Have a look around the site, and at some of the sites they have featured. These are all examples of bad design, and also offer an explanation about why they fall into this category.

This task should give you an idea of the things to look for when evaluating sites, and how other people evaluate them.

Task

You will be evaluating at least four websites from the domain of pet supplies, and producing a document to summarise the process you have undertaken.

Task 1

Have a look at Nielsen's or Schneiderman's heuristics (see the evaluation lecture) and consider which you feel to be most important when evaluating websites of this type (ecommerce sites).

Task 2

Create a table with criteria you are going to consider when evaluating your sites (these can be directly linked to particular heuristics found in task 1 but can also include other factors you feel are important).

Task 3

Search for websites for "pet supplies".

Evaluate at least four relevant pet supplies sites using the evaluation criteria you identified in task 2,and for each website enter your values in the table you created. Ensure you record the website URL in your results table.

Task 4

Decide which of the sites you would consider to be, in your opinion, the best. Explain your reasoning, and reflect on how closely this matches the results gathered in task 3.