My Portfolio Site: The Whole Sha-bang in One Post

As another requirement for my instructional website design class, I need to design a portfolio website which will stay with me throughout my IDLT career. So, I"m going to knock out what I can according to Garrett's chapters 3 and 4.

Site Objective: Visitors will be able to form opinions and assess my progress in the IDLT program through clearly stated program and personal goals, a professional biography, and a compilation of my best coursework.

User Needs: A user visiting my portfolio website will need to easily navigate to any subject/material. The material provided as examples of my work need to be accessible or the user needs to be clearly instructed how to access it. It also needs to be visually pleasing, engaging, and light-hearted as the content could easily bore the user.

Audience and Profiles: The audience for this website are professors, friends/fellow students, and potential employers.

1. "Dr. Melissa Nelson" She's an IDLT instructor who really likes to crack the whip over her students' heads. She not only expects her students to understand course material, but to master it: she doesn't let slouches slide! She wants a portfolio site that is navigable and comprehensive in its purpose: however, "she's seen it all before."
2. "Joey Estudiante" Joey is a fellow 1st year IDLT student who, like any IDLT student, wants to become more adept at using technology for educational purposes. He wants to know what I'm up to, but not in a competitive way. He also wants to know a bit about my background to see if we could collaborate on a project later on. He also has a strange fascination with the comedian, "Carrot Top."
   
3. "Mrs. Joanie VonChochie" She works for an educational software conglomerate and wants to hire a well qualified and creative software design manager. She needs to know the quality of my work before entertaining the possibility of interviewing me. She's impressed by clean design, engaging material, and dogs who can balance treats on their noses.

Content and Functional Requirements:

• Content: A professional biography, personal and program goals, and a compilation of my best coursework.
• Function: Easy navigation, a method of feedback (a simple mailto: tag, a feedback form, or a forum), links to external sites (personal interest and for reference), and it needs to be easily updated.
  

User Profiles and Site Features for My Instructional Website

It's nice that I have a "headstart" on my assignment this week: I haven't read the syllabus for about two weeks. It's like finding money in your pants pocket while preparing to wash them. Due to my oversight, I failed to write "user profiles." But before I do that, I want to expand the "user's needs" I mentioned in my previous post because I really wasn't describing their needs as much as their qualifications.
So here are some user needs:

• Learn step by step how to set up a PHP website (including web hosting and database setup)
• Users will need content that is broken up so that it's accessible to a broad range of talents: i.e. be able to skip to where one is comfortable.
• Users will need examples of code and output.

As I said, this website's audience consists of advanced web users, and web designers of all skill levels. Based on this understanding of my audience, I have created three user personas:

1. "Tracy Metatagerty" She's an advanced web user who surfs the web on a daily basis and is comfortable with the technology that allows her to view it. Although she has not designed a website before, she wants to dive in head first, and start a big project.
2. "Craig Domenico" He is a beginner/intermediate webdesigner. He's built several sites for personal use, knows how to setup hosting, and has even used Content Management Systems coded in PHP: yet, he hasn't actually coded using PHP. He wants to delve deeper into PHP so that he'll have more control over his website in terms of content and visual aspects.
3. "T.R. Rowencolum" T.R. has designed many websites and is comfortable designing dynamic websites. However, he has used other languages such as ASP/.NET to build his sites. He wants a quick overview on how to program a PHP website because he wants to add another marketable skill to his resume. He probably doesn't need to learn things step by step: it's more like "fill in the blank" for him.

Content and Functional Requirement:
Ironically, as this website, being instructional, epistemologically falls on the "Content as Hypertext," the content/end-product falls under "web as software interface." In simpler terms, the two bleed into each other and it can be confusing as to what is content and function. And so, I'll mix the two (yet try to keep them somewhat separate).

• I will need to design a site that is navigable depending on the skill of the user. Match content with its relevance to the user: from the home page, a user should be able to skip to content that they need instruction on.
• The website needs to be hosted on a server that supports PHP
• The website will host relevant links to external sites that could provide clarity and/or further instruction: in one location and at corresponding steps/pages that a lesson may apply to.
• A basic introduction to PHP will be needed.
• The instructional content will progress from setting up a page to building a .html template to coding basic dynamic content to coding a photo gallery (am I crazy or what?)
  
