In terms of content management we have been asked to look at our thesis projects in terms of the Vitruvian principles of Business, Commodity, Firmness and Delight.

Having misunderstood the emphasis for the presentation, I had researched into the concept of the Vitruvian principles which I will detail here briefly so as not to waste the work that I have done. I am basically stating that the original principles of firmitas, utilias and venustas cannot work independantly of each other and cannot stand alone in a design. I will then go into detail with regards to cognate and non-cognate websites.

The fundamental principles of architecture

The fundamental principles of architecture can be summarised as firmitas, utilitas and venustas which can be translated from Latin as firmness, commodity and delight.

Firmitas (Firmness): This denotes something that is well-made and has a structure.
Utilitas (Commodity): This means a design should have a function, a usage. A building’s function can be categorised into its primary space and its secondary space. The primary space will be the main function of the building (i.e. its rooms). The secondary space is what makes the building usable (i.e. corridor, toilets etc.).
Venustas (Delight): Signifies that a design must have beauty. This involves order, arrangement, eurhythmy and symmetry. For example, in a design, each component is considered separately as well as proportionally to the whole. It requires an arrangement and an adjustment dependant on its character.

Alison Barnes argues in her blog that design does not have to be pleasurable or delightful. She refers to the Berlin Holocaust memorial as an example of this. In her blog she has a problem with the word ‘delight’ as a translation of the word ‘venustas’ and she advocates that this may be too subjective a word. Rather design should be something that evokes an emotional response from the reader. It is described this way by O’Gorman:

“Architectural space is first of all utilitarian. Architectural art begins physical and ends psychological.”

So maybe the word ‘delight’ in design can mean something more than aesthetic pleasure, but something that evokes meaning to its users in terms of their own experiences.

However, it still is the case that neither of the Vitruvian factors can be independant of each other. We can liken this to the interdependancy of client, builder and architecture. O’Gorman describes it well:

“The work of the architect is the result of the architect’s interpretation of the program in relation to the client’s budget, the building’s site, and the availability of materials and structural technology.”

Thus the client provides the plan diagrams of their needs in creating a building.
The builder provides section diagrams for the structure of the building.
The architect provides the elevation, the design, which evokes the beauty of the building.

Thus neither the client, architect nor builder can pursue a creation dependently of each other. The same applies to the Vitruvian principles: there is no point having a well-structured (firmitas) building without it having a function or any beauty or meaning behind its design. Likewise, there cannot be a beautiful building without it being well-structured or having any function etc.

Delight is still debatable. However architecture is design and design, in the end, must have meaning. Wherebeit the meaning is pleasure or some other response, this will be up to the architect and the meanings he/she would like to input into their own design.

Cognate websites

Chinesefood-recipes.com

Chinesefood-recipes.com is the first site to appear in Google search engine when a user enters the words “Chinese food recipes”. Thus it will be part of my cognate website analysis.

Business:
In terms of this site’s business it relies heavily on advertisements, particularly Google. The site is heavily littered with adverts and make it look appalling. The adverts inhibit its design and the site’s function as a recipe index. The lesson to learn from this site, is to integrate the use of adverts in a better way and not to make the site too heavy with it.

Commodity:
The site attempts, on the face of it, to achieve everything:

Cooking methods
Glossary
Tips
Measurement conversions
Food articles and fun stuff
Chinese restaurant guides
Book shopping
Cooking videos
Detox diet

It is in no way lacking content. However the content is extremely text-heavy. There are very few images and it makes the content hard to read. It isn’t clear on the onset exactly what the site is for.

Firmness:
The site is made using XHTML and CSS style sheets and PHP. In terms of its navigation it could be a lot more succinct and clear. The front page is just littered with links of every word that a user may search for. This is possibly the reason why they are so high in their ranking on Google search.

Delight:
The site uses the colours yellow, red and green and blue links, which are highly saturated, on a white background makes it very difficult on the eyes. There is no clear hierarchy in its information structure and its layout of different elements causes confusion for the user.

BBC Food

Business:
BBC are a company who provide television entertainment for the community who support it. Thus their business on their website is to present an extension to this service. In particular, their recipe index section is used to promote their television chefs and their programmes and provide a trustworthy and useful extension to their programmes.

Commodity:
It is all about the search. That is the recipe index site’s main function. As soon as a user enters this page, their mind is automatically in navigation mode wherebeit if they know what they are looking for or just browsing. Also in terms of usages, BBC Food provides videos, images and high quality content in a simplistic manner.

Firmness:
The site ensures it is coded well, with use of XHTML and Javascript and form fields for search bar. Its site navigation is excellent and clear. In comparison with chinesefood-recipes.com it still is including a lot of keywords to draw in users searching for those keywords but BBC Food does it in a clear and succinct way.

