This lesson task is fairly simple, but an important step to begin studying screen based design. In the first part of this task I will be giving a description and explanation of a few terms before posing questions for clients to gain a proper understanding of the briefing process. I’ll be exploring concepts such as the internet, HTML and browsers to lay out a foundation of what lies at the core of web design. In the second part I will explore briefing process and add my own set of questions to the existing list of 10 questions to ask the client (as presented in the lesson).
Part 1
The Internet. What is it? How does it work? Just as a concept the Internet can be hard to grasp – access to pages from all over the world, a coalition between people, languages, text, pictures, videos and much more. At its core the internet is the connection between devices and people, as a vast network of information being sent and received between said parties. This usually happens by sending packages of information between servers and computers through what are known as TCPs (Transmission Control Protocol) and UDPs (User Datagram Protocol). These type of packages compiles information into a small packet that is sent to the other end where it’s reassembled into information. I won’t be delving too much more into the specifics about how these packages are handled as that is a whole topic for another day, but what’s important to take away from this is that the sharing of information lies at the core of the whole mechanism.
This brings me to the next topic of discussion, which is HTML (Hyper Text Markup Language). HTML is a universal language that lies at the base of a webpage and describes the structure of said webpage in a HTML document. It gives information to the browser on how it should present the contents of the page. For example, within a HTML document you’ll find blocks with labels such as head, title, body, etc. All of these blocks help confide and structure the information into what the information is supposed to present. A title can for example be the title of the webpage at the very top while text within a body block will be text displayed as the “meat” of an article.
As previously mentioned, the contents of the HTML document will be presented through a browser. When you search for a webpage on your browser, it will scan the internet for a server that is connected to the URL (Uniform Resource Locator) put in by the user. The browser then presents the information it has retrieved. This poses as an interesting problem for web designers, as not every browser will present the information in the same way. It is therefore important to make HTML codes that are consistent with every browser.
In this part of the exercise, I will explore the briefing process required to make sure the product is satisfactory to the client. To start off this part of the task, I want to list off the 10 questions recommended to ask the client as presented in the lesson material:
- What kind of visitors are you expecting on your website?
2. Who are your competitors and how do you differ from them?
3. What actions do you want visitors to take on the site?
4. What is your deadline for completing the site? How big is the budget?
5. What features should be used on your website? (This includes things like contact forms, pictures, videos, etc.)
6. Please list the names of three sites that you like and explain what you like about them.
7. Do you have any colour preferences? What should the look and feel for the website be?
8. Who will be the contact person for this project?
9. What do you NOT want on your site in terms of text, content, colour and graphic elements?
10. Who will be responsible for maintaining the website? Will the person have the time and skills to do so?
These are the questions I would add on to the current set:
- What values does your brand/website represent? How can those be highlighted?
- What platforms will the website primarily be accessed from?
- What is the goal of the website?
- What is the future of the website? Is it evolving alongside a set of other products?
- Is the website going to have ads?
- What the aimed initial impression when the user lands on the webpage?
- What links to the webpage?
- How is the website being advertised, if at all?
- What is the webpage centred around? Is it a set of products or a theme?
- What level of interactivity is the webpage going to support? (Forums, user submitted content, shopping)
Based off on these questions, I would exchange some of the original 10 questions with some of my own to create my own ultimate list.
- What kind of visitors are you expecting on your website?
2. Who are your competitors and how do you differ from them?
3. What actions do you want visitors to take on the site?
4. What is your deadline for completing the site? How big is the budget?
5. What features should be used on your website? (This includes things like contact forms, pictures, videos, etc.)
6. What platforms will the website primarily be accessed from?
7. What is the goal of the website?
8. What level of interactivity is the webpage going to support? (Forums, user submitted content, shopping)
9. Do you have any colour preferences? What should the look and feel for the website be?
10. Who will be responsible for maintaining the website? Will the person have the time and skills to do so?
Part 2
This part of the exercise is simply studying other webpages, highlighting some that I really like and some that I find to be lackluster.
Websites I think have great designs:
https://twitter.com/home (easy to navigate, intuitive)
https://www.instagram.com/imgur/
https://www.facebook.com/
https://www2.hm.com/no_no/index.html (Good overview on arrival, easy to navigate from there)
https://www.skillshare.com/ (Sleek design, inspires the user to learn through presentation)
Websites I think can see some improvement:
https://www.theguardian.com/international (Too much text and information frontloaded / small fonts)
https://www.dagbladet.no/ (Too big pictures, fills entire site)
https://www.metacafe.com/ (Too small text, hard to parse)
https://secure.square-enix.com/ (One of the most confusing account creators I’ve encountered)
https://no.pinterest.com/ (Content blocked by login after a certain scroll amount. Notoriously annoying to use and offputting for users)
Linnea's blog 