• Code and the "final product" will need to be displayed.
  

Chapter 3 and 4: According to My Topic

As I've just posted my topic, I'm going to design it in conjunction with my readings in Garrett. Luckily, I won't have a fully formed strategy or scope just yet, but these chapters will help give my site direction because frankly: I don't know how to do my instructional topic. So content-wise, this site is an open book and this means that I'm going to have to be methodical in my approach: I cannot get caught up in what Garrett calls the "Web as Software Interface" side of design. Why? It's the aspect I'm most familiar with.

What are my site's objectives and what are my users' needs? Off the top of my head, my site objective is to "instruct those who want to design a dynamic photo gallery in PHP." I know Garrett doesn't like for features to creep into a site's objectives, but I think, in this case, I need to sacrifice feature flexibility (i.e. the use of PHP) for conciseness and approachability. I don't want to program it in .NET/ASP or ColdFusion because a) I don't have the time to learn those and b) I don't want to confuse my users. I'll also make the argument PHP isn't necessarily a "feature" because the website itself will not be driven by it.

What are my user needs? They'll be an advanced web user, but not necessarily an advanced or intermediate web designer. They'll need to be able to code websites, and be able to set up their own hosting service. They'll need to know how to set up a database, how to connect a page to a database, and how to program it to identify new files in a photo directory. And these are just off the top of my head.

How will I measure success? If my buddy, Craig, can do it without using a pre-scripted photo gallery! (Not a good metric, but not a bad start)

What is the scope of this project?
I think I can answer Garrett's two questions, "what am I building and what am I NOT building?" rather quickly. I am building website that will provide a foundation for putting together a simple dynamic photo gallery and I am NOT instructing someone on how to build a complicated or "feature heavy" gallery.

Complication: Here's the complicated part of this project: it's a website about a website. Right now, I'm having all sorts of recursive thoughts because what applies to one, the design of the instructional website, applies to the other, the website's content. My brain is spinning right now.

In my next post, I'm going to list my site's feature requirements (and not my topic's feature requirements).

My Instructional Website

As I've contemplated my instructional website, I kept in mind several mitigating factors: do I want my content to be fun and familiar or do I want it to be new and challenging? Actually, these questions arose after I narrowed my topics down to two: but that's neither here not there. The two topics that I've been bandying around are "How to Build a Basic Dynamic Photo Gallery" or "How to Brew Beer." I think it's obvious which questions match with my topics.

Since I've changed my daily routine to attend SIUE, I have pretty much dedicated myself to tackling new challenges. Therefore, I'm going to design my website around the topic of "How to Build a Basic Dynamic Photo Gallery." I have never designed a dynamic photo gallery: a gallery where I could upload pictures into a directory and automatically incorporate these pictures into a gallery. I think it would be helpful to those like me who want to tackle such a project, but don't have a clue (or at least a small one) on how to do it.

Thoughts on Ch. 2

As Garrett builds his conceptual foundation on user centered design, it was obvious that he needed to establish a lingua franca and framework for web design. Dividing this process into five levels which progress from the abstract to concrete, he deftly explains these elements as being: strategy, scope, structure, skeleton, and surface.

As an amateur web designer, I've probably focused more on the skeletal (page layout) and surface (the pretty stuff) elements than the others. Why? Well, it's probably a dance between my instinct and ignorance. I really don't have a unified theory of web design and from start to finish, my approach could be considered haphazard by a professional. However, being an advanced web user and amateur designer, I "just know" how I want the site to come out visually and navigationally. Since I've only designed websites that focus on Garrett's "web as hypertext" meta-divide (content only sites: in my case, restaurant and personal web sites), the strategy and scope aspects were already clearly defined before I got a hold of it. Take for example my personal website, kooz.net. I drew the skeleton before I did anything else. Since its a personal website, I have little strategy and limited scope (both are dictated by my narcissism! Ha!). I focused on the skeleton because I thought it would challenge my design skills: and it did! Even though I don't update it often (which is a content failure), I think I successfully created an accessible and friendly website!