Week5: Visual Design Methods in Interactive Applications

“Simple concept and is useful for design”. Jean Vanderdonckt assorts these visual techniques by different and interesting concept. According to this article, I easily a layout ii composed and designed by many vertical and horizontal lines; moreover, although I don’t have design experience, it helps me understand how to design a layout with user-centric. However, whether the design is human based depends on audiences. It depends on users. Some people may like dark background with light color words; in contrast, others like light background with dark color words, so I think there is no a definite design principle.

I found an article from Google which explain the visual design as well as techniques (actually it a note on visual and interaction design). Here is the link: http://www.valcasey.com/webdesign/index.htm. This article talks about the basic elements of visual communication and what should be avoided when designing. I think these idea are also helpful for me.

Version1: Individual Project Poposal

I have been living in Seattle as an international student for nine months, and I found my life style has been changing! This is my first time to live outside my home country for a long time. During the nine months, I haven’t been outside of the US so I gradually get used to living here and I would like to find out what changed the life. Also, I’m still exploring new things here so I want to tell some stories about the timeline life of some international students’ lives from Taiwan to Seattle. Additionally, my ideal goal of this project is to develop a web site introducing international students’ life style in Seattle as well as offer a place for Asian students to exchange their thoughts and opinions about life style here. Thus, my target audiences beyond class are international Asian students at UW.

First, I want to do research by interviewing 4 Taiwanese students. Each of them has been stayed here for different duration. For example, the first one has only stayed in Seattle within one year, and the second personhas been living for 1-3 years. The third one has 5-year lige experience in Seattle, and the last one has already stayed here for 10 years! “What changed their lives?” and “Waht is the major difference between in Taiwan and in Seattle?” are the main idea of the project.

I want to put introduction for each interviewed person via text and pictures. Besides, I would like to shoot videos to illustrate the changes in Seattle. For instance, when I was in Taiwan, I was able to ride a motocycle to anywhere; however, after coming to the US, it is hard to see motorcycles on the road! I want to use wordpress to tell the story through words. pictures and videos. There will be these four people’s headshot and the city views in Taiwan versus in Seattle on the homepage. The second page would intorduce the background of these four people with links allowing audiences to see more details and videos so there would be four more pages. Moreover, I want to set up a message broad for another page allowing users to share their minds.

Entertainment Promo

Analyze these stories. How have they used hypertext? How well does the navigation work? The design? What do you like, dislike and why? How do these stories reinforce or counter your best practices/learnings from last week’s discussion?

1. Sideways

This web page from FOX searchlight promotes the movie “sideways” and provides videos, sound tracks, cast and story for audiences. I like this website (as well as I like this movie) although it takes time to load information and hard to find what I want to get. The interface is cute and cool and the navigation is clear. Moreover, there are some flash allowing audiences feel dynamic. The hypertext can link to many other movies’ information. Audiences can link to homepage to see what the new released movies!

2. IMDB

“The Internet Movie Database” is a typical website to introduce movies’ ranking, evaluations and schedules. I think it’s a functional and informational website to look up movies’ schedule and theaters’ location. I don’t like this website because the web site is too big and too much information; however, I can get what I wanna get. For example, it is easily for me to link to “Blades on Glory”, so I may think they use hypertext properly.

3. Grey’s Anatomy

It’s a good promotion site because audiences can see the video of this TV drama immediately on the homepage and make me feel impressed. However, it looks like full of Ads and makes me don’t like this kind of website (but this is a promo website!). To sum up, these three website have different audiences because sideways is a movie; IMDB is an informational website allowing audiences to look up movies’ info; Grey’s Anatomy is a TV show about hospital. They are promoted and designed in different ways to attract different audiences.

