Robert Hammerton: May 2008

Tuesday, May 20, 2008

Portfolio 2.0 - update

Just a quick progress report of my portfolio site. Ive made a banner, menu, sub-menu and footer for the site.

I had a small problem with the width of the banner. It was too short, and I couldn't figure out why. I finally spotted the problem, after about an hour of looking! Turned out id just mixed up a couple of figures and set the width too short. I hate problems like that - they really piss me off! Heres a screenprint of the homepage:

Its also available online at http://www.greensky-creations.co.uk/

and my DeviantArt page at http://greensky-creations.deviantart.com/

Monday, May 19, 2008

My Portfolio 2.0 - WIP

Ive started coding my new portfolio website. The site needs to be finished quickly as I'm going to be using it as the base-site for our end of year exhibition. Heres a screen print of the progress Ive made today.

Thursday, May 15, 2008

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.

Wednesday, May 14, 2008

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.