Final Thoughts

It is the final two weeks of the unit and I feel I have learned about issues that will help me considerably in my other design units. Fortunately I have 3 more design units to do and will certainly use the kills I have learned here to overall improve my future website designs.

I think this unit is so fundamental to website design that I am wondering why this unit was not recommended as the first design unit.
I think I was fortunate enough to have studied this unit with a great group of people, great friends!

My tutors were as always first class, but I wouldn’t expect any less from Curtin tutors (no suck-up intended guys).

I have just submitted my final documentation assignment and will submit the cover page for this one shortly. I am now off to prepare for NED24 next SP. I am told it is going to be a bit complicated. I just hope I will get a chance to build a website where I can put my usability skills to practice.

Page Design Tests

I did the page design tests on the employees of the same office but this time I selected members of another department because I thought the previous participants already had an idea of what my project is about and the ‘Get it’ test will not be done properly.

The ‘Get it’ test was successful, everyone got it right! I guess I made sure the site is clear enough after my usability test participants had so much trouble guessing the purpose of the 3 websites I chose.
I generally wanted to know if they understood what the website does and where or how to find information on it. I also asked them their preferred place to start, which was the main menu for most of them.
For privacy reasons I have covered the names of the test participants here but the final documentation does have the complete scans of the page design test papers. You may click on the images to get a closer look.

Card Sorting Results

I should have posted these results a while ago but here they are.
I have separated each top-level category in columns and the rows display the cards that were sorted out by the test participants. The numbers next to each card-row indicate how many participants placed the card under a particular category.


Only a few pages were sorted into categories I did not intend them for, but overall most of the cards were sorted as I expected. Although it was a good learning experience I did not use the results in my final report.
Initially I intended to design a dropdown menu for the site but then I analysed the results of the usability tests and almost everyone liked the menu to the side where they could see all the categories organised in one section. Therefore I changed the style of the menu and since only the top level categories of the menu will be displayed the card sorting results were not used except for one category that was explained in the storyboards.

Final Home Page Storyboard

This may be the final storyboard for the Home page. I have distributed this design on paper with some questions to the same office workers that I surveyed for my research proposal report. The questions are general ‘Get it’ questions and guessing where to find things on this website.

Final Wireframe for Home Page

This is a slightly different version. It still has all the essentials and the searchability of the first design. The only thing different is the header image and I have decided to remove all the ads.

Second Level Pages Storyboards

First Storyboard

This is how the Home page will look and feel. I am not really sure about the whole design I may definitely change it now.