Final Presentation

Original Site Concept and Goals

• Build a site for northern midwest locals
• Teach amature photographer how to take pictures of the n.l.
  • Equipment, settings, time
  • A place for folks to share their photos
• Provide places to view and photograph
• Information
  • Myths
  • Educational
  • What they mean to you

User Goals

We have identified our potential users as students, photographers, artists and the everyday web browser.

We have focused on user goals by having all the pages in the site asked for or brought up in interviews or among the group. (contact,gallery,how-to.....)

Users can identify where to go and how to go back throughout the site due to the consitency of the nav bars. Easily spotted at the tops and bottoms of the pages, navigation remainsin the same spot on all pages. The navigation options are clearly labeled for all categories.

Our format for every page is consistent with color choices, layout, navigation, content and images.

The layout of the images, content and visual designs contribute to the overall message of the site. Images and colors in the site do not take away from content, but adds to it subtley.

The homepage looks professional and very basic to use. It loads fast.

Content yeilds all info asked for by users and the group.

The content is scanable and easy to read with bullets and headings.

Tasks

• Todd Geiger
  • Photography Instructions Content
  • Myths Content
  • Yellowknife Veiwing Content
  • General Input and Info
  • Took group photo (ooohh yeah)
  • Contributed self-shot Bemidji photo to gallery

• Jeppe Bundgaard
  • Had the northern lights idea, came up with title
  • Travis and I contacted photographers and gained permission to use images
    • Process: Travis had the idea to ask Flickr members for permission to use images. In my opinion, this idea Travis came up with was the best idea from the group, especially considering the poor celestial and terrestial weather conditions the last few months.
  • Drew up graphics (header, footer) and came up with monochrome color scheme of site
    • Process: How best to showcase the content? I felt monochrome would not distract but compliment the content.
  • Designed the template and uploaded the site
    • Process: Had group votes to make decisions
  • Resized and compressed all images
    • Process: Users wanted pics and info fast, so I compressed the best I could with the time I had
  • Wrote all content for the home page
    • Process: Interviews and personas indicated our traffic would be most likely to search for pictures, science, and photography how-to. I provided links to these topics on the home page and little else, so they could find their information quick.
  • Wrote all content for the FAQ page
    • Process: Kept it short and sweet for scanners, for our primary and secondary users, people looking for info fast, possibly for school projects.
  • Found and created most of the content for the links page
    • Provided brief, tag-like descriptions for links so user would not waste time traveling to sites that won't help their needs
  • Created the gallery
    • Kudos to Todd Geiger for capturing a Bemidji photo. The rest of us could not.
  • Wrote most content for contact page
  • Found weather stickers
  • Wrote about Tromso Norway in viewing page
  • Made links, image mapped, hyperlinks, inserted tables
    • Katie did a great job with this as well. She is the fastest on a Mac, and saved the group a lot of time with her Dreamweaver and Macintosh proficiency.
  • Had idea to make "secret" pages for videos I found

• Katherine Grandstrand
  • Created rejected background/logo (majority wins, and that's okay)
  • Did a lot of linking photo gallery pages together
  • Proofing site for errors
  • Wrote veiwing page main article
  • Wrote about Bemidji on Viewing page
  • Wrote about Fairbanks on Viewing page
  • Created "secret" video links (Jeppe's idea)
  • I did a lot of the little fixes here and there... the perfections, if you would]

• Travis Grimler
  • Contacted photographers and artists about using images.
  • Gathered content for photographs by Island Kerstin and others (name, locations, how the photographs were taken, links to more photos).
  • Gathered information for science page.
  • Helped add to links section, science and photographers specifically.
  • Proofed for errors.
  • Stayed behind and helped Jeppe finish up multiple pages.

Design problems

If ever we had a problem we put it to a vote -- majority wins -- end of arguement. This is how we moved forward when bogged down in indecision, or if course of action was producing undesirable results.

• Chose thumbnails over rollovers
  • Either would have worked fine, but the majority chose thumbnails because it was felt it would be easier to implement.
• Chose one template over multiple templates
  • Easier for designer and more continuity for user
• Diagnal navbar
  • As the designer, I (Jeppe)was looking too close and was reading global links in header from left to right instead of top to bottom. Initially, the global links in the footer caused confusion as the order did not follow the top to bottom order of the global links in header. Doctor Morgan's fresh eyes caught my error and it was fixed.