Gestault

week 4 makup:

when designing a webpage a similar look and feel for the site from page to page is a no duh, but how much farther can we take this principle? for example similar navigation? similar text size and similar font faces can help establish a cohesive identity but why stop there? Other applicable factors are different sizes for different pieces of navigation, what's bigger seems to belong together, main links bigger and grouped make them stand out. keep it simple and understandable and obey basic principles and the gestault theories can be really useful to guide users without them even realizing it.

affordances and constraints help people do the right thing whether they want to or not. if it is possible prevent a user from doing something wrong by making it impossible to do. don't allow an improper command for example, automatically tab over in phone number box's to allow someone to continue typing, they may still click in the box but at least it doesn't prevent those who don't from not continuing with the phone number. some better examples are given by donald norman in DOET and this reading but for now that is something that would be very nice as a convention. a real example of affordance is the fact that i am bound to the earth, this is a relationship between me and the object earth, only with great difficulty and the proper career path can i break free of this constraint and in my lifetime it really is a constraint. i cannot move my cursor out of the screen and i cannot exit the atmosphere.

Third time:

I copy and pasted this time:

I hate this stuff kathy, blogger is so unreliable... I just lost a long blog post... I'm not typing all that again.

I was trying to make up a blog post from week 5 but now i feel really defeated because blogger deleted it by not connecting then not allowing me to go back.

in short:

it was on the organization for the masses reading and I was talking about how the card sorting was a very useful experiment that I actually subjected several of my friends to which allowed me to realize that many people think radically different about where things ought to be so for my website realizing that I couldn't make one system of navigation work for all the users I focused on designing manysystems that worked for some of the users and i think that it manages to provide more benefits than harm when you design for difference. That was a huge lesson...

More Wires for us to work off of.

this one took a while:

This one was easier pwr point slide:

wireframish

Home page

Tasks

Task One: Find out Viacom's subsidiaries biggest subsidiary.

Task Two: From the site map, Find out when Kube 93.3 was founded.

Task Three: From Home: navigate as quickly as possible to Warner Bro's upon arrival submit review request to acquisition history.

Breakdown.

So I thought I would break down the tasks into responsibilities we could go over before our group met.

Consider this an agenda to go over for the meeting.



Introduction:

Sounds like this is not one of our responsibilities and that this has already been completed, if we need to make any changes to this document however then there should be someone who knows when we might have to do that.

Project Object ... ives:

This is the scope of the project, we will forum over this in the meeting today and it will be decided.

Someone will then have to put dates to "deliverables" for example the goals that i posted about the design chances are this person will be me. deliverables include blueprint of webpage and go live dates.

Definition of success:
What constitutes success on this project? In this situation it might be easier to define faliure.

Site map:
One of us will have to outline this, it should take 5 minutes on paper and perhaps 10 on computer. It's pretty fricken obvious. This is a deliverable.

Functional Specs:

Much of what will go into here was in my design post, Is anything missing?


Technical Specs:

After we decide upon the functional specs then the technical side must be resolved, we should try to make it as web based as possible with little to no flash or other applications needed.

Privacy Policy:

We can nick this from almost any website out there and make small edits, also a deliverable.

Content plan:

This is possibly a large assignment or a small one, how do we input content, we will need to figure out whether or not we would make this a wiki style site or a controlled input of information for the public.

Wireframes:

We need more information about this, as we are not creating the site how much fo a wireframe do we actually need? this may be a difficult point as well if we actually have to create a site that functions as kevin and I were discussing in class. pictures and mockups are easy but will those count as wireframes? who will design the wire frame? either way this comes after the other information is decided.

Aesthetics

I think this is a really valuable reading.

This is something that applies not only to web pages, in fact it makes a lot of sense, for example:

Surprisingly enough to most MBA students, powerpoints should not be bullet load after bullet load of text on top of that the format should be similar from slide to slide to make the viewers feel involved and able to easily recognize the slides and information. This is true also of a webpage or any other display of text. text especially informative text needs to be displayed in a user friendly manner that reduces cognitive load. If something is easy to read and aesthetically pleasing a reader can learn more from ten words than ten paragraphs.

The rule of thirds is something I have encountered before in communications theory. I can't over emphasize the clean, visually pleasing use of the above the fold space of a website. Following the rule of thirds you can design a clean look for the fold space that the user will see upon entering the website or websites and this can make the experience much more pleasant overall persuading the viewer/user/reader to stay and browse around more.

I swear to god...

These deadlines... I always wind up missing them! class exercises are... well... I didn't know it was noon today, I remember monday not noon... whatever.

My group had government, one inclusion i came up with is public documentation is a must, most gov are on .gov but if they are not they are on .org as something like ASUW governments so here are my websites:

http://www.aswsu.org/

http://www.il.gov/

http://egov.cityofchicago.org/city/webportal/home.do

These have information about the government and offices held and officers, and have public documents and are .org minimums.

Project goals.

