Three Examples of Design with User Input

Odosketch

Odosketch is a free-to-use website from design agency Odopod that allows the user to draw anything they like and submit it to a gallery. The drawing process is recorded, so the viewer can see exactly how the artist got from a blank canvas to a finished piece of work. The interface is very easy to use as it only has the one function, which is accessed by pressing the button on the homepage which says 'Create a Sketch'. Browsing other people's sketches is also easy as there are some displayed on the home page with options to look at more. The website is also very nicely designed, using a light colour scheme with pastel colours and cute images. Personally I really like this site, both in content and design, and will probably use it myself now I know about it.

Nigella.com/recipe

Aside from being chef Nigella Lawson's personal website, this site has a rather good recipe section that allows users to share and review recipes. There are lots of recipe sharing site on the web now but I think this one has a more attractive design than most. Users can search or browse for recipes in a few ways; by clicking 'inspire me' to get a random recipe, picking a category such as indulgent or romantic, or by simply searching using keywords. I believe there is one annoying issue with the navigation on the site, when displaying the list of recipes. When the list comes up it has links to pages 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 then Next 5, so you have to click this to get links to page 6, 7, 8, 9 and 10. I think this is unnecessary and just plain annoying. The colour scheme for the site is simple and attractive, using white and orange for the recipe section of the site. Each section has a different colour representing it, forum being brown, book being blue etc. Overall it's a clean-looking attractive site that is easy to use.

Gumtree

Gumtree is a classified ads site that has a homepage for different cities across the country. It's free to use and has lots of different areas to post ads in; jobs, flats and houses, stuff for sale etc. I use this website quite a lot to find things in my local area and as a user I find it simple and easy to use. This is vital in a website like this, as it is designed to be used by anyone and everyone. The design is simple using mostly text and not many images, though I find it more attractive than the site craigslist.org, another classified ads site. I think this helps towards the usability of the site, as when I saw craigslist.org I found the wall of text quite intimidating at first glance.