Category: Part 3 (S4)

New website – check it out!

Check out my portfolio website –http://www.veronikalesnakova.co.uk/

If you like what you see and you have a project in mind then I’m happy to hear from you.

Evaluation

Overall, the full project was challenging and a lot of learning was done throughout the process. First of all, the project was meant to be build one and that is why deep research on different CMSs was done and a good knowledge of work with totally different working CMSs was gained. Most of the time was spent trying to learn how to work with CMSs and how to implement them into website. doorGets CMS was not appropriate for this project at all because of it was not professional enough and support on it was not good enough. Drupal 7 was more professional, dashboard was visually better created, there were a lot of themes to choose from and technical support was great. However, after weeks spent trying to figure out how to work with this CMS, decision was to give up and change it to different CMS. This was because it was over complicated and lack of time to learn to work with this CMS well enough to build full functional website in it. CouchCMS was the best choice for this project as it was quite easy to implement into the website and user would have no problems working with CMS.

However, there were some problems with functionality of this CMS which showed different ways of sorting problems out with community of practice. The only option that was there was to join CouchCMS community of practice and ask for help. This was huge learning curve as it was never done before with any project. Finding out that it is important to be out there working with people is a good step for future. Also, a lot of help was gotten from lecturer and that is why a good knowledge or problem solving in web development was gained.

However, because of  decision to keep the project as concept only, next challenging part had to be managed – the design had to be visually appealing to users but also already existed text had to be embedded into the design which influenced the full design. Marketing strategies were kept in mind throughout the full designing process and community of users were created. A lot of research was done on how Ice Arenas market their products and all best parts were taken and combined into one design for the best result possible. Hull Ice Arena has currently no official website and it is only part of Hull City Council website, there were no restrictions on the design whatsoever but current text had to be kept. All images used were downloaded from Google and it was hard job to do as the design was based on a lot of white space and therefore images with white space around the main focus point had to be chosen. Visual imagery was used as research showed that users are more likely to remember things by seeing rather than reading. Certain style of icons was used to keep symmetry in the design but also to keep meaning behind it – time at Hull Ice Arena is about having fun and therefore icons used were in a little bit playful style. This had a good contrast combined with quite serious design interpreting information.

Booking form was done through visual imagery and was focused more on users clicking on provided choices rather than users having to type information in. This was decided to do after doing research about designing principles of a good design where was found out that if any task on the web has a high cost of energy, users are unlikely to complete the task unless the reward for it is also high. Also Hick’s law says that the more options users have, the longer it takes to make a decision and that is why booking form was kept simple and straight to the point.

User testing was done throughout the full project and therefore design was adjusted regularly. The last user testing was success even though some users said that they would rather prefer to have crossing line across all images above images just to keep images clear to see. This comment is important to keep in mind for future development. All users said that they would be happy to turn this design into a new Hull Ice Arena website as it is easy to use and effective. Accessibility test was done to make sure that people with disabilities that use internet on daily basis would be able to use this design and the results were positive.

Overall, this project was a success in every way.

Accessibility test

Accessibility test is important because there are people with disabilities that use internet on daily basis. The reason why was decided to check colour blindness accessibility is because apparently one in twenty people have some form of colorblindness and they are affected in using internet.

This is colour blindness check that was done to make sure that colour blind people would have no problem using this design.
Tool that was used is called Colour Blindness Simulator and this is the link to it – http://www.etre.com/tools/colourblindsimulator/

Process is easy; upload image, select the condition to simulate – there are three

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and press ‘Simulate Colour Blindness.

The result

This is the result for Protanopia –

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This is the result for deuteranopia –

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This is the result for tritanopia –

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This is how people with monochromacy – completely colour blindness see the design

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People with these four forms of colour blindness would be able to use this design as dynamic of colour scheme was choose well.

Contact page

Contact page was designed simple and straight to the point.
There are two contact forms –

  1. allowing users to contact Hull Ice Arena straight from the page
  2. allowing users to request being contacted by Hull Ice Arena staff

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Google map with location is shown to help users find the arena –  pointer used is in the same style as icons to keep continuity in design. Also contact and address details and social media icons.

3

 Full design

Contact

Image downloaded from Google!
Icons downloaded from http://www.flaticon.com/packs/social-media-hand-drawn/