Website Research: Kunle Adeyemi & Michael Maltzan

 Based on my project, I will be looking at two Architects websites; Kunle Adeyemi & Michael Maltzan. I will be looking at the website and how easily accessible and functional it is for users and how their work is displayed. This website research will assist me in understanding how to create my own website so I will consider the overall design, colours and typography, navigation, usability/ user friendliness, links and mobile view.

 The first website I will be looking is Kunle Adeyemi website. I started with the homepage. It clearly stated his name and his occupation and included a picture of him and a biography as well. It states that he is an architect and founder of his own firm and also talks about his most notable works, awards he has won and also his vision towards architecture in Africa.

 The homepage has a white background with clear text and headings and also includes a navigation menu which links to other pages. I scrolled down to the footer and there is a copyright symbol and link to terms and conditions. It also includes the same links in the navigation menu and links to different social media contacts as well.

The second page on the navigation is the Design Page. There was a video presentation of some of his works but when I scrolled down it showed all of his works individually and you could click on them to see more images of them and a description of the work as well.

For example, I clicked on the first design shown which was the Zaria Court in Kigali, Rwanda and it took me to a page that stated what kind of project it was, the client and people that worked on it and also more images of it in different angles.

The next page was called "Culture" and this showed the more artistic designs he did for cultural shows and exhibitions and you could also click on each one to get more in depth knowledge of them

The next page in the navigation was called " Education" and this just showed all the lectures, workshops and conferences he had done over the years. It also showed his published books and journals on the topic of water cities which is something he works on a lot. 

I clicked on the book on water cities and it included description and also a link to where to order it.

The last page was called "water" and when I clicked on it it took me to a whole different website. The website is called water cities group which is his organization which provides sustainable building and infrastructure solutions to waterfront cities and communities in Africa. This website also has its own navigation which includes a developments, products and services menu.

        

 

For the mobile view, the homepage is the same and adjusted well to view on the phone the only difference was that there was now a menu to click on the top right in order to see and access the different pages on the website. All the pages worked the same and had basically the same layout. It was just as easy to use on the phone. 

Overall this website was very easy to use and very informative. Everything was in the expected place although if unfamiliar with his work, the "water" page might be confusing but the website it links to when I clicked on it was easy to follow

  The second website I am checking is the Michael Maltzan website. I began with the homepage. The homepage was not really pleasing to look at as it had the navigation in awkward white boxes. There was also no footer for the copyright symbol and the contact addresses were included in the navigation bar instead. There was also no biography of the architect or a picture of themselves. There was no information on who this person was or what type of architecture they specialized in.

I also noticed that every time I clicked out and then back into the website, the image on the homepage was a different one every time

I then clicked on the next page which was the profile page. This page showed different links (again in those white boxes) that led to different pages again like the firm profile. awards, significant works, exhibitions and so on.

I clicked on firm profile for example and the architects biography was surprisingly there. The about page should have been easier to find than that.

 

 

I had to go all the way back to the homepage in order to test out the other pages. The next page I went to was the projects page. The page did show all his projects and I was able to click on each one to get more information but the text was too small and hard to read and I have noticed it as a pattern in the whole website

 

 

The next page I clicked on was called essays. This page was confusing for me as I was not sure what it was about. It just had links to different pages so I clicked on one of them

 

 

When I clicked on one of the links, what appeared to be maybe a story or an essay of a piece of work he had done showed. It was still confusing and I think unnecessary to add to his website and the writing was far too small for me to concentrate on it.

 

 

 

 

The next page I looked at was the news page. All that was there was just articles of some of his works 

The last page there was the contact page  and it included links to their social media, information about employment and internships, the site credits (It was when I clicked on this link that I saw their copyright symbol) and also a site map that shows the different pages on the website

I finally checked the mobile view of the website. The home page structure looked the same, apart from the different background image but the navigation was very small a the top. All the pages looked the same and functioned properly. 

Overall this website was very confusing as things were not in the right order and there was too much unnecessary information everywhere like the articles and news papers.The text was also not accommodating to viewers as it was tiny therefore making it hard to read

Comparing the both sites, the first one was much better. It had a clear structure and was not confusing like the second one. The Kunle Adeyemi website also had the same theme and design of the website while the Michael Maltzan one showed different background pictures with each use. The Michael Maltzan one also had very poor choice of font and placement of links to the pages that made it look very odd and unappealing. There was also a bombardment of information in his website while the Kunle Adeyemi one kept it concise while making the most important aspects of himself and how works be known. The mobile view for both websites were also relatively okay.

Relating this research to my own website design, I think I am on the right track in terms of the page structures and the social media links and I also got an idea of things I should not do with my website. I aim to make my website more engaging for the viewers and more eye catching.