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Report
Created by Shelley Webb For Open Univeristy Course T183 |
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| 1. What is the specified purpose
of your site? e.g. what information is your site attempting to communicate?
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This web page is a personal page used
to convey information. It is non-commercial site about a local book club.
It was designed to inform members about the book we are reading and meeting
time and location information. This site also informs non-members information
about who we are, why we meet and how to contact us. This site needs to
convey who we are as a group, why we meet, where we meet, when we meet, books
we are reading or have read and contact details. |
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| 2. How did you decide the structure
of your site? How did you organise or ‘chunk’ the information to be put
on individual pages? |
As suggested in lesson 7, the site was
designed first on paper. Post-it notes were used for each potential web
page. Using these made it easier to move around and redesign the layout.
The information it should to convey is who we are, why we are, what we
are reading, where we meet and when we meeting. These were then group together
"who/why", "where/when" and "what" on it's own. The "what we are reading"
information, was too much information for one page and it was decided to
split that into "what we are currently reading" and "what we've read in
the past". Originally the page was based on a possible 3 level hierarchy.
The past books we have read were designed on a lower level hierarchy page
from the currently reading page, however this idea was abandoned for a two-tier
hierarchy structure. Thus making for a simpler design and easier navigation.
It was decided to keep with the simple layout, the information on each page
had to be concise and not too much scrolling would be required for each page. |
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| 3. How did you develop and test
your site? |
To further develop the site, the paper
mock up was shown to potential users. Feedback from this was to include
information about local bookshops in the area. Taking this a step further
it was decided to put a links page with local bookshops, on-line bookshops,
used book resources and local libraries. From the paper mock up an html
version was developed using Netscape Composer. This was tested in 3 separate
browser, Netscape, Firefox and Internet Explorer. The site was shown again
to potential users for feedback. From the feedback, other cycle of the design
cycle was completed until the finished product. |
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| 4. What types of users did you
identify for your site? |
This site could have a very diverse
user base. Age, culture, or disability does not necessarily limit users
interested in this site. As in lesson 8, profiles for potential users were
created. Some of these would include
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| 5. How did you ensure your site
matched user characteristics? |
To ensure that the site would fit the
potential profiles the following was done
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| 6. What considerations for navigation
and usability did you give in designing your site? |
The main design feature for navigation
is the constant navigational bar at the top of every page. The current
page the user is on had no background colour and no longer is a link. On
the home page the left-hand column is used as a site map, making it easier
for a user to jump to a sub-section. For example if the user wants to know
when me meet, they would have use the path Home Page > Schedule > When
We Meet. Using the site map they only have to use Home Page > When We
Meet. Not too much information was put on each page. This was to make sure
the user didn't have to scroll. Also sub menus were used on the second level
hierarchy pages to add in navigation, as well as "back to top" links. |
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| 7. How did you decide the page
layout for your site? |
The layout started as a Sklar table,
as shown in lesson 2. The screen resolution was design for 800 x 600. Sklar's
priority position of the centre was given to the most important information
trying to be conveyed. The second priority position of top was given to
the group logo, name and navigation bar. The left-hand side was used for
site map navigation. The right hand side was designed to have a quote that
can be changed monthly. The page was divided into 7 sections to accommodate
Miller's 7 plus or minus 2 theory from lesson 2. The Arial font was chosen
because it is a sans-serif proportional font. Using this type of font makes
it easier to read on a computer screen, as per stated in lesson 3. |
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| 8. Selecting images and colour
scheme: What graphic file types (jpeg, gif, etc.) did you use and why? Explain
the reasoning behind your choice of colour scheme in the web pages |
Since the site is for a book group,
it made sense to have pictures of books incorporated in the web site. Images
of book covers were taken from Amazon.co.uk and reduced in size. They were
saved in jpeg format to reduce their size for fast downloading. The logo
was designed especially for the site. Since it incorporated letter, and
transparent background, it was saved as a .GIF format, as from the information
supplied in lesson 5. The red circle gif on eca3.html was also created and
saved in the same method. Other clip art was found on the web and used as
their original .gif format. A cool colour scheme was chosen based on lavender
(#ffccff), the main colour chosen. Wanting to keep to a simple colour scheme,
other colours used in the navigation bar were used with huge and saturation
variations on the main colour. A contrast colour of blue (#000099) was selected
for the text in keeping with the cool feel of the page. The colour grey (#666666)
was chosen for the top and bottom bar as a neutral colour to help break
up the brightness of the pink hues and creating a Bezold effect, as mentioned
in lesson 4. The colour scheme was used consistently throughout all the
pages of the website. The colour was limited by Netscape composer, which
has a very limited colour pallet. However, this did ensure that the colour
scheme was kept within the 251 web safe colours, as mentioned in lesson 2. |
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| 9. What consideration did you
give to accessibility in designing your site? |
Accessibility for this site was kept
in mind during the whole design process. The site was designed to be simple
with minimal colour and images. All images have alt text to describe the
images. No 'click here' links were used as discouraged in lesson 8. No
frames were used, to help aid in the use of any speech screen software. No
moving target links were used in these web pages. To test the page, a blind
user was asked to use the site. The conclusion from the user is that it
is accessible. The text size can be adjusted in a browser, thus helping
with users who have site accessibility issues. |
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| 10. What interactive features
could usefully be added to the site? |
To make the site more interactive a
link to an off site forum was added. Here users can interact with each other
and leave comments on the books they are reading. It would improve the page
if the forum could be directly on the web site, therefore not having users
leave your web page and not have a way of getting back (other than using
the back button). Other possible types of interactivity that could be added
would be a form to give feedback, or a poll where people could answer what
their all time favourite book was. The poll could then update the home page
with details of the top 5 books people have chosen. |
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Word count 1296 |
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