Final News Presentation

Scribd presentation

This project was tough for me. I slipped a few times but in general, I was happy with how it turned out. I learned a ton since we've never done website design before. I learned how information can be and should be presented and how to organize it so that people can understand. It was tough juggling all the information and at the same time, making it aesthetically pleasing. I wasn't able to present the final scenarios, which I'm sad about, but I did the best I could. Working in Photoshop also made it tougher since I'm not used to it anymore so relearning that was fun. Overall, there are still a lot of things I feel like I could revisit and improve if I had more time but I'm not unhappy with what I have now.

Digital Wireframes Round 2 and 3

Round 2 (went with the 3rd look)

Round 3 (the first one was following round 2, the rest, I started everything over)

Digital Wireframes Round 1

Scenario 1
Scenario 2
Scenario 3

Site map:

Hopefully it's self explanatory. I feel like I'm missing things but I will ask my fellow classmates for their opinions.

95% Typography Readings

"95% of the information on the web is written language. It is the information designer's task "to divide up and organize and interpret this mass of printed matter in such a way that the reader will have a good chance of finding what is of interest to him. Information design is not about the use of good typefaces, it is about the use of good typography."

I liked how he stresses that it isn't the type's fault that things look bad, it's the designer's. Typography is tricky when it comes to screen based things and it's up to the designers to know how to use it. I viewed Khoi Vinh's website after we had a talk about him quitting the NY Times and was quite excited to see his website as an example. I loved the simplicity of the website along with the use of its typography.

In the reaction reading, he's basically defending his thoughts about how the designer designs for the users. I totally agree with him because in the end, it's for everyone to benefit from. I liked that he lists all the mistakes different groups of people make when they are in the designing stage. Even though it seems logical and "of course", no one really thinks about it and really consider it.

Wireframes Round 1

After researching the USA Today website, we had to create 3 wireframes for our redesigning. The readings helped a lot in terms of what should be there and what shouldn't. Basically it's just a reorganization of data.

This first one, is basically just collapsable things. So if you click on a "tab", that one will open but the others will shrink back. It works throughout the website like the sidebar navigation and the stories.

 This second one plays off the idea of a map and you basically can click any state, region, or the entire country to view things about that and then it goes into like block things that shows the categories and stories.

The 3rd one is kind of like the first idea except there's a reel with all the top stories in it. There's that and then the collapsing thing as well. This is the concept that I'm going forward with so hopefully it will turn out well. It's called the "Collapsable Reel of Stories." :D

Improving the Online Experience

After reading chapters from Don't Make Me Think, it really got me thinking about how I can improve how people view the Travel section of the USA Today online site. The first thing that catches my eye is all the text and how it's organized. There really isn't much difference in hierarchy, which is something hopefully I can fix. There's also a ton of articles on there so maybe lessening the amount of articles on the front page so that people won't be overwhelmed. The use of color would be nice as well since right now its mainly clouds and "tropical" colors. There's also not really a distinct way that the articles are categorized. There is a little bit of a system happening but it's not very noticeable so I hope to categorize things more so that the viewers can easily navigate to what they were looking for.

Don't Make Me Think

There are 5 important things when creating a website to keep in mind: creating a visual hierarchy, taking advantage of conventions, breaking the page up into clearly defined areas, make clickable things obvious, and minimize noise. Each thing had their own sub thoughts like sticking to conventions of webpages and people are used to certain looks so stick with that if you can. It also doesn't matter how many clicks viewers has to make to get to where they want, its how much thought should be put into finding those clicks. The structure of the webpage is also important because the user will spend as much time on the lower level pages as they do at the top so as a designer, we have to think about every aspect of the webpage for it to work as we please.

Analyzing News

USA Presentation

I was assigned the travel section of the newspaper and it didn't exist in print so I annotated the home page of the newspaper and my travel section. Most are said in the keynote, which is posted above. I didn't mind navigating the section. Some of the articles went into a slideshow layout and some read as a regular article. It really depended on the content because some were lists of places or news articles about a place.

Wurman

"We are what we read." Information architect is, in a sense, an organization of information that is pleasing aesthetically. There are five ways according to the reading, to organize the information: LATCH - location, alphabet, time, category, and hierarchy. The deciding factor is how we want the organized things to be found. It seems as if this article was written in 1996 when there isn't as much information as there is now. This makes me wonder if his thinking then and now are the same. I understand that the way information is organize plays a huge part but now that there is too much information, can we still employ the same theories?