Mill Avenue District by Tyler Johnson & Kyle Long

MillAvenue.com

Arizona State University is populated by a wide range of diverse students and faculty. The diversity on campus is not only reflected through the languages spoken on campus but also through many restaurants and entertainment found on the hot spot known as Mill Avenue. It is known as a hot spot because the major street contains shops, restaurants, movie theaters, tattoo parlors, dance clubs, and everything in between. It is nearly impossible to run out of entertainment on this strip of Mill Avenue. Seemingly chaotic in reality, its website portrays a clear way to navigate the culturally booming avenue.        

The website to introduce Mill Avenue to the online population is well organized and accessible to its users.  The clearly labeled tabs allow the viewers to know what exactly Mill has to offer: from dining options, to live entertainment, to how to put your business on Mill. Under “Entertainment and Events”, for example, sub-categories emerge to show events such as the Tempe Festival of Arts, the Fantasy of Lights, and the Hayden Flour Mill. These subcategories help narrow the user’s search. Another organizational feature is under the “Dining” category where a long list of restaurants and food shops could overwhelm the user, but buttons split the list into different types of food and shops making the structure easier to access. Overall the Mill Avenue website is clearly laid out and well-structured to sufficiently impress the reader and draw them to the street.

Aside from the organizational enticement, appearance is critical to draw in the consumers. A significant part of appearance is color. Color has to match the intention of the website, so color scheming is very important. On Mill Avenue’s website the color scheme is filled with a range of colors. Grays and whites take up most of the text on the home page and subpages of the website, which are not enticing to the user. The colors that do pop out are on the background of the titles and headlines that use primary colors to show importance.

Vital in keeping people interested in a website is the graphics. The Mill Avenue website uses many interesting graphics that act as attention grabbers; like, a large picture of the next main event and smaller local events. The main picture represents the Ironman Triathlon which is the next upcoming event taking place in Tempe Town Lake and crosses through Mill Avenue. The smaller local events appeal to different audiences. Pictures of puppies, sports bar events, and group gatherings appeal to the diverse population of people interested in the upcoming cultural events.  Provided alongside the visuals are clear tools to navigate to the location of the events.

Navigational tools such as maps are an important part in aiding the consumers to the location of the actual streets. Each map has its own specific focus that provides a plethora of information, and detailed layout of the neighboring streets. When the Dining tab is pressed all of the restaurants, bars, and other points of interest appear on a map of the Mill Avenue district. The graphics are a key aspect to overall appearance, but the seemingly smaller aspects of appearance of font and layout are equally important to user interest. 
The fonts used for Mill Avenue’s website are well chosen. The website uses font types that are easier to read because of the larger size and lack of detail. Consumers are then able to read about the upcoming events on Mill Avenue without strain their eyes. More focus can then be put into actually reading the website. The font for the points of interest is slightly larger than the subcategories. The larger size causes the major categories such as “directory”, “living here”, and “about us” to stand out more. Different areas of the website require different fonts to focus attention. For example, the title of the page has a bolder font than the whimsical caption font of a photograph. A complementary part to the font styles on the site is the layout.

An appealing factor of the Mill Avenue website is the overall layout of the site. The first thing one sees as the website loads is an interesting picture of recent and upcoming events, which greatly entices the user. Currently there is a picture of the Fantasy of Lights, a holiday festival of floats and festivities, with the date and details on the main page. Also at the top alongside the main events are links to mill avenue social network sites. Links to Mill Avenues sites are conveniently placed at the top of the page easily visibly for the users. The next things on the web page are various links to interesting news that is going on and around Mill Avenue. Interesting titles accompany each story to draw the viewer’s deeper into the articles.. The layout, the font, the graphics, and even the color are all vital in the overall appearance. These aspects of the appearance help make the website more user friendly. Another positive of this website is it’s accessibility.

With web 2.0 the ability to share content has grown immensely from web 1.0. Previously content could only be shared through web links and emails; there was no way to easily and enjoyably share data. There was social revolution with the advances of web 2.0 that gave the new websites the new ability to grow and interact with the users. Content is now able to always be changing with peer editing and constant changes in info, websites are much less stagnant now. The key sites that have contributed to web 2.0’s social growth are Facebook, and most recently Instagram.

Facebook started out as a small network of faces between a single college and quickly grew to a worldwide connection for people and businesses. Mill Avenue’s website uses Facebook to promote Mill Ave. and the business on the street. The website also uses Facebook to attract customers with deals and current upcoming events. Currently on the Mill Ave. Facebook there is a promotion for a buy one get one deal at Mellow Mushroom, which gives their fans a quick and easy way to find deals on Mill. Over all Mill Avenues website being connected to Facebook makes the experience of the website more interactive and informative.

Pictures are worth a thousand words and can be perceived in many different ways by everyone. The application Instagram makes it easy to share your experiences through pictures and tags. Mill avenues use of Instagram on their website gives the user a much better experience Mill Avenue’s website uses Instagram to share pictures of shops and entertainment attractions that occur on Mill Avenue. A picture that is currently on their Instagram is from World of Beers, a local bar that had just recently opened, promoting one of their new beers. Through Instagram Mill is sharing local products through pictures and not words. Instagram, one of web 2.0’s newest social medias, makes sharing experiences more entertaining through pictures rather than just text.

A defining factor of a well put together website is whether or not the website is easily usable for a person of any age. A website that is made usable for only one age group will limit the amount of people that can access the information and deals on a website. Also if the website is made to basic it will lose the interest of the user and also make the credibility of the site questionable. The usability of the Mill Avenue website appears to be easily accessible to anyone who is looking for something on Mill.  Their website overall makes that site easily usable with the many tabs, sub-tabs, and sub-categories.

The tabs and sub-tabs clearly label each area of interest on the Mill Avenue website ranging from Getting There to an Entertainment and events tab. Under the Getting There tab it shows ways to arrive at Mill via walking, biking, light rail, and locations on where to park. These sub categories make the search for the best way to arrive at Mill Avenue much easier than having to search all over the website.  under the Entertainment & Events tab it clearly shows popular happenings that are currently and will be happening on Mill. One sub-tab is Dinner & A Show, which when clicked redirects you to a page with all the restaurants and venues where these events can often be found. The layout of the mill avenue’s website makes an extensive amount of information easily usable through the tab and sub-tab system that  has been designed.

Mill Avenue may be a very busy social center of the ASU campus, but with all the benefits the website provides, the maze of entertainment is much easier and safer to navigate and enjoy. With its appearance, accessibility, the ability to share, and usability, the website provides a very user friendly way to keep consumers interested in the hot spot that is Mill Avenue. Visiting the Mill Avenue website sparks interest in planning your next weekend on Mill.