Information gathering

Information gather on Newtons three laws of motion and some ideas about the kind of animations I could use to illustrate each law.

Info-graphic Brain storm

For my info-graphic I would like to explore or explain something to do with technology or science. For example something explaining components of a computer, what they do and how they work with each other.

For technology, in terms of style I think something that would contrast the typical look of technological. Something like using flat solid colours or even just a paper texture.

For a science info-graphic I think visually explaining a simple theory of aspect would be quite interesting. For example one of Newtons Laws, I think could produce some very interesting little animations to explain the laws of gravity or motion.

In terms of style I think something very bright and vibrant that would really capture the viewers attention would work very well. As some people may be put off due to the fact it's to do with science.

Assignment 2: Info graphics

Final Website

Rationale

For this brief I chose to do a redesign of the Adversity Gaming website- a New Zealand based competitive gaming community. For the site I wanted to create a very simple minimalistic layout that focused on clarity and easy navigation.

            To do this stylistically, I chose a simple colour scheme that consisted of one shade of dark grey for type and boxes with a shade of red for important titles and links.  I created a simple and functional layout using the 960-grid system. This way my site can fit into a browser with a width of at least 840px. I chose not to add any background images, or unnecessary aesthetics as I found they only distracted from the actual content of the site.

            Most other gaming related websites I researched appeared very dark and often consisting of grunge and/or metallic textures. I chose not to have a dark aesthetic for my site. Instead I went in the complete opposite direction and chose a mostly white colour scheme for the site. This is purely as it reflects the AVT brand better as their logo has a white font with grey and red outlines. This is reflected with a grey toolbar and footer to frame each webpage.

            The aim for my site was to give the target audience the information they require quickly and effectively. Based on my research into the community, I found the most viewed and used area of the site were the forums. The gaming sections of the forums were the most popular, telling me that more focus should be put on the games as opposed to social media, or galleries etc.  I have now introduced a separate games section with published guides/ strategy section and links to the forums. To retain the social media aspect, I included a small fixed toolbar along the top of the page. This toolbar contains account sign in and sign up links, along with this I have included outgoing links to AVT’s Facebook, Twitter and YouTube pages.  .

            To create my site I used DreamWeaver CS6 (HTML5) for all the pages. I used Jquery on the Starcraft II page to get tabs that change the content for the guides.

            Given more time to work on my website I would like to expand the forums. I would like to add some of the actual posts from the AVTs forum, or at least some of the sticky threads. The only other thing I think the site could use is a small profile page, although they weren't used all that often on AVT. A profile could have things like  preferences and settings for forum posts, for example: setting a signature image, profile pictures, maybe links to independant YouTube accounts etc.

          

        

*All screenshots taken on 1600x900 monitor 

Post test

After testing my site on a few people from the appropriate age group, only a few things needed to be changed: An about paragraph on the index page, briefly summarising AVT and what they do and are about. A sign in button along the tool-bar. Also to have the terms and conditions open in a new tab or window.

Website before testing

I have the all the pages for my site, and will now begin testing my site on the target audience. The target audience being young gamers (16-mid 20's) who are more interested in the competitive aspect of gaming. I have a number of friends, some of who are part of AVT, and range from age group specified.

 From my last post I have integrated a fixed toolbar along the top of the pages. These have links to AVTs Twitter, Facebook group and community YouTube channel. I have removed the background gradient as on some pages, particularly those with lots of content (guides section) became too cluttered for what I had intended.

A few screenshots of some of the finished pages

Website progress

Some screenshots of my website in it's current state. I have and will probably continue to try and refine my site to what it only needs, while still being easy to navigate. AVT's current site has a lot of content, however most of the traffic on the site, is in the forum section. Mostly do with the games themselves, so I have tried to make that more predominant. Also I have found that the media section of the site isn't all that useful, as all the photos from there can be found on AVT's Facebook site. Which I can assume means people prefer to use Facebook for viewing photos of events etc, instead of AVT's site.