Barbara's Multimedia Blog

Conclusion

barbarabrownebis4 — Thu, 02 Apr 2009 21:19:16 +0000

That’s all for now folks, hope you enjoyed reading my Blogs…. I’ll look forward to doing more of them at some stage in the future!!

Week 5: Graphic Design Principles

barbarabrownebis4 — Mon, 30 Mar 2009 19:45:06 +0000

The website I have chosen for my final blog in relation to graphic design is www.breakingnews.ie. I will go through this website and discuss it under the four principles of graphic design which consist of Alignment, Contrast, Proximity and Repetition.

ALIGNMENT: One of the most critical principles of design is alignment. Although your first impression of this website may be that its home page is two cluttered, I believe that this is a good aspect. A little taste of everything is given in the home page under its respective sections. Each section is broken up into smaller sections and these are divided clearly, making it easier to find the section you are searching for. It includes the following sections: Advertisement, Banner, Navigation Bar, Main Breaking News, Irish News, Sports News, Video and Audio Clips, World News, Weather, Business, Entertainment, Film Reviews.

This layout allows you to obtain a glimpse of everything currently in the news. These sections are also aligned in proportion to each other. There is a clear definition of alignment on this website.

CONTRAST: Strong contrast adds visual interest to a page and makes it more attractive to the reader’s eye. Breakingnews.ie uses contrast in its headings and subheadings to make it easier for the reader to glance at the page and understand what is going on.

PROXIMITY: All the previous mentioned sections are all linked and closely positioned. The elements and sections on this website are all interlinked and relate to each other, thus giving the elements a stronger relationship than they would have if they were spread out randomly on the web page, for example they have grouped the related items together so that they have a stronger relationship and this is far more effective than having them spread out throughout the web page, i.e. all the sport topics can be found under the sports heading and this is the way for each relevant group causing them to become one visual unit. This website has a strong visual layout. Once you click on each section you are then brought to that relevant page.

REPITION: The breakingnews.ie headings and navigation bar along with their style and format and alignment are repeated throughout the website regardless of which section you visit. It creates consistency and visual unity. It makes breakingnews.ie more interesting and as a result it will be easier to attain and retain the person’s concentration as they will know that they are still on the same website regardless of the page they go into.

Week 4: Kevin Kelly and the Web

barbarabrownebis4 — Mon, 23 Mar 2009 20:42:04 +0000

Kevin Kelly

The web as we know it is less than 5000 days old! This stuck me as one of the most interesting points which Kevin Kelly made during his film about the web. He also went on to say “It’s amazing, and we’re not amazed”. I agree with Mr. Kelly 100%, the majority of us definitely take the internet for granted, perhaps this may be due to the reason that many of us know no different and for as long as I can remember, even since I started secondary school the internet has been available. The internet has come along way over the past 5000 days and ten years ago nobody would have predicted that we would be able to do so much with the web. It just goes to show we must believe in the impossible! All this new technology leads to one machine, something which Kevin Kelly repeated a number of times during his video.

The second point which I found extremely interesting was when he said that our brain doesn’t double in power every two years, however the web does. The internet is amazing, and if we just stop and think about what it actually does and what it can do we may realize this! Over the next 5000 days we will not only see the web, we will see the web in a better, different, smarter, intelligent, more personalized and more ubiquitous way. Everything will become more centralized, everything will become linked. Basically web will become ‘The One’.

Here I have included a copy of Kevin Kelly predicting the next 5000 days of the web.

Week 3 Blog: Accessibility

barbarabrownebis4 — Sat, 14 Mar 2009 20:16:36 +0000

The website I have chosen for this week’s assignment is ‘An Post’, www.anpost.ie/AnPost/ . Every single person in the country is familiar with the term ‘An Post’ and if people have internet access than I am sure that most people will have looked it up at one stage or another. I, for one, have visited this website a number of times. It is a recently new website and is very modern and up to date. I would be one of the first to recommend this website as it allows customers to do many things that they would usually have to make a trip to their nearest ‘An Post’ branch to do for example paying bills. Making that trip to the post office can often be more complicated than it seem as most of them shut for lunch, have different operating times and the one we’re all familiar with, queues! So basically, if customers use this website they can cut out all that hassle. All that will be required is that they become familiar with this website and how it operates. I believe that it is a very simple website to follow and this is mainly owing to its layout and design! This website is very accessible. It displays the Alt attribute function which will enable this website to be compatiable for people wth sight disabilities. The content picture use alt attributes in order to help aid people with such disabilities. This is a popular tool which we are finding on most modern day websites.

