The Jam Factory
My first impressions of The Jam Factory’s website were overwhelmed by a huge hero image on a slider, which scrolled too fast for me to see which exhibition they are promoting.
The rest of the website is very clean and simple. The understated navigation menu is across the top and separated into eight options of Info, visit, Exhibitions, Support, Design, training, marmalade and shop, plus the search bar. The footer of every page is consistent and contains all the address, contact and opening hours information for their three physical sites. There is a very subtle “Board Resources” button on the bottom right corner which leads to a password protected gate. The website has a hierarchal structure and the organisational is topical, with the most important first in the order of What? Where? What will I Do/See? as discussed by Hadley (2017).
To improve accessibility I think the text on the navigation buttons should be made larger and the buttons further apart. I appreciate the minimalist aesthetic but an outline of the actual button would be useful. I think the pop-up on the home page is annoying and unnecessary. The contrast of the text and background colour is excellent, although the hover colour on the hyperlinks is a bit too subtle. The images are not used as links so the site would work well as text-only.
Overall I think the site is beautifully designed. The text is set precisely, albeit too small, but their use of negative space really simplifies the text and makes the images stand out. All the information a person would need to plan a visit there is present, even which bus to catch and nearby eateries. Nothing is more than 3 clicks away. Although there are more than seven categories in the navigation menu, they have managed to present a huge amount of information in a very clean way which is easy to navigate and understand.
Hadley, P. (2017). What do the best museum websites all do? Retrieved from https:// blog.cogapp.com/what-do-the-best-museum-websites-all-do-8d6727504605
Technological Foundations 
Excellent evaluation of the Jam website, with in-text references to support your discussion. I also find pop-ups annoying. I hope you found this activity useful.
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