Platypotamus

For the rest of the quarter, you will be working on two projects.

The portfolio site will follow the same essential format as the Children's site and the Tourism site. That is, next week, you've got 3 layouts due, and we'll be critiquing them and sending you to your final destination. You'll have to have the entire site done by the end of the quarter.

The second project will be the completion of one of your two previous sites. You have the option of taking either your children's site or your tourism site and completing five pages of it. These will not be publicly critiqued in class, so if you want feedback as you work on it, you'll have to ask for it. This is also due the last class of the quarter.

For this assigment, you must design a kiosk interface.  We're going to do this one a little bit differently than any of the web interface projects we've done so far, so make sure you read through the instructions carefully. (more…)

As part of your homework assignment, you must design a site map for your travel site. Below, I've gathered links to several site maps for you:

• http://pages.ebay.com/sitemap.html
• http://www.apple.com/sitemap/
• http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/tableofcontents/
• http://www.google.com/sitemap.html
• http://www.whitehouse.gov/sitemap.html
• http://www.wired.com/services/sitemap/

This is going to be quite similar to the second step of the children's website, though a bit more specific. For all the nitty gritty details, read on.

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In class, we went over your five plans for a children's website, ultimately deciding on one of them as the winner. Take this plan, and create a fully realized design out of it.

Again, you are working in Photoshop or Illustrator here, not building a functional site.

You are on the hook for a variety of things here:

• The home page
  • Biggest concern of the home page is to make it appealing to new users as well as returning users
  • Remember the title of the text book, even if you haven't read any of it yet.
  • Make sure I know where to go as a new user!
• Navigation
  • Navigation isn't just the most important part of the site... it is the site
  • If your navigation (or any other aspect of the assignment) feature dynamic interactivity (such as roll overs), use layers to show them off.
• One page of actual content
  • Whatever site you've chosen features something interesting
  • Do a design of this "something interesting" as well
  • Show the site laid out for this content
  • Show how the navigation updates with whatever "you are here" method you use.
• General guidelines
  • Yes, I expect you to actually create some of the content for this content page. It is very helpful in visually showing off your site.
  • You should be creating your own images here
  • This IS an interface design class, and as such, the interface/navigation aspects of your design should get the most attention.

First, here is the collection of links that we discussed in class, in case you need to refresh your memory:

http://neopets.com/

http://vmk.disney.go.com/vmk/en_US/index?name=VMKHomePage

http://pbskids.org/

http://www.whitehouse.gov/kids/

http://www.kidzworld.com

http://kids.yahoo.com/

Next, you should read up through chapter 5 in the book by next week.

Finally, the details of the first part of the assignment are behind the cut below.

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In class on Wednesday, we had some technical problems, and couldn't view the videos on potential future interface concepts. Here are links to the videos that we would have watched, given technical cooperation:

• 3D with Head Tracking - Perhaps this doesn't have much application outside of games or 3D visualization tools (modelling, architecture), but is still interesting in that it's direct view control via head movements.
• Multi Touch - Perhaps the most plausible future control scheme, this video shows of multi touch control interfaces. As an interesting side note, I saw a clip from CNN's election coverage, and they were using multi touch interfaces as they moved votes around on screen. Their use of it seemed utterly superfluous, but the technology still looked pretty cool when they did so. This Link has a screen capture of what I'm referring to. Pretty cool that this tech is being used at this point.
• Seadragon - This one shows off the seadragon technology that a student mentioned in class. Definitely a bit more going on here than purely interface related concerns, but worth discussing on that topic as well.

Also, while I've got my interface design students paying attention to the website, just a quick note that if you're looking for some participation points, come to class this week with an example or two of webpage geared towards children, and be ready to share your thoughts on the interface found therein.