Group Techies: Update

In Interactive Design Studio, my group is exploring options for building photo galleries and a forum for the GRDE site. We are really excited about the possibility of creating a gallery using javascript because it would eliminate the need for viewers to have a FlashPlayer, make it possible for a lighter out put, plus it’s all standards compliant. As we are doing more research on the idea of a javascript gallery and when it is time to produce it resources like jQuery are going to be so helpful.

Having a forum that is open to future, current, and graduated, FSU design students is also something we are looking into. Currently, we have three functional prototypes powered by, punBB, phpBB, and vanilla, they each have there pros and cons, but right now I think that we are leaning towards using vanilla. It has intuitive navigation and it is easy to administrate and moderate.

We know that producing this new GRDE site is going to take a lot of time and will probably be quite a challenge, but me and my fellow group members are excited and ready to take on the challenge.

Control

Control, is what Khoi says is the biggest difference between print and interactive design. I agree, in print design the designer can control everything that goes into the printed piece. When designing for the web, designers lose a lot this control. Not only does the designer have limited typeface choices, the users can adjust the size of the browser window or increase or decrease the size of the text, and they want to be able to have some control over their own user experience. Interactive design also has multiple states and the designer must consider how the content is going to behave in each of those states. Khoi says, that since the beginning designers have been trying to take back some of the control. A couple examples he gives are, rendering text as images instead of HTML or requiring users to download specific fonts before using the site. These ideas have been mostly rejected, because they make it to difficult for the user to actually experience the site. This brings up another point Khoi made that I think is really important to keep in mind when designing for the web, “Users to don’t learn how to use a site over time”. I think that it is important to remember that we are developing sites that users must intuitively know how to navigate and discover the information that they are looking for.