User Friendly & Non-User Friendly Sites~

There are many websites out there where the usability is anything less then friendly, and it's a disaster to try to find anything. On the contrary, there are many websites out on the Internet that are user-friendly, and easy to navigate around. Here are examples of both:

User- Friendly Sites:

The first site I would like to analyze as being user-friendly is Facebook: www.facebook.com. What I enjoy about this site is the simpleness of it. The intro page doesn't have a bunch of ads, banners, or images and it doesn't take forever to load. The learnability aspect is very easy to accomplish and everything is pretty self-explanatory. This site is designed for specifically college students, however I believe it is read at a middle school level. This is good for all the students that are not very web-oriented, but the site isn't too simple it's boring. I feel there is a good balance with Facebook, and this has contributed to its success. It's efficient, does not open new browser windows randomly, and addicting because of how interactive it is.


The next user friendly site is my favorite artists website, Clay Aiken: www.clayaiken.com.
Again, I feel simplicity can really go a long way. The format of the site is easy, and I like the backdrop used not only for the design but you don't have to continuously scroll up and down to get where you want to go. The links are easily accessible, and if any excess scrolling is necessarily I liked how the designer put in an additional scrollbar so you don't have to scroll down your whole site. If someone does not come to this website in a while, it really doesn't matter because the design makes it easy to understand everything initially.
Non User-Friendly Sites:

When I think of a website that is not very user friendly, the University of Bridgeport's website immediately pops in my head: www.bridgeport.edu. There are so many reasons that bothers me. The home page has the same font for absolutely everything, including links and the navigation bar. Nothing is even in bold, and I don't think that's very hard to do. I don't like the colors of the homepage either. Someone needs to tell them that our school colors are purple and white, and not blue. It's hard to find anything on that site, and I have been going to it for four years. The search engine is terrible, and the usability is not friendly either.

Another website not very user friendly is MTV's official website: www.mtv.com. There is so much going on at once at that website I just want to leave it. I hope people don't have their volume on when they go there either because a few things will play at once. It is hard to find different parts as well on the website. The advertisements are annoying, and it takes forever to load because of all the images and everything going on. The efficiency and memorability levels are very low as well.
Here is the MTV website screenshot and the Facebook one: