ROBERT LYNCH
boomsatsuma
MEDIA STUDENT
Unit 34 Web Authoring and Design
Analysing Web Designs
Purpose: The purpose of the 'VICE News' website is to give people a platform where they can learn what is happening around the world or in their own countries. This acts like many popular news sites such as BBC News, SKY New and CNN, the only difference being VICE News tends to have more of a transparency posed to the other listed sites. VICE News are renowned for being in the heat of a story on the ground and giving what feels like unfiltered news. A site that is transparent like VICE News is RT (Russia Today).
Visitor Needs: The visitor needs to be able to find information quickly and efficiently. The VICE News website is very easy to use as it is all on one large feed, like Facebook. The news is in order of newest at the top and the further you go down the page, the older the news gets. This is a very good layout for the visitor to get their needs as they're not going to get lost down a maze of links and pop ups and can take their time down the page.
Information Flow: As stated in 'Visitor Needs' the layout Vice News has chosen is one large news feed much like Facebook which makes is easier for every day users, the information is on one easy scroll down feed. The feed uses slide shows and videos to make to receiving or the giving of information more entertaining.
Features: Features on the Vice News website are text and images, sometimes they are in the form of slideshows to showcase all the topics that come out around the same time or have relevance together.
Benefits: The benefits of using this site are it's easy use and transparency. The website is very is easy to navigate with it's open feed. VICE News is very transparent compared to other news outlets so it'll give the viewers raw news stories.
Content: The content of VICE News is as the name implies, news. It contains the goings on through out the world and keeps people up to date. The news is in forms of text and images, the images break up blocks of text or are backgrounds for text, slide shows are also incorporated in order to help move through information in a lovely way.
Vice has a very open and spacious web design, this makes it easy for people who go on the website to navigate.
As well as having the spacious web design, Vice also have sub sections to click on, for example here you can see "latest", "features", "Videos". This sub heading makes it very easy to know exactly what you're looking at and are about to click on, it also makes it easy to look for what you find quickly.
Purpose: The purpose of the website is to buy items that range from every day essentials to extravagant spending sprees all by the click of a button. Amazon is one of the easy alternatives from physically going to the shop which is helpful and convenient for those with physical ailments.
Visitor Needs: Work; the visitor of the page will either be potential employers, other members of the media industry or people who want to look at some projects from Bristol. Either way the work needs to be visible; the work should probably be aimed towards impressing potential employers so the website but showcase all of my work to it's fullest.
Links; links to work or sources need to all be working correctly as if a potential employer is looking at your work and a link is broke they may just completely scrap looking at your work as you can't but the effort in to set a link.
Layout: Headings/Placement; For people to be able to clearly navigate through my website I need the have my work in clear categories, for example precise headings and text boxes need to be used so people who just look at a picture know thew context. If someone wants to fly through my work and find something specific, headings can be used as reference points.
Pictures/Graphics; Images will be a large part of the website as they could either be work I am showcasing or can be used for reference along with text. The reference images can be used to break up text.
Work/Films; Work and films are going to be the big focus points no matter who is looking at my website so I want to put my best stuff forward for people to see easily. Along with the previous point of placement I need to remember to have my videos and work in clear places also working well with text on the page and other images.
Navigation: Menus; Menus need to be clear for example in a project is listed in 'group A' and someone goes on a dropdown of 'group', 'group A' needs to be clear and visible for the user to be able to get on. Navigation devices also need to be easy to use, you don't want someone finding it a hassle getting to your work else they won't bother and will just find someone else with easy work access.
Categories; Work needs to be categorised well, for example videos need to be in one category and images need to be in another or in they are together they need to be part of the same project.
Easy click buttons; If you have buttons leading to certain areas of your work you are going to want them to be to be obvious where they are going and for them to work.
Simple Layout/Style; Amazon's layout looks busy but if you look it's actually quit simple as it holds your hand through a lot of the searching, the reason for this is there is explanation next to every button and link.
This search bar is the main tool that will be used by the Amazon consumer, when you type to search something you want there is a drop down menu that gives you sub sections to search within which makes the search net a lot tighter. As well as this on the navigation bar there is also a basket which is the link to what products are in your basket, this makes it east to keep track of what you're planning on getting.
At the bottom of the Amazon home page their is a large list of links to use, these links are sub sections you can use to search products. As well as this there is also a selection of Languages to choose from. This is something very important as Amazon is such a huge website it is crutial for it's expansion that people can use it all over the planet in whatever language needed.
My Website
Purpose: The purpose of my website will be to exhibit my work that I’ve done over my two year course with boomsatsuma. My plan will be to have a navigation bar located at the top of the page and on this bar will be a button with a hyper link for each of my units, so if someone looks on my navigation bar and see’s “Unit 1” and click on it, they will be taken from the “home” page to “Unit 1”. Then from “Unit 1” they can go back to “Home” or any other unit they choose. As well as logging all my work the website will serve as a portfolio that will contain projects I’ve worked on, the roles I played in that project etc.
Target audience: My target audience will be potential future employers as well as other potential forms of education to follow. Because of this I have kept a professional look through out mu website. This applies for the way I have laid out my work and the fonts I have used. I have kept a consistent font throughout my website to hold a strong house style.
Content: In order on links and units my content pages go ‘Home’, ‘Unit 1’, ‘Unit 11’, ‘Unit 13-14’, ‘Unit 15-18’, ‘Unit 16-17’, ‘Unit 22’, ‘Unit 22’, ‘Unit 23’, ‘Unit 24’, ‘Unit 34’ then ‘More’ which contains ‘Unit 32’, ‘Unit 34’, ‘Unit 41’, ‘Unit 43’, ‘Unit 44’, ‘Unit 46’. These are all the inits from my 2 year course. Each unit is based and contains a different form of media which in some way I have analysed then recreated myself.
Production plan: My plan is too create the home page then all the pages needed to hold the Units that I have done, when we start a new Unit I will name a page for that Unit then start filling it in as I get on with work.
As you can see here this is what my vavigation bar will look like, underneath my name there will be either 'Home' or whatever unit is clicked on. So here it is on home now if I want to go to unit 1 I click on Unit 1.
Now after clicking on Unit 1 I have been taken to unit 1. There will also be a brief of the unit next to the units number.
This will be the design choice of my website, no matter what page a viewer is on they will have both text and images to break that text up as I do not want to have extremely text heavy website that makes someone feel anxious to read. Images stimulate the mind as well as when someone is reading and have an image to relate that two it helps them understand the subject more. That being said means the images I choose to go on my website have just as much purpose as the text surrounding them.
Website preview
Survey from my website
This is the survey I ised for my website, I got a variety of people to analyse my site based on the questions I asked them.
Based of this feedack I'd like to make my current interactive images even better, maybe being slightly more relevant to the project, as well as this I'd like to make sure my punctuation and grammer as well as spelling is flawless.