Peppermint Tea

I don’t know, I’ve mixed feelings. So, let me keep my mouth shut!

The concept is very interesting…but I’m not so sure that it’s the best approach. There’s certainly nothing wrong with being different. After all, there have been plenty of designers who have created alternative interfaces to websites through Flash. Many of them are successful…but many of them aren’t. The problem is that many of them simply lack familiarity and are almost too different.

One of the aspects of making a site more useable is to add elements of familiarity to a site. If the average visitor has to spend some time trying to “figure it out” then you run the risk of losing that visitor pretty quickly. Another important aspect of useability lies in how a site is organized. Shaun has taken a different approach to how his site is structured and, although the concept is damn cool at face value, I don’t think the implementation of that concept is quite there yet. It’s just a little too confusing. If a visitor’s first reaction to the site is, “Huh? Uhh…what exactly is this again?”, you know you’re in trouble. In redoing the concept, I would restructure everything into a more familiar layout. Nothing wrong with keeping it simple…I just think the way all the information could be structured a bit better.