'Most Wanted' - Final year Exhibition!!!

It's on! And looking pretty damn goooood.. my mum said she was proud of me, so thats a success in my mind! Heres some of pics from...Friday evening:
Monday afternoon:

PRP Overall Evaluation - Trends

The following clonclusions summarise the results of the artefact questonaires, in which people were questioned as to what genre of website they thought each artefact was designed for and the specific design elements that influenced their decision.

• #1 Gaming Community - Overall look and feel
• #2 Portfolio - Page layout and Content design/position
• #3 Auction - Page layout and Content design/position
• #4 News - Anomaly
• #3 Social Network - Content position/Colour scheme
• #1 Car showroom - Overall look and feel

I have gained the following knowledge about webpage design in each genre based on the above conclusions. (the # symbol marks a key to be linked with the conclusions above)

#1 - Devoted sites to a particular product or field.

#3 - Universal design for sites of this nature.
- Designed for functionality and usability.
- Sites of this genre are similar to optimise usability.

#2 - Shares the same results as #3.
- However sites of this genre are more flexible in
design and generally more aesthetically pleasing.

#4 - Anomaly result, due to changing approaches to
designing sites of this genre.

PRP Artefact Evaluation
Artefact 6 – Car Showroom web page.
The Car showroom design took 4-5 hours to create in Photoshop CS2. The elements of the design are in-line with the elements of ‘real-world’ car showroom websites. There are numerous design elements which are common amougst this genre of website, most noticably the colour scheme. Car showroom sites seems to prefere a ‘washed-out’ blue theme with lots of reflective glass-like surfaces. Many web site in this genre opt for a screen resolution that does not extend beyond the confinds of the browser window. Inside this fixed set of parameters are scrollable text boxes. This means that the amount of text on the page doesn’t interfere with the overall look and balance of the design.
I have encourporated these elements into this artefact.
The following graph displays the results of question one of the questionaire. Out of 13 people surveyed, 54% correctly thought the artefact was designed to be a car showroom site. 38% thought it was a portfolio design, while 8% thought it was a gaming community site.

The design element which averaged the most influential was the Content design. Other elements which had a positive influence were the Colour Scheme, Content Position, as well as Extra ‘Bells and whistles’, which included lighting/reflective effects – as indicated below.

Out of the people who were surveyed, 92% thought the page design’s primary fuction was either for marketing or advertising purposes.

In conclusion, the survey results suggest that the car showroom websites are recognisable via the actual look and feel of the page, rather than the functionality elements.

PRP Artefact Evaluation
Artefact 5 – Social Networking web page.


The Social Networking page took 2-3 hours to create in Photoshop CS2. The colour scheme and layout is typical of the major social networking sites. I used a combination of the colours found on myspace and facebook. These are two of the biggest and widely used sites of this genre, and because I had these sites as a guide, creating the design wasn’t too taxing.
The following graph displays the results of question one of the questionaire. Out of 10 people surveyed, 100% correctly thought the artefact was designed to be a social networking site.

The design elements which most influenced these answers were the Colour Scheme and the Content Position – as indicated below.

As social networking sites contain such applications as chat, messaging, video, file sharing, blogging, and discussion groups, it is no surprise that the majority of people surveyed (60%) thought that the page’s primary function was for interaction (communication).

In conclusion, and as expected, the survey results suggest that social networking site designs are recognisable via the position of the content and colour scheme of the design. However, this survey does not take into account editable profile designs, which are common on myspace.

PRP Artefact Evaluation
Artefact 4 - News web page

The news design took 5-6 hours to create in Photoshop CS2. I based the design on the bbc.co.uk news website. I changed the navigation element of the design by adding a menu bar under the banner. This feature wasn’t in the bbc’s design, but this is an element which reflects other websites in the news genre. A genre which is especially dedicated to the access and usability of it’s content.


The following graph displays the results of question one of the questionaire. Out of 21 people surveyed, only 14% thought the artefact was designed to be a news site. 52% thought it was a games community site, while 26% thought it was a car showroom and 8% voted for portfolio site.

The design element which averaged the most influential was the Content design and position. These elements were also influencial in the games community and car showroom designs.

