Project 1 Overview
important due dates
- September 29: Site Inventory and Analysis due; present findings
- October 18: Site Prototype due; present to class
- November
1517: Final Site Re-design due; present to class November 15: Poster Rough Draft dueNovember 17: Poster Final Draft dueNovember 22: Bring Printed Poster to Class dueNovember 29December 1: Present to LA ITS
the assignment
Project 1 is a collaborative project which involves an imaginative redesign of a section of an existing informational web site. Very often, web designers are asked to re-design a web site which already exists. The site may be clumsy, confusing, hard to navigate, aesthetically unappealing, or simply outdated and in need of restructuring. It may lack enough content to interest readers, or provide so much content that is hard for readers to navigate.
For this project, we will work in groups to redesign one section of a University of Texas at Austin Web site: The College of Liberal Arts Instructional Technology Services. In order to make this project succeed, groups will need to break the work into stages. You may work on several stages at the same time (in fact you will probably need to), perhaps by dividing tasks among the team members. There are multiple tasks associated with each stage. This semester we are fortunate to have the opportunity to discuss the ITS site with Gary Dickerson and Suloni Robertson, the COLA ITS web masters. Gary and Suloni are very interested in hearing what we have to say about the current site and what suggestions we have for a future ITS site. As a result, we will be presenting our findings to gary, Suloni, and certain members of the design team, and there is a chance that some of our re-design ideas could be adopted into a future ITS design.
steps to complete the assignment
- Become very familiar with the web site as it is currently posted and complete site inventory to find out what information is available at the site. Please be strategic in reviewing what is there in order to develop a fairly complete inventory. The inventory can be stored on a web page, a Word document, Visio document, or other electronic form.
- Conduct comparison research, reviewing and making notes about other sites with a similar purpose or audience. What kind of content is provided? How is it organized? How well is it presented? How usable is it?
- Analyze the potential audiences for the web site and their needs. This involves fieldwork research, and will, in part, be completed in cooperation with ITS. You might conduct an email survey of users, do face to face interviews, and/or observe users who are accessing the site to get a sense of how they use the site and their opinions about its content, organization, and design. You will also have access to ITS web site log data.
- Think through the categories of information, organization, and navigation structure for a proposed redesign of the site.
- Prepare a final design proposal with a prototype (about 10 web pages) and a two-page rationale for the design.
- Complete the re-design for the pages in your prototype.
- Depending on interest and time: create a poster presentation to use when presenting your re-design to the ITS web design team.
the groups
Group numbers link to the group's Web page.
| Group 1 | Group 2 | Group 3 | Group 4 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Jennifer Nguyen | Rizko Djong | Brittany Andress | John Christmas |
| Cody Norris | Vanessa Garcia | Brian Cabana | Ryan Dennis |
| John Rainbolt | Frank Huang | Octavio Corral | Bianca Jackson |
| John Ricks | Rose Kuo | Jonathan Reingold | Sameer Karim |
| Josh Syvrud | Trey Philips | Shena Sandle | Michael LoPiccolo |
| Melanie Riddick |