Week 12 
Pasta Web Sites Crit
The crit for the pasta web sites was very useful. My site did not get picked by the randomizr, which I was happy enough about. But seeing other people's web sites and the comments made on them has given me some ideas for tweaks / improvements.
Changes
Firstly I need to make one change to my pasta web site which should of been there in the first place but I completely forgot about it, make the logo at the top of the page a link back to the home page. I know it is web design 101 basic stuff but for some reason I forgot this time, no matter though, it's done now. Asides from that there wasn't much else that I wanted to change, I have from now to the start of January to make anymore changes so I'm going to have a think about it over Christmas.
User Interface
Back in week 6 I had a look at user interface. The time has now come to look at it more in depth; decide on a layout, create a site map, etc. Ties in quite nicely because all this is needed in my major project proposal.
Site Map Research
This is the first time I've had to consider absolutely everything that is going to be contained in my site. I hadn't really thought of all the small details yet, for example an about page or how al the different tutorials are going to be linked together. One thing I did notice when I've been researching is that any site that has been built specifically for children has an "adults" or "parents" section. Is this something I need in my site? I think the answer to that is yes. It's a good place to put information that needs to be there but children wouldn't be interested in or content to help adults know what the site i about before they let their children use the site. When looking at Playhouse Disney's version of this I noticed they had a section for educators and I thought this would be a good idea to.
My Site Map
I created the site map using my favourite brainstorming app XMIND; I like it so much because it combines brainstorming with creating, if I change my mind about something I don't have to re-draw / re-write everything I can just press the delete key. While I was creating the site map I found I was adding a lot of sections to just the home page and I had to stop myself and think about my target audience. A lot of sections on the home page would confuse a child so it really needs to be kept to a minimum and broken down into sub-sections and further sub-sections. Anyway have a look at my site map via the image on the left.
Layout
Looking at other sites, aimed at a similar target audience to my own, there's no real standard. I can't say that most of them are one particular layout, which means it's whatever will work out looking best. Right now I think that simplicity is the best route for me to take. One point that definitely needs to be made which is consistency. I always think that consistency is important in web design, there's nothing I hate more than confusing web sites (unless it's intentional), but this is more important now than ever considering my target audience. I think two standard layouts should be enough to cover everything, tutorials / games pages and non-tutorials / games pages. Take a look at my layout ideas / chosen layouts via the image on the right.
Major Project Proposal
This week I want to get a bit of a start on my major project proposal. For this I want to conduct a bit more research. I think a short questionnaire is in order here. Due to my target audience there wouldn't be much point ask fellow IMD'ers there opinion on which character they like best or what their favourite colour is. So I've designed a short and simple questionnaire to give to kids. Hopefully I'll be able to find enough kids to fill it out. PDF of the questionnaire can be seen here or can be viewed via the image on the left.
I'm heading to Dublin for the weekend to see some friends so I'll hopefully get a few questionnaires filled out there and then a few more after I come back. Next week I'm going to analyse the results.
// 01 // 02 // 03 // 04 // 05 // 06 // 07 // 08 // 09 // 10 // 11 // 12 // 13 // 14 //
Jonathan is an enthusiastic web designer with a great passion for all things technical, extreme sports, photography and the church he attends. After spending almost 18 months in Dublin Jonathan has returned with his sights set on making his mark in the multimedia industry.