Individual Project Poposal

IDEA 1

For the individual project, I want to focus on the topic “Changes”. As an international student, it is the first time to live outside my home country, so I want to tell a story about the timeline life of my life or of other international students’ from Taiwan to Seattle. For instance, when I wan in Taiwan, I seldom; after coming to the U.S, I became a good cook and am able to prepare a feast! I want to use wordpress to tell the story through word, pictures and video. To sum up, it is like a personal website.

IDEA 2

Living in Seattle, I am concerned about the environment where I am living. I have another idea about my project that’s how greenhouse effect (or other factors) affects the weather and anything in Seattle for the past 5-8years. The problem I may face is too broad information when researching. I still use wordpress to present my project and the main concept of this project is to educate public and remind people in Seattle to concern more about this place.

Week3: Patterns of Hypertext

According to “Patterns of Hypertext”, “Cycle”, “Counterpoint”, “Mirrowworld”, “Tangle”, “Sieve”, “Montage”, “Split/Join”, “Missing Link” and “Feint” are the nine patterns of hypertext. Bernsstein illustrates many concepts to explain what hypertext should be but those concepts are too abstract for me to understand. For example, I cannot get the point what “tangle” is. In my opinion, I think Bernstein when making a hypertext through HTML, a clear instruction should be presented, that means audiences can exactly know which links they have already accessed if the color of link turns to be red instead of green. If tangle happens that means an unclear guide for audiences. I’m not sure whether I correctly understand it!? 

So called hypertext is “a user interface paradigm for displaying documents which, according to an early definition” (Nelson 1970). Hypertext is a way to organize limited materials by clicking a link to other homepages. Huge information can be incorporated and connected together by hypertext. For me, hypertext is an abstract idea but this article is to philosophic to understand so I need more concrete examples to learn how to make a homepage more easily and quickly. 

Group Project–Seattle

“Indicate if you would rather work on a group story about “Seattle” or about “Media Ownership” and provide details about the types of stories you envision as the group project.”

I want to work on about “Seattle”. Besides, I would like to explore the “Entertainment in Seattle”. For example, I want to design a search engine like “citysearch” to introduce various kinds of restaurants in Seattle; what dose the latest movies and local music albums be released; moreover, I would also like to present outdoor activities such as sailing in summer in Seattle.

Week2: Readability Assignment

STORY 1: Tully’s shareholders pleased company plans to go public
(From Seattle Times)
http://archives.seattletimes.nwsource.com/cgi-bin/texis.cgi/web/vortex/display?slug=tullys30&date=20070330&query=tully%27s

Passive Sentences: 6%
Flesch Reading Ease: 55.0
Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level : 10.4

STORY 2: Dog Yoga Classes Catching on
(From Discovery News)
http://dsc.discovery.com/news/2007/04/03/doga_ani.html?category=animals&guid=20070403113000

Passive Sentences: 5%
Flesch Reading Ease: 64.0
Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level : 9.4

STORY 3: Who Else but an Old Buddy Can Tell How Lost You Are?
(From The New York Times, by A.O. Scott)
http://movies2.nytimes.com/mem/movies/review.html?_r=1&res=9C01E6D61430F930A15750C0A9619C8B63&n=Top%2fReference%2fTimes%20Topics%2fPeople%2fS%2fScott%2c%20A%2e%20O%2e

Passive Sentences: 6%
Flesch Reading Ease: 51.4
Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level : 10.7

Week2: Blog Post (2)

According to Krion Kasekar’s article “Inverted pyramid”, Kasekar states that news writing should be written in inverted pyramids style. That means a reporter have to begin with the conclusion of news and then are the minor information, and then the details. So the structure is like an inverted pyramid: the most important information is on the top. Most readers may stop at the middle of news when reading and authors want to make sure readers get the outline first. I take an academic writing class this quarter and I realized it is tough although it has just begun a week, because how to provide an accurate controlling idea and enough information in limited time is hard!  

