When I first looked at the 5 Safe Points Driving School website, I thought it was a joke. To me, the site was just a blur of randomly placed images and text. One of the things that particularly bothered me was the page sizing. The width of the page was too large to fit into my browser window. I had to scroll over to see the text that went along with the image links on the right hand side of the page. Also, after the search option at the bottom of the page, there was an extremely large section of white space.

In addition, it is very hard to distinguish what are links on the page. When moving the mouse around the screen, almost the entire page turns the cursor into the ‘hand shape’ indicating a link. At first glance, it seems that all of the red text signifies links. However, the phone numbers are in red, but are not links. After further inspection, it turns out that the text along the side of the page and at the bottom is also links, but is in blue. Every image on the page is also a link. Some of the image links are label with text, while some are not. Also, the same images link to different sites. The DMV approved logo on the left links to the Virginia DMV site; however, the logo on the right links to the 24/7 Online Driver Improvement page. Also, there were many different links that led to the same pages. In addition, the pictures of the thumbs up only links to the image itself, which seems pointless.

The organization of the site is also horrible. The site leaves the user confused as to the hierarchy of the site or what it contains. Although there is a title at the top of the page stating what the site is about, it is smaller and less attractive than some of the other material on the page. I found that I was so distracted by everything else that it took me a while to figure out what the site was about. There was no layout that grouped similar links together, and the text on the site was not scannable.

In terms of Jakob Nielsen’s usability components, the site is extremely unusable. It is very hard to learn how to perform basic tasks on the site without searching through many links and clicking them to see where they lead to. The site also lacks efficiency. Even if you did become familiar with the site, it will still take time to scan through all of the links to do what you wanted. The site isn’t memorable either. It has no structure which would allow someone to easily remember how to navigate the site after a period of time. I found that it was easy to make errors with this site. I often found myself clicking on random links and then having to back track using the back button to get back to the original site. Finally, I found no satisfaction in using the site. It was disorganized, cluttered, and too complicated to use.