3208 Doodlez

Hey, so it's been quite a while since I blogged huh? Yeah, been rather busy with all the projects and assignments and what-not. Let me just quickly summarise my first Assignment. Which was group work too.

Summary:
- Coded all the pages to link to one another. Wasn't so difficult as I could simply copy-paste teh webpages, then edit them to their different looks.

- Jalea did all the designs and headers. I simply put them in place.

- Sharon tried her best to come up with a design of her own, but that didn't work out well as her design looks more suited for a airplane insurance website.

- So in the end, due to the limited amount of time, and seeing as none of us knew Javascript well to make the pages more interactive, we were left with design ideas waiting to be implemented by real programming people. Haha.. I mean.. that's just my honest opinion about the whole issue.

It's not easy creating a fully functioning website with all the different interactive elements simply by knowing CSS. It is undeniable that we'll need to venture into really awesome HTML and Javascript langauge to come up with super cool websites. And seeign as how none of us are Computing students, it was highly unlikely that I could learn a crash course in Java and still be able to create amazing interactive elements that can work and be maintained easily by others on this little website that we created in over a week.

I know my limitations to this Assignment very well. Yes. But I also know that my design ideas have no boundaries. I am aware of the things that are possible in website creation and although I do not possess the ability to make it happen within a week or so, I am sure that there are others who could take my idea and make that happen.

So thus, to me, Assignment 1 was more about my team coming with ideas that could be feasible in actual real revamped CNM website rather than coming up with a final WYSIWYG (What-you-see-is-what-you-get) product where you take whatever that you see on our revamped website.

Thus, here is the website: http://nm3208.thruhere.net/

If I can, I will try to neaten it up further for a nice presentation on Tuesday. :) But for now, I will give a quick run-down of the website elements:

Elements:
- One unique feature to this revamped site is the new page called CNM Galleria. It is supposed to be a platform to showcase work from past students from different media modules. It is about time that CNM prides itself fro their students work online. Although I'm sure their work has spread far and wide without the CNM department's help (for example, YouTube, Blogs, publications, etc.), it would be better if CNM could link up all those resources to the website.

- Another idea I'm vouching for is CNM News. Students need to be updated with whatever that's going on with our department. For example, new modules? Lecturers? Career talks? Internship openings? Things like that. It would give CNM Students a closer feel to their department rather than having to refer to FASS for news.

- Since we are required to have the navigation bar above, I realised it is highly useful for navigation. Plus it saves space. So therefore, we will not be adding any additional links on the mainpage as there will just be unnecessary overlapping. And I do not want to control the user's ability to go to a page (like say if I were to disable all the sub-menus and force the user to go the that page so that it can link up to another sub-page.... ICK. NOT GOOD).

Alrite, here's what I have for now. Will be blogging about the Pre-production Planning soon.

Ok so we had our first group meeting. Me, Sharon and Jalea. Trio of girls. Awesome. Could get along well with them.. Hehehe... Oh right.. We discussed the layout and the kind of special elements we should incorporate into the website. And also things like what to put in and what not to put in. Some of the ideas I had previosuly during the last lesson, we kind of brought it forward, with their approval of course. And now we're sourcing out for ways to enhance our design even further.

As of now, we all agreed to keep this CNM website simple yet professional-looking, something that looks clean-cut and suave, not kiddish or too colourful or anything of that sort. Mainly because it doesn't tie in well with the other departmental websites within the NUS domain. We gotta look good for everyone, right? Even potential researchers could be the target audience. So we really started to think carefully. What is our main aim?

We then decided on a focus. We're gonna make the website idiot-proof and noob-friendly!!! Gonna have a clean grid with big buttons and signs... Nothing messy. Targeting the main dempgraphics that would actually visit our humble little CNM website. Yep. More details soon... I have to go for lessons now... Tata...

So the first assignment for the semester  would be to edit the current CNM website according to the guidelines given to us via the NUS Web Design Guidelines file. Yep. Pretty cheeeem stuff I thought. Hmmm...


The first idea that came to my head was to create a simple clean-cut layout that pays more focus to the links which students are more likely to click on. Just using my common sense I guess. Furthermore, I have my own opinions about the current website already that I would like to change. Well, I might as well list them out right now. This might come handy when my group decides on what would make the best design layout for this website.


Before I list my potential changes, I actually thought about the aspects that I must consider when I am designing a website with this specific purpose:


1. Target Audience: Important to know who is my target audience (who will be looking at this website, basically). A professional look would make our department look more.... worthy of entry and if its too colourful or too much design, it will be more of a distraction as opposed to being useful, as when someone visits this website, chances are that they are there to find information fast, and not to be wowed or mesmerised by the design they see on the main webpage, and to find themselves a bit confused or taking a while to adjust and learn how to navigate through the website. I want their learning curve to be next to nothing. Zilch. They can totally navigate their wair around the website intuitively. It's all about INTUITION!

2. Accessibility of links and information layout: Must consider how information will appear, in what manner, and how links will be formed from a set of info to another set of related info. I'm trying to imagine a potential, possibly better overall sitemap layout that could serve as a better website than the current one. Navigation is key. fast navigation, quick links, big buttons are best in my opinion.

3. Time taken to load: The time to load must be fast too. Cannot be so slow. Thus although I originally wanted everything to be a Flash applet, I realsied that it would take a long time to load. Plus all the hassle in updating the information via Flash. Now that would just be a pain in the *****.


Here are the changes (in general) which I hope to implement for my new website design:

1. Header: Right now, we don't seem to be conforming the header with the guidelines' one. So we're gonna be doing that I expect. I do have the preference of using the blue header instead of the orange one. Since I'm so used to seeing the CNM website in blue. Haha... :)

2. Links: In any website, I think it's good to have a few key links being highlighted or given precedence over other links. Rather than having all the links placed in a list to the left side. I would 'highlight' the links which I think are the most important or the links that students go to the most.

3. Displays of students' work: I thought that since we're a CNM major, CNM students regularly produce all sorts of designs and media forms as part of our regualr assignments and projects in various modules. But no one every gets to see it! :( I later on found out from my fellow classmate that she felt the same way. My idea was to have a form of platform to showcase certain digital media on the website. For display purposes. Which I thought would be cool I guess. So far, everything that I hope to design, I'm capable of scripting it out, plus the Flash and wat-not, since I know how to create Flash movies (I did Flash games before though). But I am trying to find better ways of displaying the work and making it easy for students to donate their work to the CNM department for display. If only I could find an proper outlet....


Other changes that I intend to make would probably be the CSS style sheets the website uses and such, particularly for the print and screen. Those would be according to how well and easy it is to read on screen/paper. The rest I think I will be discussing with my team about it soon enough! :)


Here's just the rough 'sketches' I did to realise my designs, very minimalist I'd say. I love straight lines, straight cuts, clean and crisp edges, very simple without the hassle of shadows and bevelling and such. I think they are just too detailed for my taste.