Introduction to Web Development

As far as HOME goes for the Artemis site, the only thing they really have so far is the minimal download time and that's because there is not much to download. High quality content is only partially there. I like the satellite diagram on the satellite page and the picture on the mission page. The sponsors, events, and news pages are completely lacking in content at this point. Once there is content for these pages, then these pages will have to be updated more often than the other pages, but as it stands now the site is not updated often. The site is fairly easy to use now, but that is also because of a lack of content. I would like for more work to be done on the team page linking team members to their subsystem and profile. I would also like for there to be some drop down menus at the top navigation bar.

The ARTEMIS site does not offer updated content as of yet, and the front page is not geared towards the multitude of users that will need to access the entirety of the site (AE students vs. laypersons)

There is also a need for high quality content for all users with both lots of technical data for engineers and also hightly updated news and information on the project for those non-engineers.

THe HOMERUN method (though without much corp. work) will work for the site eventually as different sites and pages are fleshed out

----------------------------------------
The reverse side also has a reverse side

I would say that the lihi.org site is pretty simple and to the point. Most things that people would want to find are made obvious from the navigation panel across the top. Finding the newsletter could be made easier though. I guess there isn't really much of a need for updating often, but whenever new properties are added or whenever a person's contact info changes, the updates should be made quickly so as to avoid confusion for users who are looking to get involved with lihi.

I think there are two main problems with the ARTEMIS in terms of simplicity in design.

First off, I agree with the other students that the site needs to bring back its users with updated content. I feel like Nielson's suggestion to update the site once every week would be an appropriate timeframe for the site's news.

I also think that the site needs to be designed more relevently to the user's needs. Right now, there is a lot of vocabulary and semantics that the common user might not understand. I agree that we should break the site in half to distinguish between expert visitors and the common visitor, and follow with appropriate semantics accordingly.

Well after reading chapter 9 from Jakob Nielsen's book, I found out that the most important thing to a great website is user usability. In order to redesign our website to be completely effective for our users, we must follow the guidelines of HOME-RUN. After learning about HOME-RUN, I went back to the website that I would be redesigning, or at least a similar website, and I saw that it met with most of the guidelines from HOME-RUN already. High-quality content was one of the guidelines that applied to this website because the information that this website provided is exactly what this website was said to offer. The information offered wasn't set up in the best structure, but was still high-quality. Another guideline that this website followed was Minimal download time. The website had nice basic images in its web pages, but they weren't huge images so the download time was always short. Now the guideline Ease of use is debatable, because as the set up of this website was great, the use of their links and drop down links were poorly organized and often led to a run around within the website, so the structure was easy to use, but the organization was a little dodgy. The last guideline that this website followed was: Relevant to users' needs, because this side did have a whole bunch of information on their website and all of it was really informative to the program that they offered, even though you had to search through the different links to find exactly what you are looking for. The only major issue I noticed with this website was that they was they set up their link structure was not well thought out so if we were redesigning the website Low Income Housing Institue, then that is something that we would definately tackle. Another aspect that we would like to add to the website is maybe some type of a current events section so that the website manager can keep the website updated with coming events and important dates, just to keep the community and public aware of what's going on. After getting those guidelines corrected for this website, then it will definately be an acceptable website according to Nielsen. Along with that, it would also be a whole lot easier for users to navigate through with out getting confused, and with that, we would gain user loyalty and grow as a great website.

I agree with Neilsen's HOME RUN acronym and feel my group will be able to apply it to the Oak Creek Village website. The site needs to be easy to use and have minimal download time to keep the users interest. We want our site to be usable to those at the Oak Creek Village and those visiting who are interested in donating, volunteering, or eventually moving there. We hope to attract many visitors by keeping it simple but still providing relevant information to all its users.

LIHI needs to make use of a more organized NAV bar. Some of the the organization should be simplified and use a logical ordering. Some of the links should have all the content on one line or else they look like two seperate links. The jobs portion should have a a drop down menu or become a part of another portion of the NAV bar. LIHI might consider using a local vertical nav bar on the side and a overall nav bar on the top as it has now.