These are the goals that we need to complete in steps broken down in attainable format to create a database search form of website that is both user friendly and functional.

Knowing the type of website that we are designing and the type of content (and knowing we don't have to put the information in ourselves) we should design the website to be the most user friendly as possible.

The first step in doing so is creating an easy to use navigation.

What is the design of the navigation for the website that we want?

Goal 1 Navigation:

Decision #1:

Do we want top down navigation begging with the top dog and ending up on the smaller corporations or do we want bottom up navigation where all streams lead to the ocean? Should it be alphabetical etc..
These questions are the symptoms of the over arching idea: where does navigation start?

Decision #2:

The navigation style is only one of the two components to navigation that we need to make the other is a decision about navigation format, flash, frames, or archive. What is the best type of website to browse through this navigation? Is flash appropriate for something like this? or should the website be displayed in a similar fashion as theyrule.net? Perhaps this is an occasion where frames are in order?

Goal 2 Content:

Decision #1:

How much content is going to be inside each page? graphics, videos, pictures? Are we going to list in text all the information? If so what type of text? A history of each media company? or perhaps a history of each media companies acquisitions and takeovers? some of this may be decided in the navigation issue but perhaps listing the companies subsidiaries or superiors on the company page is what we should do as well.

Decision #2:

The scheme of the website is going to be what keeps a user there, this falls into homepage design and color format partially aesthetics partially hitting the right information right away. what information is going to be on the landing page? will there be a landing page? navigation will dictate much of this but this is important on it's own. if the site has a landing page what will it look like? the colors and format of this page will dictate what much else of the website looks like to make sure the user knows they are navigating through our site.

Goal #3 control:

Decision #1:

How much control does the user get in this situation? do we want them to be able to use the back button? a link to home on every page? will we allow the user to adjust the text size or is this a one size-fits all page? once again, part of this is in the navigation but part of it is not, how will we limit the users ability to alter our design, if at all?

Decision #2:

This is largely a component of navigation that does not have to be decided until now but is more of a design and expectations issue, top nav? side nav? L shape navigation? web 2.0 style? are we going to try to fit into a genre? or are we just going to make one up? Where will the search box be? will there be something to subscribe to? email alerts? what features do we need to have that we haven't thought of yet? (now you can go crazy on it Kevin)


Goal 4 Blueprint:

Once we have thought through these goals we will lay a blueprint out as a conglomeration of the ideas we have decided upon and this will be a semi final markup of the site, we will are review the blueprint and tear the blueprint to shreds any way we can think of, it will not be an html blueprint it will be a text written blue print (possibly with accompanying JPG example).

Goal 5 Feedback:

Self explanitory.

Goal 6:
Implimentation of feedback, this section will be expanded when there is something to be expanded upon.

The Design of Everyday Essays

I'm going to be talking about the design of everyday things in class today, I couldn't pick a good book and broke down and bought design. Turns out I don't regret it. Too bad he worked for apple, but despite that, it's a good informative insightful read i look forward to talking about. I learned a lot about the ignorance of engineers and design award winners. the book really should be called common sense for smart people. Donald A. Norman : Design of Everyday Things.

I picked the book because it was on kathys list and sounded interesting and not overly web related.

Key points include user centered design over elegance or switch bombing. Chances are it's not your fault its the designers. and really please in the future make toasters safer and really really really try not to make a nuclear console difficult to understand that there is an actual malfunction when it is about to tear an island apart.

Design for error, and stop thinking your so creative by making doors that look like walls.

fink

Turn handle open door, enter bathroom, flick switch, turn toward mirror, locate and pickup toothbrush, put tooth brush down, pick up tooth paste, open tooth paste, apply tooth paste to tooth brush, apply pasted brush to teeth, vigorously move tooth brush in circular fashion against teeth while lightly salivating, cover any area that is made out of enamel calcium or borders between gums and tooth, brush roof of mouth, brush tongue thoroughly, spit aiming at sink, turn sink on by rotating hot water knob, gurgle water once hot, spit, gargle more water, spit, wipe the mouth with wash cloth, rinse sink, turn hot water off, turn light off, leave room, close door.


Click projects once link loads. Groove to music. Click on interactive, see splinter cell and xbox 360 get distracted and click. Click back to project index because the back button is non functional. Click on film main titles, click back to projects click on interactive, click on e-commerce ibm link, click back to projects, click interactive, click Honda, redir- projects.

Click on contact, click on map and driving directions to new york office, click on suggested search.


Imaginary forces fell into the trap of flash, there is no back button usage which means every button is in the website and is flash based. The text size does not allow us to alter it to make it easier to view. There’s a photo gallery and I am not quite sure what it wants me to view. The reading on affordance and constraints really applies the most to this website as it decided to ignore all constraints and was constructed in a very uncontrollable fashion, music that plays automatically, text that is not adjustable, and worse no back button on the browser. It sacrificed everything for a sleek looking page but a warning for flash layouts, if the menu system isn’t clear be prepared for trouble.