Unlike any of the websites which I discussed last week this website’s layout is very clear, efficient and effective. It has a white background so it’s simple and easy to read the words, especially for an elderly person or someone who suffers from colour-blindness. The colour scheme is also appropriate and clearly legible. ‘Anpost.ie’ is a very well structured website and has been designed with maximum accessibility in mind. It definitely conforms to the website usability terms as outlined in week 2’s blog. Step by step, this website takes you through the process of operating the system so you can carry out what you want to do. For example if you want to pay your T.V licence, rent a DVD, or pay your bills you can now do all this on this website. It also is a very informative website as it answers a lot of queries regarding posting which people may have and explains all these very well. The website is very well structured, when you type in the URL http://www.anpost.ie/AnPost/ you are greeted with the home page for ‘An Post’. You have the choice to pick the option you want from the tabs along the top, or the navigation bar on the right-hand side. There are also options at the bottom of the page for Business Customers and Personnel Customers and these contain a number of links to the main options in these two categories. ‘An Post’ is very accessible and the design of the webpage itself is very easy to follow, just continue to click on the link you need and you will find what you are looking for. This is probably one of the best Irish government websites there is but that may be due to the fact that it is a relatively new website.

An Post’s Website

References:

Week 2 Blog: Usability

barbarabrownebis4 — Thu, 12 Mar 2009 19:17:36 +0000

This week’s blog requirements are to find websites which contain some or all of the five E’s of usability. When we were assigned this task last week there was a huge sense of reluctance at the thought of finding websites which contain some or all of the five E’s of usability. We all assumed it would be impossible to think of and find sites that were badly designed. It didn’t take me long to see that this wasn’t the case. On a regular basis we are all victims of these badly designed websites some however are more obvious than others.

The 5 E’s of usability consist of the following

Effectiveness of the website,
Efficiency of the website,
does the website Engage with the end user,
Is the website Error Tolerant and
Is it easy to learn and understand from the website.

1) The first website which I think is rather badly designed is http://www.bankofireland.ie/ .One would think that because this is one of Irelands main banking companies that they would have a top notch website for their customers. Instead we see a bland plain website which does not ENGAGE very well with the end user. We can see that the Apply Online buttons are not very well aligned and the welcoming font appears like this ‘Welcome to Bank of Ireland Republic of Ireland’. It uses two different colours and no punctuation. When a customer logs in, there are a number of steps that need to be completed and a number of different pages that have to be opened before the target page has been reached to check their bank account details. This portrays INEFFICIENCIES and is highly INEFFECTIVE as the customer will just lose attention and won’t be bothered to go through each step. I don’t think that this website has been designed to the best way that it could have been. It isn’t a very interesting website and certainly wouldn’t hold my attention.

2) Another website which is inefficient and dazzling to say the least is the Radio Kerry Website- http://www.radiokerry.ie/ . For starters the colour of their background is enough to dazzle a hare and I don’t think people would stay on this site long if they visited it especially if they suffer from migraines. Not alone is the background colour very off putting but also the pictures on top of the page of people popping up and down is also quite annoying! The Radio Kerry logo on the top left hand corner containing the green writing is practically illegible and this website certainly would be of no use to anybody suffering from colour blindness. Their navigation bar is squashed and the font on the page in general is rather small. This website is just not very well laid out and the design could be a whole lot better. It would definitely not be EASY TO LEARN from this website.