This is the first artefact which has failed to be correctly identified by the people surveyed. A possible explaination for this that the site I based the artefact on (bbc.co.uk) is free from some of the print-based design elements associated with newspapers and magazines. Nowadays, designers are increasingly thinking about the accessability and usability of their sites. But this approach to may not yet be registering with user’s when they think of a news site.

The opinions of the people who were surveyed about the primary function of the design is varied. I expected this after viewing the results to question one. The opinions are as follows:

To entertain: 28%
For communication: 24%
For advertising: 24%
To inform: 19%
For marketing: 5%

In conclusion, the survey results suggest that the artefact’s design elements are not in keeping with what people associate with a news website.

However, I think these views are likely to change as news websites become more geared towards user ease of access and usability.

PRP Artefact Evaluation

Artefact 3 – Auction Web page.

The auction design took 1-2 hours to create in Photoshop CS2. The content design and colours reflect the most recognisable of auction websites - ebay. This is the quickest artefact I have created so far and, although I’m not 100% satisfied with the design, it encourporates all the basic design elements of an auction website.

The following graph displays the results of question one of the questionaire. 58% of people surveyed correctly thought the artefact was designed to be an Auction website. 25% thought it was a news page and the other 17% thought it was a social networking web page.

The design elements which most influenced these answers were the Page Layout and Content design elements – as indicated below.
48% of people surveyed thought the primary function of the artefact design was for marketing purposes.
24% of people thought the design was to inform, which co-incides with the percentage of people who thought it was a news site design.
The surprising conclusion is that the survey results suggest that people recognaise auction websites via the content position more than by the colour scheme.

PRP - Artefact 6

Please complete the survey based on this design. It can be found at http://ess.ntu.ac.uk/sutton/formfiles/n0096263/prpartefact6.htm

PRP - Artefact 5

Please complete the survey based on this design. It can be found at
http://ess.ntu.ac.uk/sutton/formfiles/n0096263/prpartefact5.htm

PRP - Artefact 4

Please complete the survey based on this design. It can be found at http://ess.ntu.ac.uk/sutton/formfiles/n0096263/prpartefact4.htm

PRP - Artefact 3

Please complete the survey based on this design. It can be found at http://ess.ntu.ac.uk/sutton/formfiles/n0096263/prpartefact3.htm

PRP Artefact Evaluations 1 + 2


Here are my submittions for the evaluations of Artefacts 1 and 2 of my Personal Research project. Ive not only uploaded them up on here for my own personal log, but also because when submitting them via the university network i was unable to submit images.

PRP – Artefact 1 Evaluation Robert Hammerton N0096263

My research project question I am investigating is “What design elements most influence users when determine the function of web pages”

For this research I have created six web page layout designs as artefacts. Each artefact represents a different genre of websites. Users answer a questionaire, stating what genre of website they think the web page is of and how much the design elements influenced their decision. The design elements used reflect my research into websites of each genre. I hope to discover whether users use these elements to distinguish the function of the site without need for content.


Artefact 1 - Gaming community web page.

The gaming design took 3-4 hours to create in Photoshop CS2. The colour scheme and layout is typical of web pages in the gaming community websites genre. I re-designed the artefact twice as I wasn’t happy with the design - the design above was the third attempt at this artefact - and so the only problem I encountered was that it took longer than anticipated to complete.

The following graph displays the results of question one of the questionaire. Out of 20 people surveyed, 85% correctly thought the artefact was designed to be a gaming community site.
The design elements which most influenced these answers were the Colour Scheme, Page Layout, Banner Size and Navigation – as indicated below.











60% of people surveyed thought the primary function of the web page design was for user interaction (communication).

In conclusion, the survey results suggest that the artefact’s design element are mostly in favour of the overall look and feel of the design, rather than specific elements.


Artefact 2 – Portfolio
The portfolio design took 2-3 hours to create in Photoshop CS2. The content position and lighting effects are similar to that of online portfolio web pages that I have seen. I didn’t have any problems while creating the artefact, although I did remove the original banner as I felt it detracted from the design theme.

