while struggling with looking for advice last year I came across The lowdown website that’s a female based website where women can leave reviews on the the Contraception that they are on right now or have been on previous, this is the first ever Contraception reviews place out there for women to go on at point of their day, while not a lot people know about the website is really good to get know about others experiences but there is a couple of errors on the website.
Below is the home screen for the website, very minimal design but works very well as the layout isn’t over clutter everything is labelled of where it goes, the typeface on the front page stand out very bold I would say it a good typeface too use as it not formal not informal, the navy colour works from the bar however the grey writing for the different pages is a bit washed out to improve the page it would make it better if they stood a bit more.
The first tab the comes down is the different Contraceptions, this setting allows you to go on and filter your search to the one Contraception reviews you want to read into more, this is so good as it allows people to see the different options that out there when I first went on here I had no idea what half them were until I did more research, this setting is so useful and would be something I would want to bring into my design to try and highlight the amount of different choices that out there for women.
Above is one of the choices that could be clicked on, it takes you to its own page it tells you a bit about what’s in it and how it works and the most common side effects, once the typical information is done it goes into tabs results of reviews people have done by placing their own review on their experience, this information shows the side effect while on the ochre and the after if you want to come off it however theses results are useful to know are well displayed easy to read but looking into different areas that females might want to know about before going onto this certain option. while theres date to show different areas the website also gives out information the option more and things that can go wrong. Under the support and data that a given by people’s reviews you can read some reviews that’s out there I came across an big error that can be found.
The error that appeared in the reviews was that the user review star ratting isn’t from the user it’s based on the side effects and it tries to guess the user experience this can be as not a real, the person could have a lot of positive an one mild side effect but the rating is dropped I think this really unrealistic because everyone has some type of side effect there’s never going to a perfect one but as human we will often just deal with the small side effect, I think in my app I would the users to give the option it’s own star rating on different areas as this something that really useful but I think my app would have a lot more freedom for the users to track their own moods and side effects daily and for the app to pick up any issues that the user might be having.
The next part of the website the user can click on is the about page, this page is just telling you about where the owner came up with the idea and the story behind and how it’s scare how people have a lack of knowledge and data out there to use, personally I think a lot this information should of been the main centre page on the lowdown homepage but where you scroll down as a user if didn’t really to know about the backstory e.g like most people and only looking for information I want to then close down they wouldn’t read it or see I only found this after looking into the website to pull apart for this project.
After the About page theres the blog page, on this link theres a lot different blogs that go into detail about the different options and how to find what’s right for a user, maybe if the website had a different name I probably would looked into this page before anything but I thought it was going to simple blogs by people that wouldn’t be useful however looking into a bit more all the blogs have some support and could really help someone.
One of the options you can do on this website is request a £20 zoom call with a doctor if you don’t feel comfortable about going to your local doctor or local sexual health clinic, this a good tool to have on the website but the charge £20 it might put people off and not want to get the advice.
While looking at this website I really like the users can place their experiences online and help people see some common side effects and what data lows most of however looking at the design side of the website I think the heading of pages are way too big and it takes a lot of scooling to get past this something as a designer I think should be sorted as it just look a bit much dead space and annoying when got scroll to the main text on the page, I would also think about moving. some pages around and highlight one that to stand out.
overall I think the website is really helpful and help people but theres a lot more room to improve and explore with support and this what I aim to do. Thinking about the colours overall I really like the pink and navy blue together but I think adding another colour in could bright up the mood a bit more as the navy makes the website a bit dull.
Georgia Smith 