Life As a 20-Year-Old Teen official website: https://20yoteenagegirl.com/
This is a website review on Elisa Bruci’s website called “Life As a 20-Year-Old Teen”. At the front of the home page, we are greeted with a warm-tone pink theme with pictures of Elisa’s life. There is also a filter that is cool and consistent that overlays throughout the website (granulated moving pixel texture filter?). As I navigated throughout the website, all content was related to Elisa’s life as a 20-year-old, relating to recent updates in her life which can be seen in the photos she takes. In general, I liked how she integrated her personal life into her blog. Viewers can get a sense of her lifestyle by reading and navigating through her blogs. My favourite post from her blog is called “Bad Driver? Good Driver?”. I thought it was very funny to read her views on Albanian and Canadian driving (all British Columbia drivers suck).
In terms of website structure and building, I believe the website could continue improving on structure. At the home page, we are greeted with a beautifully curated page that relates to Elisa’s life composed of photos she has taken on a banner with fun and appealing fonts in light pink and white. However, the website design and structure might make it hard for new users to navigate. The website can approve technological affordances for user interface elements. Victor Kaptelinin describes user interface elements as clickable buttons, hyperlinks, and clickable tabs as examples (2014). Some buttons on the home page, such as the buttons called “Hobbies” and “Fun Stuff” don’t lead to any pages when you click on them (Elisa is probably working on this). I also saw that there were some social media site links, but just saw one for TikTok so far (Elisa is probably working on this).
Aside from the website structure, design elements could also be improved. Travis Gertz from Louder Than Ten suggests that elements and responsibilities of typography, colour, form, and illustration affect visitors’ experience (2015). Even though the colours of pink and white align with Elisa’s theme and personal life, they might not appeal to viewers due to the limited accessibility. The colours of light baby pink and white do not contrast well against one another. I suggest using a slightly darker shade of pink because changing the colour theme slightly will not affect the ongoing theme and will allow for user accessibility (for those that have partial vision).
In terms of content, I read some blogs that were very fun to read. One critique I have about the content is the page structure. The spacing is a bit off for some sentences. Fixing that spacing will allow for clarity for readers. Other than that, Elisa has written good content for her blog.
Overall, I like Elisa’s theme for the website that she created about her life. It reminds me of the 2000s fashion blog pages and Myspace. In general, Elisa’s website just needs to improve on building her page structure and altering her website slightly while continuing her themes.
Resources:
Gertz, T. (2015). How to survive the digital apocalypse. Louder Than Ten, Feature: Design Machines. https://louderthanten.com/coax/design-machines
Kaptelinin, V. (2014). Affordances. Interaction Design Foundation – IxDF. https://www.interaction-design.org/literature/book/the-encyclopedia-of-human-computer-interaction-2nd-ed/affordances