Instructables

Instructables
This website is a community type site that allows its members to post and share instructions on various subjects. The home page has two navigation systems that are on every page. The top one is the primary navigation with four groups: home- the first home page; explore- takes you to the second navigation; community- forums, marketplace, and help; and submit- to submit variety of things such as instructions, videos, forum topics. Although there are only four groups, which may seem small, all aspects of the website do fall under these four distinct groups which make it rather efficient. The secondary navigation, which is located under the primary nav and is where the “explore” link takes you, groups the instructions into specific categories that encompass pretty much all potential forms of instructions: all, craft, food, games, green, home, kids, life, music, off beat, outdoors, pets, ride, science, sports, and tech. The offbeat link might seem a little vague because it is, and is basically the category for anything that doesn’t fit the other categories.

home page

Once you click on a category it breaks the category into thumbnails of featured, popular, zeitgeist, and recent. Also when you click category the look of it changes to white font with a dark grey background. This lets you know where you are within the instructables. However, the top navigation does not have selected states or clear headlines so when you click on community or submit, it is sometimes a problem remembering where you are in the site. With the primary nav being on every page there is never a point where you can’t get back to the home page.

Green category page

The site has a very deep architecture. There are many instructables over such a wide range of topics and each instructable has its own long list of steps with images. In addition the community section has numerous forum topics and threads and a marketplace section to buy,sell, or trade various items, services, or jobs. The marketplace feature doesn’t seem to fit in the website. I would rather go through a site dedicated to a marketplace feature than as a side feature to an instructions site. The site is not flat which is a good thing considering the amount of content and information this site provides, instead it is grouped nicely into the primary navigation and all the information falls accurately into those categories.
There is a nice hierarchy of typography apparent throughout the site. It does nice job separating all the headings and content with different font colors, weights, and sizes. Even with the vast amount of text that comes with instructions, the site still makes it readable and clear. Most of the labels are pretty clear, like I mentioned before, the offbeat category is confusing and could be changed to miscellaneous. Other than that the labels are clear and contain accurate prevalent information.

Munny speakers instructable

The grid/structure of the pages stays consistent for each instructable. The whole top bar remains the same from page to page. The body content of the instructions is on the left while the right bar has several useful boxes. The top one is just an advertisement, the second is an info box on the publisher of the instructable, and the third is a list of related instructables. Every instructable page follows this same layout. I think that is definitely a good thing because each page is rather chaotic with all the photos, instructions, thumbnails, ads, and boxes but the consistency of a same layout brings a little more organization and structure to crowded pages. The numerous photographs or thumbnails on every page are the main focal points of any page. With the body containing many intriguing pictures of different instructables, they immediately capture the user’s attention.

A congested, chaotic page

The imagery and photos make up a large part of the sites content and do not necessarily add anything to the design of the site. The photos are an excellent way of explaining instructions and in some cases the instructable also contains a video clip which I thought was a helpful feature.

instructable with Youtube clip

None of the links use icons or symbols but instead just a small thumbnail of a photo associated with the link. With all the photos, any given page contains many colors. The palette of the top banner is two different shades of orange, white, and grey. The orange and white reminds me of the home depot colors and is appropriate for a site about how to build things. The colors separate the top banner, the primary nav, and the body content. They also nicely separate the different headings and text which make the instructions more legible.
I believe the objective of this site is to provide fun unique information of HOW2 instructions while building a community around these instructables. There is a search option in the primary nav bar on every page which lets you search for key words or certain player profiles. I think the search option is a necessary feature for such a large website with vast amounts of content. As I said before, I definitely find the video clips the most useful feature on the site. They give the user an easier option to understand and learn the instructions. I did find the pages to be rather congested with different ads, photos, boxes and thumbnails. I would suggest a way to clean up the pages and make it seem less chaotic. They are laid out in a consistent manner, but create too many distractions from the content of the instructables. Instead I would reduce the extra boxes and have a secondary navigation to access that material. Overall, I love the concept of this site. I like the ability to create a community through helping each other construct creative devices. It contains very interesting material, and I am never bored surfing through the instructables.