Readings

Reading posts are due by 9 am Tuesday, the day of class. Details on how the posts are evaluated are listed below the reading assignments. Everyone will not have to read all of these! Some readings will be assigned to individuals, who will summarize the reading for the class; this is separate from serving as a discussion leader and is part of your participation grade. Some readings may become optional.

Week 2 – 15 January – User-Centered Design

  • “The Publishing Team,” Chapter 11. Content Critical: Gaining Competitive Advantage Through High-Quality Web Content by McGovern et al. eReserve
  • “Web Team Roles,” Chapter 2. Real Web Project Management by Shelford et al. eReserve.
  • Designing Interactions: What Is Design? eReserve

Question – Post 1 (2 posts this week): Reflect on your experiences as a member of or leader of a team. How well do those experiences correlate with these readings? How might these readings help you in your next team project?

Question – Post 2 (2 posts this week): How do these viewpoints on the design process challenge or support your beliefs about design? How do they correlate with your experiences?

Week 3 – 22 January – Web Site Genres

  • Communicating Design: Preface and Introduction
  • About Face 3: Beginners, Experts and Intermediates
  • Evolution of web site design patterns. ACM Transactions on Information Systems. Volume 23 , Issue 4 (October 2005). eReserve
  • Web ReDesign 2.0: downloads (project documents – resource.)

Question: How does the concept of design patterns affect design decisions as you consider the categories of website visitors (beginners, experts, intermediates) who will be visiting your site?

Week 4 – 29 January – Conceptual Models

Question: How has the BBC website changed since the book was published? What, if any, patterns can you see reflected in the changes?

Week 5 – 5 February – Task Identification and Information Architecture

Question 1 (2 posts this week): Examine your five websites and identify where there is tension between aesthetics and usability.

Question 2 (2 posts this week): Pick one of your five websites and analyze it based on Gestalt theory.

Assignment 2 due 9 am Friday

Week 6 – 12 February – Competitive Analysis

Question: Identify at least two websites that are competition to two of your five sites. (Note: I am using “website” as a surrogate for “firm”.) Explain your rationale and articulate some similarities and differences between the three sites.

Week 7 – 19 February – Personas and Audience Analysis

  • Communicating Design: Personas
  • About Face 3: Modeling Users – Personas and Goals and Metaphors, Idioms and Affordances

Question: Knowing your audience is a key communications ideal. How would you “sell” reluctant team members on this concept, even if it were a “quick and dirty” development?

Assignment 3 due 9 am Friday

Week 8 – 26 February – Color and Typography

Question: Write three scenarios for one of your websites, based on your task list.

Week 9 – 4 March – no class

  • Communicating Design: Content Inventory, Sitemaps and Wireframes

Question: Revisit your five websites. Find the sitemaps (if there are any!); describe, compare, critique.

Week 10 – 11 March – Sitemaps, Wireframes and Storyboards

  • About Face 3: Errors, Alerts and Confirmation
  • “Internet Standards, Protocols and Languages,” Electronic Commerce, 2nd edition. Focus on standards, languages (simply skim the protocols section).

Question: How do standards impact our ability as communicators to reach our target audiences? When (why) might we chose to deliver information that does not conform with standards?

Assignment 4 due 9 am Friday

Assessment
Students will create a blog (on WordPress.com) where they will reflect (not summarize!) on each week’s readings. Students are asked to write about the readings to help gain cognitive understanding of material as well as to hone analytical skills. Weekly reading assignments are not graded, except for completeness. Be sure to check your spelling and grammar, however!

• These are short (two-four paragraphs) reviews of assigned readings. Each post must also include three (3) discussion questions about the assigned readings. Length: 250-350 words + questions.

• Each regular weekly reading must be categorized “reading”. Each extra credit reading should be categorized “extra credit”.

• These posts are due Tuesday at 9 am. No late posts accepted.

• Points assigned per the following list: you do not get extra points by providing both a summary and a reflection! The maximum number of points per week is 13; these will be scaled to account for 15% of the final grade.

  • Reflection within minimum-maximum word count – 10 points
  • Reflection over-or-under word count by more than 5% or with significant grammatical errors- 7 points
  • Reading summary (summary instead of reflection) within minimum-maximum word count – 5 points
  • Reading summary (summary instead of reflection) over-or-under word count by more than 5% or with significant grammatical errors – 1 point
  • Two-Three open-ended discussion questions – 3 points
  • One open-ended discussion question – 1 point
  • Closed-ended discussion questions – 0 points

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