As other students have suggested, it would also be important to keep the content relevant and have repeat site visitors feel an affinity towards the organizations site while having new site visitors feel welcomed. Maybe there would be a page for new users or consumers, etc.

Nielsen's discussion of the HOME acronym and its relevancy to web development is very interesting. A very good point is made about the part about High Quality content. It should be High Quality, but not so high that it causes longer load times for pages and even longer download times.

I believe this way of thinking should be applied to the Oak Creek website. It seems that a crisp well presented website, with an easy and simple to use interface will be the best bet when it comes to design time. And, according to Nielsen, we must also make sure that all of the content on the website is relavent to every user. That way we will have more users return.

Nielsen's HOME RUN acronym gives a few good points to think about, and the ARTEMIS page redesign could be driven by making sure these points are implemented. For example, the current site is not easy to use or updated often, and hardly relevant to users' needs.

Ease of use can be achieved primarily by reorganizing the site and navigation, with a more logical structure to the technical content, and making the short descriptions easier to understand.

By moving the "news" section to the front page, and periodically giving a status update there, we can increase the probability of return visits.

Most importantly, we have to figure out exactly what the users' needs are, and cater to them. Right now there is a lot of very concise technical language, which is too brief to appeal to those truly interested in learning about the details of the project, but contains too much jargon for the layman to understand.

I feel that the nav for the Oak Creek site should be better categorized. There needs to be a utility bar as well. Things can also be worded better. For instance, "Giving Back" could encompass both volunteering and donating.

We also have to find a way to differentiate where members need to go and where the public should go. If we don't differentiate, we will run into some major usability problems, especially from those who are not very computer literate. I think 2 navs will be necessary for this site.

When designing a site for Oak Creek Village, I think that ease of use is extremely important. Whether the public is using the site or the residents, they need to be able to find the information they need quickly and easily. Also, the website needs to have the appropriate information for each audience. The design should be simple, but visually stimulating. Graphics should be used to enhance the user experience, not overwhelm the page or make download time longer. There also, needs to be an element that keeps the user coming back, like future community events. Also, on the design side, the screen size and computer capabilities need to be taken into consideration, so that no user is deterred from using the site.

One of the major problems lihi.org exemplifies is complicating user-navigation by not clarifying on the homepage all of the possible places a user can go or would want to go. Nielson starts by stressing the importance of making it easy for simple tasks to be completed that users want to do while visiting the site. With redesigning Oakcreek to fulfill this criteria, it will be more likely that people from both the village itself as well as outsiders to visit the site for information difficult to find elsewhere.

Another important feature a website should offer users is a reason to visit a site. Not only is navigation important when creating or redesigning a website, but generating a purpose for users to want to use the site to seek information. In referene to lihi.org, it does not create a web environment that necessarily invites residents or those who seek information about its division.

What would be nice is a more personalized website that more closely emulates the community itself. It is important to reference the community to give anyone who is visiting a better understanding of the place the website references. Current events or exciting news should be clearly shown on the front page to attract users to find out more about what's going on. Also, it can provide a better understanding of what the place itself offers residents or where donations are being funneled.

The website needs some major improvements. I believe the ideas are complex to describe in simple terms. The design motives of the website should demnstrate progress of the project, purpose of the satellites mission, components and set-up, etc. Users are going to visit the site for many different reasons. The PDF file will help students and other project designers at other schools see the complexity of the satellite and may foster interest or support for the project. Sponsors and professors are also going to be visiting to see the improvements. This project is in competition with other schools with the goal of getting chosen to go to space, therefore the website should look professional, unique, and appealing. It represents our school, the aerospace program, and the people involved with the project.

As Nielsen says, the guiding principle for designing a website is to make users successful as fast as possible. In designing the site for Oak Creek Village, I think simplicity and easy accessibility are the utmost important elements. According to Mike Rodriguez, the site's primary audience is the general public. The information and resources need to be readily available without the viewer having to search through a drudge of items to find what they are looking for. The site layout needs to be simplistic yet visually appealing with only a select amount of graphics/images in order to not overwhelm the viewer. It also needs to have a certain element that brings repeat users back whether it be community updates or a report on community events and volunteer opportunities.

