Design Reference (Part 2 seven design characterstics)

1. (Functionality/ Easy Navigation): Each Website that I have listed has easy to understand navigation that takes the user to a different portion of the website. (eg.) hiphop dx has a banner at the top of the page, which lists Home, Hip Hop, Community, Media, Lifestyle, Fashion. When the user waves their mouse over the catergory, a drop down screen appears with more specific options. (If you look carefully at this screen shot you can see that as I waved the mouse over the media section, the option for audio, video, or mixtape media appeared.

2. (Functionality/allowance for membership): The sites that I have chosen allow the user to become members of the site for free,so they can recieve daily updates in their emails about the site. The example that I am showing is the Thisis50 website. I am a member of this site as you can see in the top right hand corner of the screen shot where it says, "Dubs, Sign out".

3. (Functionality/viewing past posts). The websites that I have chosen allow the user to view media, or articles the have previously been posted on the site. An example of this is the screen shot of Hip dx, in the first design characteristic post. On the side bar it shows past media with the date they were released and allows users to select it

4. (Functionality/allowance for self promotion). The websites that I have chosen allow members to post their own media content. This can be seen in the screen shot of This is 50.com on the 2nd Characteristic. If you look carefully you can see that it says, Welcome dubs, what would you like to do ? Post a video ?

5. (Functionality/allowance for chat). The sites that I have chosen allow members to chat with each other in two forms. 1, with comment boards. (eg. The screen shot below shows the comment board of a particular video on World Star Hip star Hiphop.com), and 2, Chat screens. The site thisis50 allows members to chat with one another. This can be seen in the previous screen shot.

6. (Aesthetics/eyecatching Banners). As you can see in all the previous screen shots each site has its own personalised banner with the website logo. This creates familiarity within the website users

7. (Aesthetics/page layout). Each page apart from HipHop Dx, has a blogstyle page which makes it easier to see current information. On the other hand, HipHop DX has a Homepage that allows users to see all the site updates. They are both very affective methods.