Website Analysis

Website: mail.msu.edu

High-Level (analytical)

Target Audience: MSU students and faculty

Most Common Tasks: Sending and receiving/reading email.

Tasks to Specific Users: Professors often send out mass emails to students specifying their assignments that are due. Students often communicate with professors or other students about homework, etc.

User Navigation: Navigation is organized on the left side of the screen and across the top. Although the organization is rather basic, I (personally) find it somewhat difficult to use.

Design-Layout Level (descriptive)

Navigation Structure: Frankly, I think the navigation structre sucks. It appears as if they've tried to organize it relatively simply, so that it can be easy to use, but by doing this, they may have inadvertently made it ugly, plain, and somewhat more difficult to use. Performing simple tasks like organizing emails into separate folders, is made much more difficult by having more than one way to do this. For example, I was able to create a folder for my Arabic class's emails, but was unable to move the emails into said folder.

Branding/Logo: They have what I suppose you could call a logo on the log-in page near the top left. It's pretty plain; black & white.

Color Schemes: There is some basic green and white on the log-in page, but not as much as you might expect. After you log-in, the color scheme turns to light blue and peach-ish, which doesn't really seem to make much sense, considering the university that this webiste was created for.

Layout Presentation: I don't particularly like the layout of the site. It's basic, I suppose, but it could be better. I find it boring, and I don't think it looks very professional.

Summary: Thumbs down! :(