Website Design Planning
From ElateWiki
Oftentimes, e-learning instructors build websites to supplement an online learning experience. The following are some issues to consider for prototyping a site.
Contents |
General Descriptions
SITE’S PURPOSE / MISSION STATEMENT:
MAIN SITE USERS:
• Who are main stakeholders? Secondary and tertiary stakeholders?
• Who are your main competitors in the world?
DISCLAIMER:
• What legal disclaimers will the site use to protect the use of its information (e.g. as information only and not for advisement)?
• What is the site’s copyright policy? Creative Commons licensing? Other?
POLICIES:
• What are your policies for use? How have you written this to protect the institution against potential lawsuits? • Who owns the information that is posted to the site?
In-Depth Design
FUNCTIONS:
• What information should this site offer? How will information be “ingested” into the site? How will it be used? What privacy protections are there?
• What services should this site offer?
• What contacts?
• What partnerships?
NAVIGATIONAL STRUCTURE:
• What will the user experience be in coming to the site?
• What are top-level types of information that should be readily accessible?
• What types of archives should be maintained?
• What on-campus links will the site go to?
• What off-campus links will the site go to?
INTERACTIVITY:
• How will users interact with the site owners?
• How will users interact with each other?
• What information will be kept permanently? What user identifiers will be kept?
• Would you like a blog part? (This is an authored part that allows people to post comments and replies but not to change any of the original posts.)
• Would you like a wiki part? (This is a community authoring tool that allows people to co-write on shared topics or to start new pages.)
CONTENT AREAS:
• What columns will you have?
• News items?
• Informational resources?
• What file types do you want to have launchable? Text? Graphics? Audio? Video? Simulations? Games? Music?
• A downloadables page
• What will the tone of the writing be?
DESIGN LOOK AND FEEL:
• What main messages would the design convey?
• What font would you like?
• What logo?
• What colors? Color palettes?
• What main over-arching design? Overarching metaphors?
• Will the institution of higher education be branded at all in this design?
• Selected taglines and messages
• Professional stock photo images? Internally created images with releases?
URL:
• What URL would you like?
• Would you like the university to be part of the name?
HOSTING:
• Would you like this site hosted at a third-party site?
• Would you like this hosted on campus?
SECURITY CONTROLS RE: ACCESS:
• Will part of the site require membership for participation (to protect access and to ensure student access?)
• What parts will be public? What parts will be private and why?
BACK-END REPORTING:
• What information would you possibly need about users of the site? (Aggregate data may be used to help you maintain and redesign your site for greater usability. There are free tools that may be put on the site to capture some of this data.)
KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT:
• What do you see as the information flow of the site? What types of information should users be able to post to your site? Text? Audio? Video? (These latter two will be “heavy” for the site in terms of memory and archival…and would be harder to track contents unless you have a person monitoring the site.) Information flow is part of keeping a site alive…as is the interactivity. The point is to make this site an end destination.
• What policy will you have for aging out contents?
• What feedback loop will you design to make sure that users can tell you about incorrect or other types of contents that should be revised?
WEB MASTER INTERFACE
• What controls do you want your webmaster to have?
LIVE, SYNCHRONOUS EVENTS
• What possible live events might your site host?
• What sorts of live interactivity would you possibly want to design for the site? How may participants connect with each other? With the guest speaker or facilitator?