Response 8_Photoshop

While watching Scott McCloud's TED talk on comics, I really liked one sentence in particular, "...a monitor is just as technically limited when looked at as a page, but not when looked at as a window."

 I'll admit, that sentence coupled with the picture above, blew my mind a little. It also made me think back to the first week of class and our exercise, "the medium is the message". I don't believe that a page is necessarily limiting, it is just another means through which to communicate.

Comics, as presented on paper, have an established order. When a person reads the funnies in a Sunday Telegram, he knows he should read the panels left to right, top to bottom. The fact is however, the author of the comic has no control over how the user consumes the material. How many times have you seen a comic strip, but instead of reading from the beginning, your eyes immediately skip to one of the later panels. Although you may go back to the first panel and read through the strip, you still have consumed the information in a way not intended by the author. A monitor would transform the delivery of a comic and other information. Instead of presenting stationary information all at once, there is more control over the timing, sequencing, and movement of delivery. Authors now have more control over how the user consumes the information. This same control impacts how users are drawn into the information however. There definitely is something to be said for the value that this capability adds to the presentation and thus the user experience, for instance, like being able to reflect a change of direction that the story takes.

Or creating a perpetual story that could really go on and on and on without the user having to "start over" in someway (like going back to the top of the page)

But I think there is also something to be said for knowing what you're getting into. Would you start a book without knowing how many pages is it? After watching a movie for 3 hours that's still going, would you still be uninterested in how much longer it will go?

Not many people make blind investments. Whether they be investments of money, energy, or time... people generally want to know what they are getting into before diving in. A person can look at a page and immediately gauge how long it will take them to consume the material. Based on this estimate, the user will continue forward or decide that it isn't worth it. With infinite scrolling panels like the image above, authors control the experience more, but it is important to still inform the user about what that experience is going to be like.

Reading Response 7

While reading this week's material I kept relating it back to my project with the Boys and Girls Club.

After reading the chapter on typography, I went and looked at the club's current site to see what needed to be improved upon. The following is a screenshot of the homepage. I would definitely recommend a change in typeface based on this reading. Also the use of italics and gray font color make reading the page that much more inconvenient for the user. There is also an inconsistency in typeface itself. The logo uses one typeface, the chunk of descriptive type looks like Bookman
 Old Style, and then I also think I see Times New Roman for the donation section as well as Arial for a link to the newsletter. The page needs some more uniformity and typeface appears to be a great place to start!

The second chapter of "Information Architecture" focused my attention a bit more on the usability. I began to think about who will be accessing the site: mostly parents. It is important that parents are able to easily navigate through the content and learn about what the club offers. There is no need for a lot of frills or flashy add ons. Shooting for "informatively simple" will be the goal. Also, one of the main requests made by the club is that the site is easily edited. Not only should the average parent be able to access and use the site, but also in-house employees as well as interns will be making changes in the future. So keeping the programs user friendly and easy to learn is extremely important.

Reading Response 6

The chapters assigned from Digital Foundations about layouts and attracting attention on a page got me thinking about all the different eye patterns I have learned throughout my coursework. I have encountered three different patterns in three different courses. This semester I am taking an E-Business & E-Commerce class in which we are learning about search engine advertising. A controversial activity many companies like Google and Yahoo are incorporating into displayed search results are "Paid Inclusions". Many search engine users believe that the list of links generated on a page are entirely the result of an organic algorithm. This is not always the case. Many search engines sell rankings based on a proven "F" eye pattern.

The pattern suggests that the majority of users will read the first 2-3 links while continuing to scan down to the bottom page. Based on this diagram, companies agree to participate in paid inclusion ranking which will guarantee that the link to their site will appear in one of the "hot" areas as illustrated on a Google results page below.

The other pattern I have encountered in class is the Gutenberg Diagonal. In a course I took called Advanced Professional Communications, we learned about design layouts for content which is evenly distributed, like a block of text in a professional document.

The Diagonal proposes that the the content can be divided into four quadrant which the eyes sweep down and across. Gutenberg explained that the weak and strong fallow areas are outside of the natural reading gravity and receive the least amount of attention. In this pattern, the most important information would be placed along the reading gravity path; so perhaps a logo in the upper left and contact information or a link in the lower right.

The last pattern I have come across in my studies is the "Z" Pattern. While taking an advertising course we briefly went over layout design when the content is not just text and there is a visual hierarchy for which the designer is aiming.

This pattern is used when there is information the designer wants to be easily seen first (aka the start of the visual hierarchy). The idea is, if everything on the page is equal than nothing will in fact stand out and the message is lost. So while taking this "Z" eye pattern into account, the designer usually incorporates three visual levels. The first is the primary level which should draw the reader in and capture attention, like a headline or tagline. As the eyes continue to move along the pattern, the primary level should lead into the secondary level. The purpose of this level is to continue drawing the reader's attention toward the main context which is located in the tertiary level. Chances are if the reader has engaged with the primary and secondary levels enough to make it to the tertiary level, he or she is interested enough in the topic to also engage with this level and consume the details of the message.

It will be very interesting to hear the patterns associated most with web content (other than search engines) and if there is another emerging eye pattern specifically for a scroll-able computer screen.