Organising the Design

OK, so I have had a go at visually organising the top level information, or home page.

I like the idea of asking people to contribute to a carbon offset program to alleviate some of the environmental impact of my travel. When I thought of it I just had to sketch what the front page might look like.

Now I have used this process to decide how content will be organised, I need to get stuck into the copy!

The Results Are In.

29 people filled out my survey. Not a bad result for 499 Facebook friends and 100 followers on Twitter - almost a 5% response rate which is probably an excellent return on a small social media response campaign.

The results are not surprising, and has enabled me to understand how best to organise the content of what will be the most commonly occuring template in the site.

I have developed a sketch, or wireframe using PowerPoint. Well, old habits die hard. This gives me a framework for collating content.

 

This brings an interesting planning question to the web design process - what comes first the content or design?

One school of thought says Get the content written first. Be happy with the tone and language. (then) Decide on the style. Another argues that designing first is not user focused.

A view I agree with is that both need to be considered concurrently. Without good content, design is a vacuous bauble that catches your eye momentarily but quickly bores you. And without good design, content is that boring professor who knows more than you’ll ever need, but lectures away in monotone and rambles from topic to topic with no rhyme or reason.

An excellent article from techradar.com discusses how websites designed for the desktop allow more elements to be added to the page, it suggest that elements are added for the sake of using space - when actually, efficient design - such as that required for mobile ready sites (ie smaller screen size) are much better at providing the key information sought by the user up front and central.

 

Even a just little bit of research helps

My survey has been up for an hour and has 6 responses already, it may not seem like many but I am already getting ideas for ensuring content is relevant, and on how to better organise it.

Site Structure, Planning & Information Architecture

This week we discuss key usability considerations – site structure and information architecture. The importance of good web design has cemented the profession of Information Architect. The lecturer’s notes quote an Information Architect to be a person who creates the structure or map of information which allows others to find their personal paths to knowledge. Well, that’s one quote, but the suggestion that the concept is more “holistic” than data based, appeals most to me.

In the last post I discussed how a website development process should be treated like any new product development process.  I am probably guilty of not paying enough attention to the planning process at one time or another, but aren’t all good brand and product marketers at times? There can be too much focus on just producing an end result, rather than the producing the best end result.

So for us brand marketers, if we review the product development process, we start off with the concept. I have made a decision about the broad concept of a website that, based on my own experience, provides travel information and recommendations. OK, sounds awful right, a Trip Advisor written from only one person’s perspective perhaps? Lets say the primary audience though is family and friends, you could maybe describe it as a personal blog that has had the information organized so that it means more to potential users.

The concept will need more detailed development before we move into feasibility.  That means research with the target market. I have asked my contacts on Facebook and Twitter (mostly friends and family) to fill out a survey so I can better understand what might be the best type of content to include.

As the topic of this weeks lecture also suggests, I need to start giving thought to the site information architecture. I have travelled to over 30 country destinations world wide, when you then break that down to cities I am looking at big job ensuring interesting and engaging content.

Perspectives on Web Design

So I owe 2 posts for 2 classes! I am not waning in enthusiasm – just been busy.

Last weeks lecture was titled “perspectives on web design”. Pat talks about the different perspectives with which people will approach the web design project, and gives us some good sources of information.

The key advice that I am clinging onto from the notes is There's no point in having a nice design with easy navigation, if the content is unoriginal, uninteresting or just absent. You need to provide original and interesting content.

Another point also hit a chord – it was about asking for feedback. I think this is a key feature often missed, and something that wasn’t covered, was looking for feedback on the site – or content – before you go into site design.

My 7 years brand management experience tells me, a website development process should be treated like any new product development process. First you develop a concept, you might have a few ideas about what it will look like, but you need to talk to the people who you want to visit your site. We will discuss this a bit more in the next post.

Discussing design, we learn that, you can’t make assumptions about the people who visit your site, especially that they will be approaching from the same angle as you. Using a particular background because of personal taste is a no-no – use all the public research widely available on the web that talk about conventions in web design.  

