DUE Tuesday, Mar 06 – 4 points
(Wednesday NOON deadline)

This week we will be reading Chapter 4 of the Website Owner’s Manual, in which Paul discusses web design.  This chapter covers a wide range of material, from monitor resolutions and fonts to working with designers and getting design signoff. Once you have completed the reading, you will need to take a quiz of ten true-false questions. (These questions will be randomly selected from the questions below. You can retake the quiz up to five times. Don’t stress about getting 100% on these quizzes: if you get 80% or better, you will be ready to proceed to the next activity and I will give you full credit.)

All questions should be prefaced with an understood, “According to the author of the Website Owner’s Manual … “:

1. T/F? The iPod dominates the MP3 player market because it has more features than all its competitors.
2. T/F? A well-designed web site guides users to the content they need and seduces them to complete calls to action.
3. T/F? The primary gauge for the success of a design is whether or not it meets the personal aesthetic of the web site owner and their boss.
4. T/F? The primary role of design is to enthuse users by creating a positive emotional response.
5. T/F? When talking about the design for a web site, you should refer back to the personas you created in the planning stages.
6. T/F? Red is perceived as a dangerous and agressive color in all cultures in the world.
7. T/F? The best way to test multiple designs is to poll users to generate statistics about which designs they like best.
8. T/F? Design testing works best when engaging with users on a one-to-one basis, not in large focus groups.
9. T/F? Paul mentions his work on the University of Portsmouth web site as a time he implemented a design he did not like because it tested well with the target audience.
10. T/F? Paul describes a design testing exercise called “flash testing” that looks at what a web site looks like without Adobe Flash installed.
11. T/F? Paul describes a design testing exercise called “emotional evaluation” that asks users how a design makes them feel.
12. T/F? Paul suggests offering users two extremes between which to choose in the  “emotional evaluation” exercise.
13. T/F? Paul recommends “design by committee” as a collaborative approach that produces designs that excite everyone on the committee.
14. T/F? Paul recommends that web site owners have conversations about a new design with stakeholders individually, not in one large group meeting.
15. T/F? One example of good feedback for a web site owner to give a designer is, “Move the inquiries section to the top of the page.”
16. T/F? One example of good feedback for a web site owner to give a designer is, “I don’t think our female users will like those aggressive, masculine colors.”
17. T/F? Paul mentions the rising prominence of search engines and RSS feeds as the two factors in the declining importance of home pages.
18. T/F? Because the home page is the first site a visitor will see, it is the first page of the site that should be designed.
19. T/F? The more elements there are on the home page, the less important each one of them is.
20. T/F? Positioning the main branding or logo anywhere besides the top left corner on a web site today makes it harder for users to identify the site and conflicts with their expectations.
21. T/F? To display text in a particular font on a web page in most browsers, the font must already be installed on the site visitor’s computer.
22. T/F? Designers often use custom fonts in Adobe Flash and images, but normally only for headings and not for body copy.
23. T/F? Web designers should only use the 216 colors that make up the web-safe color palette.
24. T/F? Horizontal scrolling makes a web site difficult for visitors to use.
25. T/F? Research in 2006 showed that only 16% of pages with vertical scrollbars were scrolled to some extent.
26. T/F? Designers should fit as much content as possible where visitors can see it without scrolling because studies show that visitors refuse to use vertical scrollbars.
27. T/F? At high resolutions, fixed layouts often have large amounts of whitespace on the side(s).
28. T/F? At high resolutions, fluid layouts often have text that is difficult to read because the individual lines are too long.

DUE Tuesday, Mar 06 – 4 points
(Wednesday NOON deadline)