LSC 532 » dtstanley

DUE DATE FOR CLIENT PROJECT

dtstanley — Wed, 19 Mar 2008 03:56:04 +0000

Just a reminder, the new due date for the client project is Thursday April 3rd. The 3 class periods we have before the due date (and after spring break) will be devoted to in-class lab time. During labs, I will continue meeting with each team and assisting with strategy and technical questions.

This schedule is sufficient for you to produce a fully functioning website (XHTML/CSS, images, etc.) with all appropriate links posted in your mywebspace accounts to share with the client on the due date.

If you have any questions about technology to use for pages (such as photo galleries, analytic tools, blog tools, ecommerce options, etc.) or anything else, please let me know by posting a comment.

Design Styles, Web Roles and How to Break the Box

dtstanley — Mon, 03 Mar 2008 12:31:13 +0000

Reading some articles this weekend, I came across some interesting articles.

LAYOUT CONVENTIONS
The first article Killing Some Bad Layout Conventions is an interesting article about poor layout design. Not sure I agree completely, but it’s good food for thought. As you are designing your interfaces, I suggest you reread my post about web 2.0 design styles.

WEB DESIGN TEAM ROLES
Cameron Moll, a very well known web design blogger is discussing web roles on his site. The question he’s asking Designer, Coder: Separate roles or one? Should designers just design or should they be doing the HTML and CSS too? This is a great discussion for beginning web design students to pay attention to and learn from others in the industry about what they think.

HOW TO BREAK THE BOX WITH CSS
Finally, one question I often get asked is “How do you create a design that isn’t boxy”? Jina Bolton has an excellent article on Sitepoint.com entitled “Breaking the Box“. It’s a great tutorial on how to create a clean, efficient CSS design that’s unique.

Homework for Tuesday

dtstanley — Mon, 25 Feb 2008 02:53:37 +0000

Read Chapters 11-14 in the “Learning Web Design”

Quiz … Due on Tuesday

dtstanley — Wed, 06 Feb 2008 18:44:09 +0000

Following is the take home quiz which is due next Tuesday February 12th at the start of class. As I mentioned before, I will not be in class tomorrow so it will be an open lab for those of you who wish to work on this and/or your second assignment. Good luck!

What is HTML? What is the original purpose of HTML? How does knowing its original purpose affect us as web communicators?
Creating a website is a process. In class, I discussed the “4Ds” process for creating effective sites. Name each of the “D’s” and please describe the purpose of each step. What questions do you need to ask during each D? What are the goals of each step?
Usability expert Steven Krug’s has 3 “facts of life” regarding how humans interact information on the web. What are the 3 facts? Considering these “facts of life”, why is his concept of billboard design useful?
What is CRAP? Explain each principle and how it relates to web design. Please find an example/s from a live website/s that effectively illustrates these principles in action.
What are 2 standard image file formats for the web? When should you use each?
Name at least 4 roles (e.g. positions) of a typical web design team.
Don Norman, PhD. (http://www.jnd.org/) and Jakob Nielsen, PhD. (http://www.useit.com/) are considered two of the top usability experts. What are they main differences in their philosophies about design and design aesthetics?
You have been hired to create an interface redesign for http://www.tallyhouniforms.com/. Please redesign the interface for this client and submit it as either a .jpg or .pdf.

Please bring a printed copy of your answers to class on Tuesday. Do not post them in the blog.

Project 1 Final Versions

dtstanley — Tue, 05 Feb 2008 03:34:57 +0000

Here are the project 1 redesigns. We will critique these tomorrow in class. Please reply to this post with your 3 favorites. As you are looking at the designs, ask yourself what specifically what stands out (in a positive or negative way)? Which designs capture your attention? How do they capture your attention?, etc. So here they are:

Design 1

Design 2

Design 3

Design 4

Design 5

Design 6

Design 7

Design 8

Design 9

Design 10

Design 11

Design 12

Design 13

Design 14

Design 15

Design 16

Design 17

Eastbay Interface for Redesigning

dtstanley — Fri, 25 Jan 2008 22:46:30 +0000

I apologize. I had this image in a not-so-easy to find spot on the blog (bad information architecture, right? And thanks for pointing that out Noel). Click on the image for a larger version of the interface that you can print. It’s a little fuzzy, but it will work for our purposes.