general

Where Does

Design: 

It might sound odd, but what catches my attention most on this site is it's title/header. It has a simple, but professional and stylish look and seems to fit right in place and to the background on which it resides. The rest of the site, however, is a little more like business as usual - a pleasant looking theme with a modified color scheme, but in this instance without teaser images and other eye catching goodies.

The color scheme mentioned is fairly conservative; black-gray with a bit of red. Reviewing other elements of the design gets me back to some of the observations I made for other sites using this theme. In short, teaser titles and text are cut off (sometimes in mid-word), search box could be put on the bar with the home link to free up header space and the pager on teaser listing pages could be adapted to the site's color scheme. These might seem like minor issues, but here they are.

On the article page there is a typical issue with ads, but since WhereDoes.org has a bit longer articles the two square ads seem to do a little less of a disruption and fit in better.

If I were ask for the biggest suggestion I could make regarding this site's design I would say: make it more unique and less like a theme that's been seen before. Of course, that is not to bash the design as it is from a simple usability point of view. Whether it looks similar to other sites or not does not indeed matter if it works. And yes, it does work, at least if the goal isn't to impress people with design (but rather content, presumably). There could be improvements, as mentioned, but it works.

Design Rating: 7/10

Focus:

WhereDoes.org is one of those sites with a name that sounds like an unfinished sentence, but it is that which makes its focus clear. Finish the sentence and you know all about what this site is supposed to offer. And chances are that by finishing the sentence you may have just spelled out the title of one of the articles published in it. This kind of strategy makes it hard to find any kind of a focus related fault as the site is pretty much an axis between its title and its content so there's no room for wavering.

While there could be various types of "where does" questions to ask it seems that all of the articles currently available on WhereDoes.org are about where do certain people live and categories apparently represent areas of these people's activity. An about page could be a useful mean to making this explicit as well as explain or affirm the reasons why this kind of content may be useful..

Focus Rating: 10/10

Content:

As mentioned all content on WhereDoes.org is about where do some people live and there is in fact 50 articles on this topic, that is to say, you can find out where do 50 of the well known people live, from Tom Cruise to Bill Gates to Paris Hilton. I have some doubts as to the usefulness of this information, but I can understand its "trivia" value and satisfying some casual curiosity.

However, this isn't all that these articles offer. After all there wouldn't be a need for articles if it was, but rather a simple database of addresses or locations. Articles on WhereDoes.org expand on the location information with a fairly comprehensive, albeit not too long winded, description of said persons, their career, properties they own and so on - a feast for those who like to track the lives of celebrities.

As such I suppose it has some entertainment value, at least, and might be a way to find a little bit more about the famous people than is typically known which I suppose can't be a bad thing. Overall, it's an interesting resource.

Content Rating: 10/10

Overall: 

WhereDoes.org provides information about where do certain well known people live and more about them, their properties, career, activities and so on, good for everyone curious to find out more about a famous (or even not so famous) person they might admire and having some casual entertainment value. In terms of design, however, the site is quite decent with a few non-critical issues, but could be more unique.

Overall rating: 
9
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