Unit 8 Reading

Chapter 10

Goodwill is the main topic in this chapter. Why does it concern in Web design? It’s because when people visit your site, some of them have a lot of goodwill, some of them less than, they will give your site a chance to browse your site. Some mistakes can destroy their efforts; some may help increase their diminished goodwill. There are some kind of mistake that can diminish the user’s goodwill and efforts, such as they can’t find the information they want in your site even they tried searching utility, also the mistaken site asked the unnecessary information, or make the user wait too long to enter the homepage, and especially your site looks unprofessional design. But you could save your user’s goodwill and even satisfy them by giving the main information and its related details, or Frequently Asked Questions section that answered the often question that most of users asked after some user usability testing or even making the whole website can be printable with just one click without go to each page and click print, this will save user a lot of time to visit the rest of site.

Chapter 11

A working site is the site that any kind of users can access and use anytime without failing user's usability.

Accessibility and usability are important aspects that web developers and designer should decide to end up their work based on from usability tests. In web design, there are many reasons to decide a layouts and functions that can support the most common kind of users of the site, such as site for business people, site for non-profit, forum, or even for handicapped people.  So just do the right thing so people can feel comfortable when they are surfing the site without skeptical. The problem for handicapped people is how they can access the computer and even the website to read news.

Hence, there must be more works for designers and developers. But to compromise the designers’ and developers is one of the hardest parts because we cannot design the layout for handicapped people with the layout for business people with the mission that your site should be consistent. Those two problems will conflict and let the discussion to not be able to be solved.

But there are few ways that can help to fix the problems between technology and standards, that are fix the usability problems that confuse everyone. And use alternative technology to help handicapped people like use audio function to help blinded people can hear the news. And finally is using web technology like HTML,CSS, and JavaScript to alter the code to make fix the little errors which can be acceptable by any users and even keep the site be consistent.

Links for reference:

1. Why User Experience Cannot Be Designed 

2. Persuasion Triggers in Web Design 

3. Stop Designing Pages And Start Designing Flows 

4. Designing More Usable Web Sites 

5. 9 Common Usability Mistakes In Web Design 

6. 10 Usability Tips for Web Designers

P2_Application Definition Statement

Luis Lemus

Viet Ho

IM231-Interface Design

Smartphone App Project

Features Users might like:

·        Live Scores for any Soccer event.

·        Highlights of most important match events.

·        Create an account to filter out favorite teams and clubs.

·        Have most viewed matches of the day.

·        History of what most people have watched.

·        Upcoming schedules for most popular matches. Option to buy tickets for any local soccer matches.

·        Sharing through social networks.

·        Comment box for all users.

·        Search a match you want to watch.

Who are the users?

·        Anyone person who loves soccer.

·        Audiences are worldwide.

·        People who might be too busy to watch sport events live on tv.

o   Students

o   Employees

Filtered Features:

·        Live Scores for any Soccer event.

·        Highlights of most important match events.

·        Create an account to filter out favorite teams and clubs.

·        Have most viewed matches of the day.

·        History of what most people have watched.

·        Upcoming schedules for most popular matches. Option to buy tickets for any local soccer matches.

·        Sharing through social networks.

·        Search a match you want to watch.

Unit 7 Reading

We are in the age of touch screens with various size of screen. Therefore, the way the browser display the content on each device is very different. For example, if you use iPhone with the resolution of 320x480(iPhone 4) or 27 inch iMac or Kindle 600x1024, the browsers display in different ways in column and row of content flow. Because of that, we need to modify the technology of web coding. To do that, people will define some available screen resolution in there code. If they define the width less than 400 pixel and the height less than 500 pixels, the browser will understand that this is the iPhone screen, so that the browser will find the iPhone CSS file, so the browser will display content correctly by the created content frame. Hence, in a html file of a responsive website, there are many different CSS file placed at the <head> section: <link src=”css/iPhoneScreen.css” type=”css/stylesheet”>. What they use to flow the content in a responsive website is multiple fluid grid layouts. The CSS file work based on the fluid grid layouts by the ID and Class name of the element they are going to break apart to place on the next line. Moreover, the photo is also responsive with definition in CSS file by max-width and max-height value. With that, the photo will shrink or expand up to the screen size and CSS definition.

