Multi-TouchScreen.com

Website: http://www.multi-touchscreen.com/

Intended audience: The website is designed to provide information to individuals interested in (i) multi-touch screen technology and (ii) Jeff Han, a consulting research scientist at NYU's Department of Computer Science, who has played a major role in advancing such technology.

Usefulness of content: Individuals seeking general background information on multi-touch screens and their development can find some potentially useful content on this website. The greatest strength of the website is its collection of videos demonstrating the amazing possibilities of multi-touch screen technology. The website also contains some interesting information on the technologies utilized by Apple in its iPhone and Microsoft in its Surface computer. Unfortunately, visitors to the website will have to look past the painful design flaws of the website (discussed below) and do some digging in order to locate any of the useful content. This definitely detracts from the overall usefulness of the website. There are also two additional factors that bring the reliability and authority of the website’s content into question: (i) the website does not appear to have been updated since May 30, 2007, so its information is potentially outdated, and (ii) the website does not identify the designer or provider of the website’s information, so it is difficult to discern whether some of the information is fabricated or derived from an unreliable source.

Consistency of design: Maintaining a consistent design is clearly not a concern or priority for the designer of this website. This is unfortunate and ironic in light of the website’s subject -- cutting edge, expertly-designed and user-friendly technologies. Text and graphics are pasted on the webpage haphazardly. Some text is centered, some is left-justified, some is large, some is small, some is red, some is turquoise. Text that is important and should be featured appears in a position on the page that is secondary to the Google ads that are prominently displayed. The most consistent design element is also the most distracting and unpleasant feature of the website: Each time the words “Jeff Han” or “Multi Touch” appear, they are highlighted in alternating yellow and blue text boxes. There may be a good reason for this design choice, but I am not aware of one. Overall, this website is one of the most poorly designed websites I have seen.

Ease of navigation: The only thing saving this website from being completely impossible to navigate is its overall lack of complexity and few number of pages. Most information can be located by scrolling down the website’s homepage. The information on the homepage is generally in date order with the most recent entries toward the top of the page, but otherwise, the designer has not inserted menus, indexes, or search features that would enable users to quickly locate specific information on the website. On a positive note, the designer has inserted hyperlinks in multiple places so that it is possible to access some of the same information by taking different paths on the website.