The following graph displays the results of question one of the questionaire. 80% of people surveyed correctly thought the artefact was designed to be an Online portfolio website.
10% thought it was a car showroom and the other 10% thought it was a gaming community web page.
The design elements which most influenced these answers were the Page Layout, Content Design and possition – as indicated below.
75% of people surveyed thought the primary function of the web page design was for advertising (drawing public attention to).

In conclusion the results of the survey suggest that the artefact’s design elements are most in flavor of content design and content position.


The next two Artefacts will be completed and uploaded after the submittion of my Client 'Live' Project, which is due in 14th April.

PRP

After completing Artefact two I thought Artefact one looked abit rubbish in comparison! So I've re-designed it. Here it is...

Dimensions: 1000 x 800

Type: JPEG

Size: 101 KB

Original Type: PDA

Original Size: 10.7 MB

PRP

Artefact two - Portfolio layout:
Dimensions - 1000 x 661
Type - JPEG
Size - 311KB

Original Type - PDA
Original Size - 1.87 MB

PRP

First draft of gaming community design. The box background colours where the content will go need to be darker i think, but it looks ok for now. Ive started the blog design, which should be finished tomorrow. Also the questionaire relating to the six artifacts will be drafted tomorrow and then created using 'Autoform' on the VLP.
- Dimensions: 1024 x 768
- Type: JPEG
- Size: 209 KB
- Original Type: PDA
- Original size: 3.41 MB

PRP - 1st Artifact

Say a person with protanopia colour blindness viewed a red object. The shade of the object would appear different to them than to us. However they still associate the shade they see with as ‘red’. Everytime they see that shade, its red to them.

There are general rules in web design about the colour combinations not to display. Many people are colour blind and would not be able to see red or green text on a brown background. However, what if these colour combinations were desired by a designer, to fit in with a brand for instance?

For my first artifact, I have designed a page so that people with normal vision and people suffering from Protanopia, Deutanopia, and Tritanopia colour blindness can all view the same page and still read the text.

The page works using links for each specific colour blindness. When clicked the background and text colours of the problem section are changed to give the best contrast for the user’s vision.

Colour options for websites exist, but with multiple filters on a website, or even browsers - changing the colours to provide better contrast - would enable a better user-experience and company-user interaction for the majority of people suffering from colour blindness using the web.

Sreenshots displayed below:

Research Project - 1st Artifact

I have found a colourblind filter tool which shows you websites through the "eyes" of people with specific types of colour blindness. http://colorfilter.wickline.org/
I will use this tool and apply it to webpages for the first artifact, rather than creating my own page. This will not just save me time, but allow the artifact audience to view many recognizable webpages under the position of someone with colour blindness.

This will help to show different sized company's approach to their whole audience.

Research Project

For my first artifact, I will be investigating the web experience of people with colour blindness. I will do this by creating a webpage that recreates how a normal page would appear if viewed by a person with colour blindness. I will show this to people the who don't suffer from colour blindness and guage their reactions and views via a questionaire.
The aim of this first artifact is gauge 'normal' people's reaction to how colour blind people experience the web. The artifact will also raise the issue of to what extent standards of web design take all people's experience of their webpages into consideration.

Personal Research Project
Agreement Form

Title: Human-intervention that limits website accessibility.
Topic: My project will investigate who has control over what we see, how and why access is sometimes limited in different places.

Research: Primarily I will be focusing on the subject of controlled or limited access experienced by people in different places around the world. What information is not permitted, the reasons used to justify these limitations and how these limitations are implemented and enforced. I will briefly look into other factors that affect people’s accessibility to the internet. Social class in demographic society, freedom of speech, physical disability, environment, and security.

Personal Research Project (Module Overview)
This is my first post of the 2007/8 academic year.

the context
This is a component designed to build upon the Multimedia techniques studied at level one and two by providing you with an opportunity to develop work which is specifically aligned to your personal technical and creative ambitions.

the brief
During this module you will develop a body of work, which reflects individual interests and demonstrates professional potential. You will research into the content and background of self initiated topics, including technologies theory, practice and contexts as appropriate.

The structure of the research project has two parts:
(TERM 1) Document based literature review and analysis.
(TERM 2&3) Research via practice.