My Own Website!

I created a website to promote myself for future job opportunities.

I plan to continue to update this website as my resume grows larger.

"Meet The Elements" Review

The Five Planes

1. The Surface Plane - On the surface you see a series of web pages, made up of images and text. Some of these images are things you can click on, performing some sort of function such as taking you to a shopping cart. Some of these images are just illustrations, such as a photograph of a product for sale or the logo of the site itself.
2. The Skeleton Plane - beneath that surface is the skeleton of the site: the placement of buttons, controls, photos, and blocks of text which is designed to optimize the arrangement of these elements for maximum effect and efficiency-- so that you remember the logo and can find that shopping cart button when you need it.
3. The Structure Plane - The skeleton is a concrete expression of the more abstract structure of the site. The structure would define how users got to a page and where they could go when they were finished there and the structure would define what those categories were.
4. The Scope Plane - The structure defines the way in which the various features and functions of the site fit together. Just what those features and functions are constitutes the scope of the site.
5. The Strategy Plane - The scope is fundamentally determined by the strategy of the site. This strategy incorporates not only what the people running the site want to get out of it but what the users want to get out of the site as well.

Building From Bottom to Top

• These five planes provide a conceptual framework for talking about user experience problems and the tools we use to solve them.
• On each plane, the issues we must deal with become a little less abstract and a little more concrete. On the lowest plane, we are not concerned with the final shape of the site, product, or service at all--we only care about how the site will fit into our strategy. On the highest plane, we are only concerned with the most concrete details of the appearance of the product.
• Each plane is dependent on the plane below it.
• You should plan your project so that work on any plane cannot finish before work on lower planes has finished.

A Basic Duality

• People use the terms interaction design, information design, information architecture interchangeably.
• They use these words in different ways.
• When the web user experience community started to form, its members spoke two different languages. One group saw every problem as an application design problem, and applied problem-solving approaches from the traditional desktop and mainframe software worlds. The other group saw the web in terms of information distribution and retrieval, and applied problem-solving approaches from the traditional worlds of publishing, media, and information science.
• If you split the planes down the middle and on the left put those elements specific to the web as a platform for functionality and on the right put the elements specific to the web as an information medium.
• On the functionality side, we are mainly concerned with tasks--the steps involved in a process and how people think about completing them. here, we consider the product as a tool or set of tools that the user employs to accomplish one or more tasks.
• On the opposite side, our concern is what information the product offers and what it means to our users. Creating an information-rich user experience is about enabling people to find, absorb, and make sense of the information we provide.

The Elements of User Experience

• By breaking each plane down into its component elements, we'll be able to take a closer look at how all the pieces fit together in the courses of designing the whole user experience.

The Strategy Plane

• User needs are the goals for the site that come from outside our organization--specifically from the people who will user our site.
• We must understand what our audience wants from us and how that fits in with other goals they have.
• Product objectives can be business goals or other kinds of goals.

The Scope Plane

• On the functionality side, the strategy is translated into scope through the creation of functional specifications: a detailed description of the "feature set" of the product.
• On the information side, scope takes the form of content requirements: a description of the various content elements that will be required.

The Structure Plane

• The scope is given structure on the functionality side through interaction design, in which we define how the system behaves in response to the user. 
• For information resources, the structure is the information architecture: the arrangement of content elements to facilitate human understanding.

The Skeleton Plane

• Breaks down into three components
• On both sides, we must address information design: the presentation of information in a way that facilitates understand.
• For functionality-oriented products, the skeleton also includes interface design, or arranging interface elements to enable users to interact with the functionality of the system.
• The interface for an information resource is its navigation design: the set of screen elements that allow the user to move through the information architecture.

The Surface Plane

• Regardless of whether we are dealing with a functionality-oriented product or an information resource, our concern here is the same: the sensory experience created by the finished product.

Using the Elements

• This model, divided up into neat boxes and planes, is a convenient way to think about user experience problems.
• Within each plane, the elements must work together to accomplish that plane's goals.
• Content is king on the web. It's the most important thing on the web.
• Technology can be just as important as content in creating a successful user experience.

Video Project: The Pre-Preseason

I decided to document what we do on the soccer team in order to get prepared for the preseason which is just around the corner!

"Writing Web Content That Works" Review

Chapter 2

I found that there is a lot more to a web site after reading Chapters 2 and 3 of Janice Redish's "Writing Web Content That Works". As a web site user, I don't even think about any of the factors that go into making a website but I do however know if a website isn't something that I like. As users of the internet we like to find what we are looking for at a very quick pace. Otherwise, we could waste our time searching for something in a library which would obviously take way longer than a site. Here are some notes that I took from the reading:

Successful Writers Focus on Their Audiences

• Writing successful web content doesn't start with typing words. It starts with finding out about your audiences and their needs.
• Understanding why your web users come will help you select and organize the content so that it best meets both your goals and theirs.