3) My final website which I found to be badly designed is http://cheltenham-2009.com/cheltenham/ . For the week that’s in it this website will have many visitors. I googled Cheltenham and tis is what the search returned to me! Once again I have many of the same complaints as I had with the Radio Kerry one especially with the colour! Seriously can these so called ‘Web Designers’ not see or something? It is hideous. I can assure you that many people would log on to this website in particular this week and they would expect top see more than what they get. Perhaps a navigation bar containing betting tips and maybe more information on the week itself instead of jus a little video screen with four options. Also the overall header hasn’t even been given a name instead we see ‘Untitled’ on display for the tab. This website is very INEFFICIENT and INEFFECTIVE to say the least. It doesn’t interact or engage with the end user at all. You also have to scroll across instead of down to see the entire page. And if you were looking up this website hoping to find out some information you certainly wouldn’t learn anything. When you click on the four links you are just redirected to the paddypower.com website so basically this website has no use at all! Also this website is not ERROR TOLERANT in the slightest. I have been waiting now for five minutes for the screen to display the live races. I definitely wouldn’t want to be in a hurry to watch a race and worse again I wouldn’t want to have had any money on a horse in the particular race that I am still waiting to watch!! I have broadband so people without it who would have much slower download speeds will encounter great difficulty with this website…causing each of the five E’s of usability to occur!

References:

Week 1 Blog: Joseph Carl Robnett Licklider

barbarabrownebis4 — Wed, 04 Mar 2009 22:10:50 +0000

Welcome to my Blog. I am a fourth year Business Information System student at C.I.T. This week my blog is about J.C.R Licklider! Don’t forget to check out the video and do my poll!! Thanks!!

Joseph Carl Robnett Licklider is unknown to many people in this world, however he was a vital part of one of the most important things which we use in our everyday lives and perhaps we take it for granted. J.C.R Licklider was part of the development of the internet! He foresaw the need for networked computers with easy user interfaces. He was determined that his ideas of graphical computing, point-and-click interfaces, e-commerce, online banking, digital libraries, and software would exist on a network and migrate to wherever it was needed regardless of one’s location. He was nicknamed by many as the “Computing’s Johnny Appleseed.” This was deemed a well earned and appropriate nickname for a man who planted the seeds of computing in the digital age. (Ref.: http://www.ibiblio.org/pioneers/licklider.html, accessed on 3^rd March 2009)

He was well-liked man and had a reputation for being humble almost to a fault, often letting others take credit for his ideas as long as they were accomplished. His modesty and good manners were probably part of his mid-western upbringing. Licklider was born in St. Louis in 1915.He attended Washington State University in St. Louis where he received three bachelor’s degrees in physics, math, and psychology. He did his doctoral work in psychoacoustics (the psychophysiology of the auditory system). (Ref.: http://www.ibiblio.org/pioneers/licklider.html, accessed on 3^rd March 2009)

Licklider was incredibly instrumental in conceiving, funding and managing the research which led to modern personal computers and the development of the Internet. To briefly inform you Licklider worked for several years at ARPA where he set the stage for the creation of the Arpanet. He also worked at Bolt Beranek and Newman (BBN) the company that supplied the first computers connected on the Arpanet.

In 1960, Licklider published his innovative work known as the “Man Computer Symbiosis.”

The main idea of this paper was that computers should be developed with the goal “to enable men and computers to cooperate in making decisions and controlling complex situations without inflexible dependence on predetermined programs” (Licklider).

Licklider was, of course, thinking about real time interactive computing and how computers would effectively and quickly do routine work. The processing speed and easy user interfaces would allow humans to interact with computers to help with the making of decisions instead of simply responding to long-awaited output. This newly developed way of computing would mean that problems would not have to be formulated in depth in advance because computers would be able to respond to changing variables, making life easier for everyone. Lick’s proposed system would not use the traditional batch processing methods, but instead it would use the time sharing method, which gives many users at individual terminals access to a large mainframe. Users thus interact directly with the computer which means that results are obtained immediately. (Ref.: http://www.ibiblio.org/pioneers/licklider.html, accessed on 3^rd March 2009)

Also included in my blog you will be able to see a video from YouTube which displays two random people who are obviously quite bored. So they aim to reenact the Licklider story of the development of the internet. Perhaps this is not exactly how J.C.R discovered and worked on his ideas but it is a brief summary about the beginning of the development of the internet which is now so widely used that no one ever thinks to stop and think where did it all begin!!

References:

Welcome to my blog!!!!!!!!

barbarabrownebis4 — Mon, 02 Mar 2009 14:46:14 +0000

I will update this blog on a weekly basis as part of my Multimedia Module!