To: Dr. Steve Evans (Supervisor, Technical Communications)

From: Alexandra Abrams

Subject: An Analysis of the Dale Chihuly Web Site

Date: 27 January 2009

Dr. Evans, the purpose of this memo is to evaluate and decide on level of effectiveness of the Dale Chihuly web site. Although informative on Mr. Chihuly’s works, the web site has many issues which will be described further on.

Summary:

The Dale Chihuly web site is an informative website about the artist. Chihuly works mostly with glass but also with paint and drawings. His website is a vast collection of images of his works and also a list of museums and other places that carry his works.

Analysis:

There are some nice features to the site that are noteworthy. First, it is very accommodating to multicultural visitors with a handy translator located at the bottom center of the screen. It also has the ability to search through the site, which is also helpful if a visitor is looking for something in particular. Finally, the color scheme is a black background with pastel fonts that goes together nicely.

On the other hand, there are many aspects of this web site that need to be looked at. The biggest aspect is the navigation. It is very hard to navigate this site, even with its site map. When a visitor explores the site, it is very hard to get back to the main index page. The menu links are at the bottom of the page, which becomes very problematic for long pages. A reader would have to scroll through the entire page to get out of the section they are on.

When looking at accessibility, this website is very difficult to view. First, the text is very small and since all the navigational links are actually images, there is no way to resize the text. Because many of these links are actually images, they do not get translated like the rest of the text so the visitor still needs to know enough English to navigate to find the actual texts in their language. There are also no alternate codes so if images are disabled or the visitor is using a screen reader, the website is impossible to follow. On certain pages, such as the Articles page under About the Artist, the text is dramatically bright compared to the black background and reading an entire section would be very hard on the eyes. Sometimes there are random arrows thrown in that lead places but have no description as to what they are. When viewing specific pieces of work, the menu that is viewable for the entire site seems to randomly condense itself and a random upward arrow appears that takes the visitor up a level in navigation, but doesn’t actually state what it does.

Conclusion:

Although pretty with fancy artwork on a black background and a fairly simplistic style, the Dale Chihuly web site needs a lot of improvement to make it more functional for both the average visitor and for people with disabilities. The navigation needs to be drastically reworked and the images should either be actual text or have alternate codes for those who cannot view images. With a little bit of organization, this site could be improved drastically.

I hope this analysis has given some insight into the needs of the web site. Dr. Evans, feel free to call or contact me at any of the above addresses or if you have any questions at all regarding my findings.