Accessibility for instance, is a key issue. From the W3C WAI, That means having a Web accessibility encompasses all disabilities that affect access to the Web, including visual, auditory, physical, speech, cognitive, and neurological disabilities. The site also discusses how important it is to put this into the planning of the site.

A site highly recommended in the class is the Web Style Guide – a free resource with boundless information – if you are planning on building a website make sure you review it, and I would start with the forward: this book has style…Web Style Guide delivers value and meaning to seemingly disparate audiences, from the student prodigy who would be webmaster to the grizzled veteran information architect who’s been there and organized that. True that.

From this class, I am already clear that simplicity is key, and that I will need to write myself a full web development brief, and am thinking about the rest of the planning recipe… oh, and I reckon to deliver interesting and entertaining content I can’t wait for week 6 to start the process! Gulp!

Some good advice...

This weekend life put me back in contact with a very old friend (bless Facebook) - its been 10 years since we saw each other, or round abouts, we were best mates in high school in class 7R or something like that. Turns out Xtina is a content producer for the website of a major radio network in Australia (my old home).

Over dim sum, Xtina gives me some good advice as I explain my dilemma about deciding how to approach the website project for this course.

Content is King she says and it clicks that obviously all those internet marketing websites that give the same advice, are not just talking about any content, about content for the sake of content - I need interesting content!

Its all about narcissism and voyeurism she says - people look at you so that you'll look at them. She speaks the truth.

Maybe she is right - even if I were to go the personal route, talking about my adventures - won't developing interesting content help me professionally as well?

First Class: An Introduction to Web Design

So day 1 of my classes in the London Metropolitan MA Digital Media. My first class is CMP002N Design for the Internet. Although at first I thought I wanted to stick mostly to the "consultancy" style courses (or "hands off" courses if you like.) I am doing this class for two reasons. 1 - because the course leader, Elena Moschini advised that even consultants, project managers and sales people should understand what is involved in designing websites for the internet so they can better select the people they work with, and understand when they are being ripped off (EXCELLENT ADVICE!), and 2 - because it fits with the class schedule so I can fit 2 classes on Fridays.

Pat Power is the lecturer and I instantly decided I liked him because he has an Irish accent and all Irish people I have met have been nice. It was only 5 minutes into the class however that I really felt like he was speaking another language!!

Now don't get me wrong, I think I have a fairly large digital footprint for a "classically" trained FMCG Brand Marketer (check out my Linked In profile), but really he was using acronyms I broadly only had to understand in the past. Try these.  CERN, CSS, W3C, HTML (know that one!), SGML, Usenet, XML, oh and by the way, I have to not only understand these but apply them to build a website in DWCS4 by the end of the course. Yikes!

There are about a dozen people in this class who raised their hand when asked if they had ever done web design before. I dislike these people immensely and hope they choose to study another course by next week instead of bringing their fancy pants web design skills to induce further panic about what else I don't know!

50% of the mark will come from a critical report that is meant to be a reflective report about my experience building the site. So, this blog is going to be my attempt to track not just the progress of my project (which lets face it at Wk1 is already panic stations) but a record of the new things I learn to add to that project every week.

So the website project can't just be any website, the brief specifically states "Conceive, design and produce a website on the theme - 'The Life and Times of [your own name]'." My most and least favourite subject at the same time. I feel a lot of internal conflict building already.

I want this project to be for more than just marks, I want to be able to use it in the future. Will I make it a professional site dedicated to letting the world know about my new consultancy Digital Stuf Ltd - or will I reveal too much unprofessional-ness (oh God - see!!?) in the process?? Hmmm... maybe I could take the opportunity to scrapbook that 2 years worth of travel I have just done and finally do something with the 10kg box of paper, tickets memories etc under the bed..... but do I have the time for the daunting process of sorting and cataloging all that and be a consultant and do this Masters and have a life???

Well I don't need to decide now.... I do decide however that I will sketch out a few ideas in my notebook, which is a brilliant idea except for that I cant draw and I am looking back at my drawings from yesterday and all I think is WTF???? Now I know what THAT acronym means and I expect we will see it a few times during this course.

That's all for now, writing this has just got me in a tizzy. Its Saturday night and I think I need to do that "have a life part" at least while its still early in the course.