Seven Steps to Understanding Your Audiences

1. List your major audiences: One way to list your major audiences is to ask: "How do people identify themselves with regard to my web content? Or "what about my site visitors will help me know what content the web site needs and how to write that content?" Write for humans and nothing else.
2. Gather information about your audiences: Know your audience and their realities. Do not write from assumptions! Watching, listening to, and talking with your web users and potential users of your site are the most useful ways to find out about your audience. Think about your mission, read the emails that come through your 'Contact Us' and other feedback links, talk to marketing, talk to customer service, get people who come to the site to fill out a short questionnaire, watch and listen to people, and interview people who use or might use your website, and do some usability testing of the current content.
3. List major characteristics for each audience: List key phrases or quotes, experience/expertise, emotions, values, technology, social and cultural environments, and demographics.
4. Gather your audiences' questions, tasks, and stores: Gather lists of the questions that people expect the web site to answer, the tasks they need the web site to support, and the stories they tell about their experiences with your web site, with other web sites, and in relevant non-web situations. As you gather them, don't try to translate them! Use the users' vocabulary in your web content.
5. Use your information to create personas: A persona is an individual with a name, a picture, and specific demographic and other characteristics. It's a composite of characteristics of many real people
6. Include the persona's goals and tasks: The persona's major goals and tasks for your site are an important part of your persona description.
7. Use your information to write scenarios for your site: Scenarios are short stories that give you a good sense of the people who come to your site, what their lives are like, and what they want to do at your web site. Scenarios give life to goals and tasks in the same way that personas five life to lots of data and about your web users. Scenarios tell you the conversations people want to start. Everything on your web site should fulfill a scenario that a real user might have for coming to the web site. Scenarios can also help you write good web content.

Chapter 3

To have a successful experience on a web site, people have to find what they need, understand what they find, and act appropriately on that understanding. They have to do all that in the time and effort that they think it is worth.

Home Pages - The 10-Minute Mini-Tour

Most people read very little on the home page of a web site. They want to get what they came for and leave which typically isn't on the home page of a web site. Home pages can be content-rich, but they must not be wordy. There are five functions of home pages:

1. Identifying the site, establishing the brand: Your site's logo, name, and tag line identify it. Don't use a paragraph to explain the site. Use a short phrase that tells people how to think about the site.
2. Setting the tone and personality of the site: You set the tone for your side of the conversation by sharing the web site's personality with you site visitors. 
3. Helping people get a sense of what the site is all about: Many people coming to your site for the first time want to know: whose site this is, who these people are, what the site is all about. They want that information quickly because they also want to know how they can keep going on the question or task that brought them here. Both too little and too much can keep people from understanding what the site offers. A useful home page makes it instantly clear what the site is about and is mostly links and short descriptions.
4. Letting people start key tasks immediately: When people come to a web site to do a task, they usually want to start that task right away. If people need a form, putting the form on the home page is a good strategy. Make sure to put what a visitor might be searching for at the top of the page and also put a 'Search' at the top of a page because that's where people expect it. Don't make people fill out forms they done want. 
5. Sending each person on the right way, efficiently: There are two critical guidelines about writing links to help people get started down a good path from the home page: 1) use your site visitors' words and 2) don't make people wonder which link to click on. Site visitors are looking for the words that are in their minds so use their words NOT yours.

Discussion Questions

1. Since we use Google and other search engines to find exactly what we are looking for, are home pages really a big deal to us?
2. What are some examples of good home pages that we use today?

"User Experience and Why it Matters" Review

After reading, "User Experience and Why it Matters", a chapter out of Jesse James Garrett's 'The Elements of User Experience', I realized that without users, all products are useless. It's the users that make products successful and when designing websites, we must not think about ourselves in the design but mostly must think of our users.

User Experience: The experience the product creates for the people who use it in the real world.

• User experience is about how it works on the outside, where a person comes into contact with something.
• Every product that is used by someone creates a user experience.

From Product Design to User Experience Design

• The aesthetic dimension of product design is a sure attention-getter.
• People think about design in functional terms (if something works or not)
• Designing products with the user experience as an explicit outcome means looking beyond the functional or aesthetic.

Designing (for) Experience: Use Matters

• The requirements to deliver a successful user experience are independent of the definition of the product and the more complex a product is, the more difficult it becomes to identify exactly how to deliver a successful experience to the user.

User Experience and the Web

• On the web, user experience becomes even more important than it is for other kinds of products.
• A website it a self-service product.
• More and more businesses have now come to recognize that providing a quality user experience is an essential, sustainable competitive advantage--not just for websites, but for all kinds of products and services.
• User experience forms the customer's impression of a company's offerings, differentiates a company from its competitors, and determines whether your customer will ever come back.

Good User Experience is Good Business

• Content, or information, must be communicated as effectively as possible. It has to be presented in a way that helps people absorb it and understand it.
• Features and functions always matter, but user experience has a far greater effect on customer loyalty.
• A good user experience brings customers back to your site.
• Return of Investment: For every dollar you spend, how many dollars of value are you getting back?
• Conversion Rate: a common way of measuring the effectiveness of a user experience. It's a common measure of return on investment. Conversion Rate can give you a better sense of the return on your user experience investment than simple sales figures. It tracks how successful you are in getting those who visit to spend some money.
• Any user experience effort aims to improve efficiency. 1) Helping people work faster and 2) helping them make fewer mistakes.

