A media product

This is a design of a website which I prepared for this module using Photoshop CS4 and Corel Paint Shop Pro Photo X2. The target audience for this specific site would be people looking for information about gardening, ordering variety of plants and flowers as well as those searching for advice on gardening. I tried to organize the website as easy as possible in order to enable users to simply move around the site. It visually pleases the eye by combination of colours which perfectly interact with each other. I have chosen green and grey colour as the main colours because they associate with nature and environment.

Design and usability

http://www.designsbypatima.com/

This example of a website is artistic, original and stands out from other websites. This design by Patima suits the personal portfolio format very well and expresses creativity. Although it visually looks very rich from the usability point of view it can confuse many users because there are too many distressed elements put on the page. I asked my friend to point at navigation buttons and she hasn't even noticed that they exist. It doesn't surprise me at all and I am sure that lots of other people would have the same problem. The users must move the cursor around the page to check what is clickable and what is not. Unless the buttons look like buttons, users might not notice them. The website itself doesn't contain much information and as it is a portfolio is only directed to specific group of people.

Site structure

This is a structure diagram of the Country Wide - another website created by me over 2 years ago. Not only preparing a storyboard is important before creating the actual website but also a diagram which will clearly show the links between each page on the site. It is a useful tool when conducting team meetings and when working in groups. When we want to show 'the big picture' along with the links and connections between the pages, site diagrams can be much more effective and straight forward than using a projector. Site diagrams are often easier to understand in order to divide site files into sections and directories and are often used by programmers before they begin their work on the server.

Storyboard

This is a storyboard which I prepared few years ago for my website called Caribbean Unlimited where customers can look for a last minute holidays. Before creating a website it is always worth to plan everything on a paper first, what will definitely save our time and visually help to organize every site's detail. Using a storyboard I can define where to place an image, logo or text on pages. I can very quickly describe the page purpose as well as link information. This is an easy way of planning and preparing before the actual work on a project begins.

Logo

A logo is mostly a graphic image associated with the company or any institution therefore it must be unique and must reflect company's activity. Adobe Illustrator is an excellent software commonly used for those kinds of designs. I have done this logo some time ago using this program and I can unhesitatingly say that it can be used as a logo for a graphic company or even a night club. This design is innovative and modern. Thanks to use of a wide range of program effects I achieved this original font and in the result great logo.

Advo Properties

Page featuring flats for rent.

Home page

This is one of the best websites I have done so far. From my experience I have learned that it is always worth to ask people for a feedback which will help to improve the own performance. I tried to make this website as easy for a user to move around on it as possible by placing the links to other pages on the top and bottom of the site.The text is mostly justified. I used a black font with size at 12 pt which on a white background is easy to read. I found two disadvantages on this site that could have been improved. One of them is green colour which I used for underlined links. I know that the blue default is more recognizable as a link colour. The other thing is that I did not put any information about the company what is very important because people can find the website untrustworthy and suspicious.

Advo Property Services

This is one of my websites which I have done before starting the university. If I had a chance to create it again I would bring a lot of changes to it. First of all I would replace Times New Roman font type to Tahoma, which looks more professional and is commonly used on many websites. Instead of centring the text I should have aligned it to the left. The other thing which users may find annoying is the logo placed on the top left corner of the website. The text appearing around the logo moves on a circular motion which can be disturbing for many users. Flash buttons are animated when the user goes over the button and make a sound when clicked. For the future I would replace them because I am aware that most users do not like that kind of features appearing on websites as they associate them with advertisements.