Neilsen emphasizes the importance of designing for the user's needs. I think the current Artemis site focuses on a user that is interested in learning more about the Artemis project and is has a higher educated technical background. However if the site is to target that kind of audience, I think it'd be necessary to give then even more information. The site is brief as if it were for the general public but the amount of technical vocabulary in it clearly indicates it's not. As discussed in class, it'd be ideal if we could design for both users. Maybe the immediate content would be for the general user and there'd be a look more in depth type link for the more technical user. I'm not sure though because this could be seen as extremely frustrating for people who want to just skip over the simple content.

The main idea of the site I will be redesigning is to acheive a task, and that task is to get the users the information of finding low income housing. It must be simple, and to the point. It must still be aesthetically pleasing, yet not overdone. It should follow a simple color scheme, and the text must be easy to follow. Simple yet elegant is the way to go in designing a website. The people who come visit this site are not coming here to see how flashy or jazzy the site looks, but for the sole purpose of getting useful information about cheap housing. If it takes them any longer than required, it will just drive the visitors away and back to the search page and go to another site providing the smae information in a simplistic manner. From a usability stand point, I would like to appeal to a mass audience. All the tags must be accurate, so that blind users can use screen readers, and can have the same experience that a visitor who can see will have. From past experiences designing websites, I have learned that not just screen sizes can affect viewer experience, but, if not designed correctly, a lot of disabled visitors feel they have reached an inaccessible website and will just move on to another site with better resources for people with disabilities.

Maanit Shah
Computer Science

For starters, I would move the news to the home page. Instantly seeing what ARTEMIS is about is fine for first-time visitors, but frequent visitors would prefer to learn about anything new that happened since their last visit. The ARTEMIS logo on the top left should also link to the home page, rather than having the link on the top right. More intuitive that way.

For layout, the entire website could be much skinnier. All that space on the navigation bar is going to waste. Better yet, use the space to show the latest news byte so visitors can instantly see if anything new happened. If vertical scrolling is an issue, remove the gap between the bar and the content and you can keep more of what's on the page above the fold.

In terms of web page style, something alluding to UT (aka burnt orange) would help users instantly recognize what ARTEMIS is associated with.

From my point of view, the ARTEMIS website as it stands now is not very usable. While it seems to have a simple navigation bar, only the satellite heading has any actual content on it. Most of the others simply say "More added here soon". This makes me lose interest in the site fairly rapidly, because I don't think there is anything worth reading anywhere. In the redesign, if there are links on the homepage, they need to actually link to something, not just take up space. Plus, when I try to get to the pdf documents on the satellite page, they take forever to load. Those need to be shortened, or opened in a different program, or maybe just written in as text and not linked as a separate document like they are. The whole website is fairly unfriendly to users, and definitely doesn't qualify as a "home run" website. I'm not sure it has any of those things really.

If I had to sum up what I want the ARTEMIS website to look and feel like, it would be 'sleek'. Something that is easy to use and has a simple elegance about it. The color scheme should involve the dark blue of the solar panels with hints of burnt orange throughout. These colors contrast very well, and mesh well with the idea of Longhorns working on a project that will have earth as a backdrop once in orbit. Text should be simple perhaps with bullets that are very informative rather than paragraphs. Users should have to click a 'learn more' link in order to view pages that do contain information in paragraph form. No page should have anything below the fold unless it is a page containing the more lengthy information. Simplicity is the key along with staying away from black text on a white background.

The website we are redesigning should definitely be simple - in design, and simple in usability. It will most likely be used by people looking for low-income housing and probably don't have time to sit around and explore the site. It's important to make the homepage the source where the user can find whatever it is they're looking for. It's a good idea to insert a search box for easy acess to all the pages. Everything should be to the point, not too wordy and the graphics shouldn't be too fancy. Pictures do convey a lot, so a good photograph (or two) could say what we want and not overwhelm the user. Since the website will be mainly for newcomers and not so much for existing tenants, it should have an appealing and attractive look, and perhaps something to keep them wanting to come back and look at the site. For our website, in particular, that would be valuable information about the properties.