However, when I read an online article first time, I explored that I tend to read in F shape. That means, I will see the headline first and then the subtitle. If I am interested in the content, I will read second time but in detail. Thus, the typesetting and the typography are important because whether readers readily get the point when viewing is depending on the page arrangement. Therefore, I also want to learn how to immediately provide information to audiences when they visit a website. In addition, after I read “How to Write a Good Story in 800 Words or Less”, written by Roy Peter Clark, I got some interesting writing rules. What I don’t really understand why 5W and H block the flow when reading a story, but I still got many sharp and useful opinions from this article. I was impressed by rule1, 2 and 8 because when I do writing, I always start with a controlling idea and then expand my other opinions and examples, so “focus, focus and focus” always pop out in my mind. However, the most difficult thing in writing is to reduce words without distorting and losing controlling idea. Too many words in one page discourage audiences to view a website, so I also want to learn how to create an interesting story in a small space of a web page.  

Moreover, an article with fluent words and easy-to-read allow audiences to spend less time to finish reading, because most audiences including me don’t like to stare at a screen in a long time so an article with a large capacity of a web page will kill audiences. If the structure is too complicated to understand, readers will spend too much time to read it and then they will be discouraged to finish reading. To sum up, these articles provide abundant and useful information for writing skills and how to create and write web content effectively and efficiently.

Week2: Blog Post (1) Content Creator

“Identify three types of stories (content) that interest you as a content creator. Provide the story/content name, URL, abstract, and a statement of what sparks your interest in this genre.”

STORY 1: Tully’s shareholders pleased company plans to go public
(From Seattle Times)

http://archives.seattletimes.nwsource.com/cgi-bin/texis.cgi/web/vortex/display?slug=tullys30&date=20070330&query=tully%27s

ABSTRACT
According to Melissa Allison (2007), a business reporter at the Seattle Times, the coffee company “Tully’s” has the intention to launch their shares. It is business news about whether Tully’s is able to go public or not. Since Tully’s was started in 1992, it hardly made enough profit to allow it to go public. Thus, a lot of shareholders worried that their money would be gone, just like if they threw it into an ocean. Nowadays, Tully’s faces the problem if it has the ability to go public and to expand the business domain in Asia. Consequently, Tully’s is ready to take action and the shareholders would like to allow the company’s plans to become listed.

This is business news from Seattle Times. The author Allison uses inverted pyramids method to write this news. She gives the main idea at the first paragraph and then is the secondary idea. Additionally, she provides details and examples such as other shareholders’ statement to back up her statement.

STORY 2: Dog Yoga Classes Catching on
(From Discovery News)

http://dsc.discovery.com/news/2007/04/03/doga_ani.html?category=animals&guid=20070403113000

ABSTRACT
This article talks about the affection of dogs after they experienced yoga classes. Most hosts said both their dogs became relaxing after class, because this class encourages both the human and the dog to increase their awareness of each other (called “partner yoga”). When I first saw the article, I was attracted by the headline because I’ve seldom heard dogs do yoga and I want to know the outcome, so I kept going to read it. I found this article states the conclusion first and then introduce how dogs do yoga. If audiences are interested in this topic, they will keep reading. Then there are some users’ experiences and experts’ opinions of dog yoga and they share their experiences to audiences who are eager to know it.

STORY 3: Who Else but an Old Buddy Can Tell How Lost You Are?
(From The New York Times, by A.O. Scott)

http://movies2.nytimes.com/mem/movies/review.html?_r=1&res=9C01E6D61430F930A15750C0A9619C8B63&n=Top%2fReference%2fTimes%20Topics%2fPeople%2fS%2fScott%2c%20A%2e%20O%2e

ABSTRACT
This is a movie review of “Reign over Me”. I just saw these movie last week, so I am interested about the review if this movie. The movie is about a successful dentist living in Manhattan lost his family on 911 attacked on New York City runs into his old college roommate who is also a dentist with a perfect career and a family. Rekindling the friendship is the one thing that appears able to help the man recover from his grief.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY!!!

Hi there! Happy Birthday to Kaichen. Wish u be happy everyday!