Epilogue Website Evaluation

Authors: Florence Immigrant & Refugee Rights Project (there were no authors listed by name, but this is a link to the staff page)

Intended audience: people in the US, specifically in Arizona, who are concerned about immigrants detained in Arizona, lawyers looking to defend cases, and immigrants themselves who need an attorney or a family plan.

Site information: the site has many different dropdown menu options with an abundance of information, from “about us,” personal stories, various programs and offerings, resources for lawyers and immigrants (in English and Spanish), and a “get involved” menu, among other options.

Design: the site seems well-designed. It has an aesthetic appeal (with bright images and colors), it scrolls smoothly, and the dropdown menus make it easy to navigate from one page to the next. I did not see a search bar though which might make it difficult to find a specific page amongst all the options. There are a plethora of pages and things to look at, perhaps due to its many different audiences, but the overall organization of the site helped make it more navigable. Only one page was in Spanish and English, and that may make it less accessible overall for Spanish speakers. I do not know how Spanish speakers would find that page in the first place unless specifically directed to it. I don’t personally like the color scheme, but they suit the website well and aren’t too bright or obnoxious.

Principles of Design: Some sections of this site are left aligned, and others are center aligned. Although there is not consistency between the different sections, each has consistent alignment individually. There is some contrast; while the fonts do not change, the text size, bold/normal text, and sometimes color changes to indicate headers, titles, and new sections. The same colors and fonts repeat themselves throughout the website. Some pages have images, some have none, and some have multiple; a little more consistency with images would help with repetition and aesthetic appeal.

Improve: I would add a search bar, first and foremost. That would help with navigation through all the different pages. I would also provide a Spanish language option on the main menu, since a non-English speaker might have a hard time navigating through the menus to the one page that includes Spanish translations. I would also add more consistency with images and with header colors – sometimes a header is bolded black, and sometimes it is red.

Incorporate: I really like the structure of this website; it is intuitive, for the most part, easy to navigate, the colors and images on the homepage make it appealing, and it incorporates some of the elements we want for our project, including stories, facts, and resources.

Here were two other websites I looked at:

Although I don’t think they would work as well for our website design, they might be worth looking through for ideas.

Reader Interactions