For my second monthly review I chose to look at http://jiouhe.com. Based on the title, I can gather that this is a consultancy service website, however since it is in another language I cannot understand any of the other text.
This site is very simple, the background is stark white with absolutely no texture. The color scheme used is a very muted collection of pink, green, blue, red, and yellow; the same colors used in the company logo. The user can only scroll up and down to navigate; clever coding makes it seem as if the page is twisting and turning about, which keeps it exciting. As the user scrolls downward, textured geometric shapes expand and contract alongside thought bubbles containing information. Since I cannot read the information, I can only assume that each time the geometric shapes change color, the content topic changes as well.
As I scrolled further downward, I noticed that every time I moved into a different category, the category name would be highlighted pink in a bar at the top of the page that could be seen no matter where I was in the site. I really liked their unique way of giving the user a site map that was subtle, yet helpful. I then realized that those category names were also links that would take me to the appropriate section; this type of navigation is incredibly helpful. Jiouhe.com is a vast site with a lot of content, but the nicely structured navigation helps make the site seem more manageable to the user.
One thing that I did not like about the website is the fact that when the user gets to the “Projects” section, the white background changes to black. In this section they also introduce a bright coral color into the color scheme. I understand that they want to highlight this section of their site, after all, their projects pages is likely the first thing a potential client is going to look at, however, I think that they could have used the color scheme already in place to make the highlighted Projects section way more effective. This section just does not flow with the rest of the page because of the poor color choices; a shame considering how great the other aspects of the site are.
Although I couldn’t even read the content of the site, I got a pretty good idea of where I was in the site by the effective use of color as a wayfinding tool. The highlighting navigational links also helped me out a great deal when I was exploring the site.