Responsive website is now commonly applied to different screen size, small, medium and large. Therefore, with responsive technology, we don’t need to create another page for the each correspond screen size. It’s convenient, less cost, code, loading time and memory consuming.

Link for reference:

 http://responsivetools.com/

Responsive Web Layouts for Mobile Screens: Intro, Tips and Examples

Could Mobile Responsive Website Design Hurt Your SEO?

Why 2013 Is the Year of Responsive Web Design

P3 app ideas

I got some following ideas for the app project:

1. Seattle way-finding system: this will help people to find the desire place. it will have a database like Yelp pull out the details of the wanted places, also applied to underground metro sytem.

2. Art Auction: the place where people discuss and bid for the Art production. Need to have an account. problem: information security.

3. Website Interface Design: post your ideas on this, people will help you to improve your idea and fix the design mistakes.

4. Okay, Glass: social network used by Google Glass. People will share what
they see, caught on the glass like photos, video and other utilities.

5. Updated Gas Price: a community place where people share gas price at where they living.

6. Shipping Watch: this allow people watch their ordered items being shipped by USPS, UPS, FedEx or other service companies.

Unit 6 Reading

Creating a mobile app is very popular today. There are some common people who create their app, such as non-technical people, independent developers, educators, writer, mid-sized and large sized entertainment companies.  It would be easy to create an non-profit app, but to create an app for profit and business need a careful plan before beginning to design, code and launch an app. For a profit app, we need to have a marketing plan that how much your app cost to produce before launching, or popularity on a common community. Moreover, those apps should be evaluated by qualifying people like iPhone app marketing professional, developers and people who already launched an app on App Store. Or you can ask yourself that your app solve problem, making people happy, or highly interactive if you got no evaluation.

There are few steps to create a profit app:

·         Develop an monetization marketing plan

·         Sign up a developer account for iOS, Android or Windows Mobile OS

·         Then layout your idea about your application:    Primary goal/content, primary information on home screen, where to begin for user to flow.

·         Identify the work position in a team for hiring: manager, designer, developer, promotion and planning.

In the sketching process, make sure that you don’t include words to the app icon. Because the app icon is kind of small on the screen, so the word will be shrink smaller inside the app icon square area. Also do not apply gloss effect (gloss on the half of icon), it will block your icon logo/design, so it creates an uncomfortable feeling for the user. Just make it simple, clean, readable in every details. In addition, you can plan to make your app icon look attractive and different among of millions apps in the store.

By the appearance of metro ui from Windows 8, the flat design is becoming common. In my opinion, its design is looking very clean, readable, simple,  clickable and also standing out. It looks simple but effectively, you can not confuse to asking yourself that what this app designed for.

links for reference:

1. How to Create an IPhone or Android App Without Programming

2. Make An iPhone, Android App Without Knowing A Line Of Code

3. http://www.apps-builder.com/en/home

4. 7 Hot Trends in Mobile App Design

5. 13 Design Trends For 2013

P2 Research

Project2: Book Web Promotion Site

Team: Viet & Chad

Book Client: Eternity Cure  

Review links:
Book Review of The Eternity Cure by Julie Kagawa
The Eternity Cure by Julie Kagawa Book Review
http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/13581990-the-eternity-cure

Concept Statement:

In eternity cure Allison Sekemoto's world, there is one rule left: Blood calls to blood. She has done the unthinkable: died so that might continue to live. Cast out of Eden and separated from the boy she dared to love, Allie will follow the call of blood to save her creator, Kanin, from the psychotic vampire Sarren. But when the trail leads to Allie's birthplace in New Covington, what Allie finds there will change the world forever—and possibly end human and vampire existence. There's a new plague on the rise, a strain of the Red Lung virus that wiped out most of humanity generations ago—and this strain is deadly to humans and vampires alike. The only hope for a cure lies in the secrets Kanin carries, if Allie can get to him in time.

Target Audience

Ages 14-17 Thriller seekers (vampires). Young adults that is into fantasy and psychological thrillers.

Objective

Design a website that will promote the book directly to the attended target audience. The site will include about the author, press blurbs, and book signings

Obstacles

How to relate and grasp an young audiences attention. After getting the attention of the audience how to keep their attention to help gain traffic for the book publicity.

Tone

Fantasy, horror, thriller, psychological

Media

Website

Book Promotion Web Products:

Moodboard:

Sketches: