Skidmore, Owings & Merrill

[spoonyg]

http://www.som.com

Skidmore, Owings & Merrill (SOM), world-renown architects and engineers of such modern classics as Chicago's Sears Tower and John Hancock Building, the San Francisco International Airport and Shanghai's Jin Mao Tower.

The site has a content management system that enables editors to easily add or update content through a web-based administrative tool.

The navigation uses Robert Penner's easing equations for the movement. Thanks Robert! As far as the look of the site: That was entirely driven by SOM. I have a nice record of the site's progress if anyone would like to see it. It went through quite a few design iterations (most against our reccommendations)

I am curious to here comments on the nav and the color used in the site.

Thanks for your time

[vilehelm]

Once I got the hang of the navigation it was pretty neat. However, I'm one of those folks who moves his mouse around to whatever he's reading and sometimes things were jumping around without my wanting them to... Anyway they'd settle for a click rather than a rollover on that? It seems like a more intuitive interaction.

I thought it was really pretty although maybe not the most effective site marketing and user path wise. Nothing seems to be any more important than anything else and thus maybe the most important elements of the site get missed.?

Search feature pop up is slick

[snapple]

spoonyg,

I liked the concept behind the navigation, but i am sorry to say that usability really is not all that great. The main problems are :

1) You have NO idea what is going on around you, really easy to get lost, confused all adding to the feeling that the site is hardwork to navigate.

2) When you mouse over e.g. Transport, your cursor is placed on the next button (as the text zooms in), consequently your almost forced into where you want to go. Because you use mosueovers, it is all too easy to tumble into a downwards spiral and before you know it, you are lost. Do you get what i mean ?

The navigation is hardwork, plain and simple, the user is never given anytime to make any choices, because of the way the navigation controls the user, NOT the other way round !

I would also try to make it a little more clear to the user, exactly when they have moused over some text.

Overall, nice concept, but thats it. The navigation is confusing and too fast, i never felt in control or relaxed using the site. Sorry !

Thaks for taking the time to read this

Snapple :)

[spoonyg]

Thanks alot for your comments guys. I sent them to my enternal team. In regards to the navigation: I have to say that I, the rest of our team and part of the client's team, completely agree with both of you. <EDIT> thanks vile -- youre right

But hey technically speaking it is pretty amazing -- its gotta cms that feeds all the swfs -- make a change in the cms, add or edit or delete a project or category and the site changes accordingly. That is pretty cool. It was also pretty cool when everything happened on one click. click the nav moved in click again and it moved out. It has a sleep screen mode -- if you dont do anything it will start running by itself. And finally the content pages looked mighty fine on white. if you would like to see our concept, design implementation, meeting presentation site here it is (see the progression of the project including what they came to us with:
http://som.tanagram.com

Thanks very much for taking time to look at the site and comment.

[vilehelm]

Well, certainly been there before. (clients and "executuve non sensical decisions"). I would think though that you might want to be careful about making comments about clients in public forums such as this. (points to the "edit" key)

;]