Minding Your Users

• User-centered Design: the practice of creating engaging, efficient user experiences. The concept is to take the user into account every step of the way as you develop your product.
• Everything the user experiences should be the result of a conscious decision on your part.
• The biggest reason user experience should matter to you is that it matters to your users.

Discussion Questions

1. Do we take in to account the our own experiences when we use our cell phones and other electronic media?
2. Do we tend to focus more on the user experience of electronic media versus traditional media?

"Point of View" Review

After reading Douglas and Harnden's chapter titled "Point of View", I realized how much thought producers must put into their work. Point of view basically determines how the audience views the film. If ballerinas and football players went to go see a movie about ballet dancers, there would be two different point of views in that particular theater. Here are my notes from the chapter:


Point of View 

1. a camera shot taken as if seen through the eyes of a character.
2. refers to the perspective of the storytelling.
3. actually the source of the phrase itself. Refers to the interests, attitudes, and beliefs associated with a character's or group's particular perspective.

Point of view is ultimately the message of the creator.

POV Shots

Moving POV shots are effective in horror and monster movies in order to build suspense. POV shots momentarily shift the storytelling to a first-person account from a character's point of view.

Perspective of the Storyteller

First Person

• First person perspective can be achieved by voice over. This gives the character's thoughts and provides opportunities for characterization.
• First person narrative can shift the balance from visuals and dialogue, to commentary and contemplative language.

Second Person

• "You" really isn't addressed in shooting a film because the "you" would be the audience.
• Advertising sometimes uses "you".

Third Person

• Most productions are in third person.
• Presentation in the third person is common in nonnarrative and narrative productions.

Character Point of View

• Storytellers can tell stories of storytellers telling stories.
• In film and video, point of view as perspective tends to be much more limited in variation.
• Film audiences share the point of view of the leading character.
• The lead in the story provides the focus for the audience.

Attitude

• We regularly see various film and video productions that present the same subjects from differing points of view (attitudes).

The Audiences Point of View

• Audience members are active participants in the production.
• What we see in the movies, we see as a created reality.

Defining the Audience

• It's important to identify the audience's point of view, its prior experience and attitude.

Discussion Questions

1. How do film makers know whether audiences will like their film before they make it?
2. Is it more important for audience members to be able to follow one lead character for an entire film, or is it better to follow multiple characters in order to get multiple viewpoints?

"The Aesthetics of Editing" Review

The Psychology of Editing

B-roll is footage that visually describes the story and is very common in nonfiction storytelling. 

• Image and Sound - sounds allow images to make a stronger statement
• Shot Order - The order in which shots are viewed create different settings for the audience.
• Shot Relationship - Editing can allow viewers to not know the difference of two different shots.
• Time - Usually editing compresses shots. Program length are dictated by distribution requirements which also effects editing. 
• Rhythm and Pacing - The editor decides how often to cut. The faster the pacing, the more specific the cut must be.

Continuity

Continuity refers to maintaining story consistency from shot to shot and within scenes. It pretty much makes the story believable to viewers. A jump cut is a series of two shots that lack continuity.

• Physical Continuity - relates to all the items used in the production. This type of continuity can be checked before shooting begins and someone on the crew can be in charge of this.
• Technical Continuity - refers to technical inconsistency from shot to shot. For example, changes in lighting, audio levels, or quality of the image.
• Continuity Conventions - A basic rule for editors is to maintain screen direction.

Sequencing

• A sequence is a series of shots that relate to the same activity. The purpose of the sequence is to add interest and sophistication to a scene and provide the viewer with a better understanding of the scene.

Transitioning

• A transition is the change from one shot to another. It advances a story line from shot to shot and scene to scene.
• The Cut - an instant change from one image to another.
• Cutting on the beat is effective when the image should change on specific beats, usually music.
• Besides the cut, transitions include mixes, wipes, and digital effects.
• Mix - a generic term for a gradual transition where one image appears to fade away while another begins to appear.
• A fade has black or another solid color as either the incoming or outgoing image.
• A mix between two images is called a dissolve.
• A wipe is when one image moves across the screen replacing the previous image as it progresses.

The Magic of Editing

For every problem, there's usually a creative solution.

• An L cut occurs when the picture and sound start at slightly different times. This creates interest or suspense.
• A filter is an effect that can be applied to a clip or entire program in order to alter the perspective, color, or other attributes of the clip.
• Compositing is the layering of tracks on top of one another.

Editing is the third and final time a story is told during the production process and before screening. I never really think about the editing of a film while watching it. I may reference it when I am done watching a movie with a lot of special effects but that's as far as I take it. After reading this chapter I have realized that there is a lot more to editing that just putting pieces of film together to complete a story.

The following is a film by Wendy Apple titled "The Cutting Edge: The Magic of Movie Editing" which I believe goes into detail what the Osgood and Henshaw article discussed.