My thesis is that TinHouse is a decent website with a clear target audience and a strong purpose. However, the context can be confusing at first glance and there are a few poor UX design choices.
The reason I say Tinhouse is an okay website is because it does a few things well. For example, I mentioned it has a strong audience. If you scroll to the bottom of the page you can find the About Us and Contact Us pages. From my experience, these pages are usually located at the bottom of the main page or within the Menu or navigation bar. Clicking on the About Us page we can get an idea on who the owner wanted to target. (and it shows that) Win McCormack said, “I wanted to create a literary magazine for the many passionate readers who are not necessarily literary academics or publishing professionals” (“About Tin House”). I believe this statement lines up to what you can find on the website. Clicking back to the main page you can see TinHouse has a lot of content that covers simple topics like Taxi Driving or “My Baby First Birthday.” Most of these books and poems are about the little things in life we often take for granted.
As mentioned in the thesis, Tin house has a strong purpose, and that is to sell. Immediately upon entering the website there is an emphasis on Magazines, Books, the Workshop, and the Shop. Someone new to the website will assume this is where things can be bought. Their assumption will be correct after clicking due to the 3 links being connected to the shop. There are other things that the TinHouse website does that keeps it looking functional and that is its use of font and the color palette. The font is simple and neat, and the colors don’t stand out much. I do think TinHouse could benefit more if they had a more focused theme of the black and red because most of the colors on the website comes from the images. Context is the main issue of the website due to the 4 images that take up half the page. These images weren’t that obvious to me, so it was a little confusing trying to figure out that it is an advertisement. With further exploration it is apparent that users will interact with the website through the shop. The other issue was the UX design choices, mainly the layout and arrangement of the website. The layout of TinHouse is reminiscent of a tablet or mobile layout. The stacked lines in the top left corner opens a hidden side bar. These are usually only needed on a mobile website to conserve space. Since this is present on the main computer website it may be easily missed and other features the Tinhouse has could be ignored. Other than that, the most important information, which is the shop, is displayed on the center of the page. The arrangement of the website could be better. Right now, it is arranged in a top down order so visitors would have to scroll to see the blog posts since the 4 images at the top of the page take up most of the screen. There is also the position of the menu button in the top-left corner that, I think, should be replaced by the full sidebar that pops up when clicked. It would help visitors find their way around more easily. In conclusion, there are a couple things that can be improved, such as the arrangement and layout design, but TinHouse is a website that knows its audience and gives them exactly what they’re looking for.
Works Cited
“About Tin House.” Tin House, https://tinhouse.com/about-tin-house/. Accessed 7 Feb. 2020.
Cheryl E Ball, et al. Writer/Designer: A Guide to Making Multimodal Projects. 2018.