Website Design and Construction Project

Value: 40 marks

This assignment provides an opportunity to develop your individual web design and implementation skills. You will create a small website for a library or for an information service of an organization of your choice based either on a real organization, or a hypothetical one that could reasonably exist in the world. The setting and target audience for the site are your choice, from a corporate, business-information centre, to a small public library, or even a library-related association. The key is to keep the size of the site manageable by selecting a focus (e.g., the reference section of an academic library) rather than building a site for the entire organization.

In Part 1 you will identify the purpose of the website and contextual issues and constraints, analyze its target audience, and design an information architecture for the website. In Part 2 you will put your design skills to work by creating a prototype of the site's main pages by hand-coding HTML and CSS (i.e., not using Dreamweaver or other web design software).

This assignment relates to course objectives #1, #2, and #4.

Part 1 (20 marks)

Identify the purpose of your website and its contextual issues and constraints, analyze its target audience, and design an information architecture for the website. Include the following:

An analysis of the purpose and contextual issues and constraints of your website. Questions to consider include: why is the site being developed from your chosen organization's perspective? what response does your organization want from users of the site? what specific needs does this site serve? what are the legal, ethical, cultural, social, or technical constraints that pertain to the site?

An analysis of the audience of your website. Questions to consider include: who are the primary and secondary users of the site? What are your users' information needs and information behavior as relate to this website?

An information architecture design of the website, including:
1. Content and organization design, e.g., what are the major areas of content your website provides? how do you plan to structure and organize the content? what content will be covered in the homepage, and what in each of the top-level sub-pages (approx. 6)?
2. Labeling and writing of content, i.e., how do you plan to write and label the content? Give some examples.
3. Navigation system design, e.g., what navigational components (e.g., global, local navigation menu) do you plan to include? Give some examples included in each of the components.
4. Page design for the homepage and one of the sub-pages, e.g., page layout, visuals to include, background, text fonts and colors. Provide an illustration of the page design.

Please note that you need to discuss the rationale for the designed information architecture by relating your design to your analyses of the purpose, constraints and audience, and by referencing information architecture theory and Web usability principles.

Your writeup should be no more than 1500 words, and should be presented in a Web format that does not violate the theory and principles you have learned from this course by this point (in terms of both design and coding).

Submit a URL for your work posted to your U of A web space.

Part 2 (20 marks)

Create a prototype of your site's main pages by hand-coding HTML and CSS.

Your site should have a main page (homepage) and approx. 6 sub-pages, including:
- sufficient real/fictional textual content on each page of the site
- information on when the pages were last updated
- some links to web resources that are relevant to the needs of your users
- a disclaimer (e.g., This is not a real site. It was created for LIS 534.)
- at least one image
- a link to your email address
- one HTML table (but not for layout)
- one HTML form consisting of at least 3 different components (e.g. text boxes, radio buttons, check boxes, etc.)

Your site should include DC metadata for all pages, and should be free of level one accessibility violations.

Your website should use HTML to structure the content, and use CSS for presentation and formatting of the content;

Your CSS and HTML should be well structured and commented, should be easy to read, and should validate using the W3C Markup Validation Service.

Write a brief (max. 300 words) reflection on the website design and construction process, e.g., what worked well (or didn't work)? What real-world websites influenced your design choices and why? In hindsight, what would you change about your initial design and/or final prototype? Find an appropriate place on your website to place a link to this reflection.

Submit a URL for your work posted to your U of A Web space.

General Evaluation Criteria:

Demonstrated understanding of concepts (IA, Usability, HTML, CSS)

quality of analysis and design, including clear presentation and logical organization of ideas

connection between user / organization assessment and design

thorough application of web design usability principles at all stages of website design and construction

quality of HTML & CSS (correctness, elegance, readability, etc.)

quality of design and content on the website

thoughtfulness of reflective remarks

attention to assignment requirements

overall professionalism of project