known for its price deals and prediction about the trend of prices. An interesting feature on this website is that of "travel alerts" that lets the navigators receive email alerts of the upcoming deals. The URL of this website is: https://www.kayak.com/

The second selected website, "Food Tank" relates to specific, detailed information on food (Food Tank, n.d.). This website provides information that is tough to find anywhere else on the internet, and includes articles on food trends and issues. The articles present informative facts such as that on family farms, interviews with the food innovators and agricultural personalities. The special "resource" tab on the page allows the navigators access a large database of people, info graphics and companies that are helping to modify the food businesses around the world. The URL of this website is: http://foodtank.com/

Evaluation of Sites

Basic Design Principles of Alignment, Proximity, Repetition, and Contrast

The most successful website designs, no matter how user-friendly they are, have to look carefully into the strategy for aligning their content on the web page. They have to evaluate how to make it easy for the visitors get clearly what the website is about and what it offers, the placement of the content, such that visitors find the relevant information easily, and whether the strategy supports the web design. Based on these principles, the alignment of Food Tank is quite suitable since the web page tells all about itself as soon as the visitors visit it. Likewise, Kayak has fine alignment strategy for its website so that navigators find what they are looking for instantly.

The proximity of Kayak design is quite suitable for the viewers since similar items appear under well-grouped sections, making navigation easy. For example, on the landing page, there are several countries mentioned where the viewer might want to travel. When he hovers his mouse to that destination, "hotels, flights, cars" appear together at once with their prices mentioned. This is the clear proximity that this web page uses for the easy navigation of its visitors. Food Tank does not show signs of clear proximity as its home page has scattered items such as articles, blogs, and upcoming food events etc.

There is no repetition on both web pages since there is a lot of disparate information displayed on the pages.

The contrast of both websites is high, and there are high definition pictures displayed on both of them. Food Tank has pictures of food items, therefore, the contrasts are high; same stands true for Kayak, that has pictures of different places around the world having high contrast in order to entice the website visitor to click on the pages.

Usability Principles

The first and foremost principle of a good website is its availability and accessibility (Idler, 2013). Both the websites are readily available and accessible as soon as the user hits their links. The second principle can be clarity; Food Tank is less clear in terms of its content available on the site whereas Kayak is clearer. The third principle is learnability, which means presenting the viewers the information that is new to them and they can easily learn from it; both websites follow this principle admirably. The credibility of the web content is fourth usability principle that the web designers carefully think about; Food Tank and Kayak fulfill this criterion as well intelligently. The final principle for good usability of the website is its content's relevancy; both website offer highly relevant data and information for its users.

Conclusion

In my opinion, Kayak's website does a better job of implementing key principles of design, color and usability. There is organized information presented on its web pages and the users find easily what they are looking for. The color contrasts are used remarkably well so that visitors are able to access their required information easily.