Delight
Delight is an important aspect to this page. Use of mouth-watering images to entice the user into clicking and exploring. Also arrangement and order of content is particularly important. There is a strong grid of thirds (or sixths). The use of neutral, desaturated colours in contrast with its strong images evokes a homely feel and in terms of delight its proportional spacing of individual elements provide a pleasurable reading experience.

BBC Good Food

Business:
BBC Good Food is a site which runs off its magazine business. As well as this it supports advertising from paid companies. It’s adverts are quite intrusive (not as much as chinesefood-recipes) but feels acceptable as a user because it purports to their expectations of advertising, due to the fact that they are relevant and also do not clash with the design. They also sell iPhone apps and are sponsored to advertise products on their site.

Commodity:
In terms of commodity they have a plethora of functions for their users. Users may register for monthly newsleters, they may rate/like, comment, add their own recipes and save recipes to their binders. They have a strong sense of a community through their ‘Latest Member Recipes’ section and their occasional ‘Star Members Recipe’. Users tend to comment on success with the recipe and suggest alternatives.

Firmness:
BBCGoodFood is built on a Java platform (J2EE). In terms of its navigational structure, it is done in a tasteful way albeit reminiscent of chinesefood-recipes.com text-heavy navigation, this is all imagery based.

It is just a mass of images, which are at least of high quality and for regular “foodies” to the site, it will cater to any kind of mood that one is in, in terms of food and cooking.

Delight:
Use of strong colours like green, blue and brown for the headers. Again, reminiscent of chinesefood-recipes, but done right! There is a sense of hierarchy and the layout for the page makes sense in terms of the many links that are placed in it.

We must conclude that in order to be successful in terms of targeting keywords, it is important to have many links on the front page as possible to get traffic into your site and to rank highly in search engines. The way that this is done has been shown here, ranging from the bad to the good.

Non-cognate websites

Favecrafts.com

Favecrafts is a site for knitting and crochet patterns alongside craft tutorials.

Business:
Favecraft supports Google advertisements. The adverts are integrated well into the design which just shows that this is possible! They also link to a crafts store of a different domain name, however they may well be connected in terms of business.

Commodity:
It is similar in substance and functionality to bbcgoodfood as users are able to register and save their favourite projects into their “My Craft Projects” section. They may also sign up for a newsletter and comment, rate, save and share (socially) on each of the tutorials. There is also a search bar to find a particular tutorial. The front page however is quite text-heavy in terms of its content. The design makes it slightly easier to dissect, and is only the information that is below the fold that is quite heavy.

Firmness:
The site is build on a PHP framework. In terms of its navigation, there is a similarity to the previous cognate sites in that many keywords are targeted in their menu. This left-hand navigation is quite text-heavy however it works well and does not cause too much confusion. So this site shows that text-heavy navigational systems can work, particularly as it is alphabetised. Although it is more essential for a recipe index site to use images to entice readers.

The site has two navigations, one that is horizontal along the top, and the other which shows categories along the left-hand side. It’s not too confusing but it is quite a lot to take in. I would avoid this on my own site. I suspect, this is done just to target keywords.

Delight:
I particularly like the site’s colour scheme and its logo which makes the site seem fun. The use of the two different shades of green for its headers separates the different sections quite nicely and echoes bbcgoodfood’s site.

Summary

In order for a site to be successful it must have all aspects of the Vitruvian principles. Delight is debatable, however we have seen that for recipe index sites, an aesthetically pleasing site with high quality images can evoke a pleasurable and mouth-watering experience for the user. Alongside this, it must be well built in order to accomodate the functions that a user would require from the site.

I’ve been particularly inspired by Google’s design principles.

“The Google User Experience team aims to create designs that are useful, fast, simple, engaging, innovative, universal, profitable, beautiful, trustworthy, and personable. Achieving a harmonious balance of these ten principles is a constant challenge”

As well as this they aim to provide users with the best experience in terms of its function. Its provision for videos, images, web content, maps etc. in the quickest amount of time is something that they strive for.

Thus although the word ‘delight’ is debatable as to whether it only means aesthetic pleasure or something which evokes emotion or even something which aids function, such as Google, whatever the case, ‘delight’ or beauty is a subjective notion and in the end it is always up to the architect to interpret and design in whatever way he/she sees as beautiful.

“Delight the eye without distracting the mind”

References:

Wikipedia.org,Vitruvius [Accessed 13/02/11]

Penelope.uchicago.edu, Vitruvius: On Architecture, [Accessed 13/02/11]

Library.thinkquest.org, The fundamental principles of architecture, [Accessed 13/02/11]

NYtimes.com, ABC of Architecture, James O’Gorman, [Accessed 13/02/11]

Blogspot.com, Firmitas, utilitas, venustas, Alison Barnes, [Accessed 13/02/11]

Google.com, Google User Experience: Design Principles, [Accessed 14/02/11]