More Reading + Quiz

DUE Wednesday, May 02 – 3 points
(Thursday NOON deadline)

In this assignment, we will be reading about making changes to web sites. The first article emphasizes the importance of focusing on site objectives instead of just trying to make your site cool, and the second and third look at the process behind two real web projects.

  • Great Designers Realign
    This article was published in late 2005, but it is still referenced and cited by many in the web design community. In it, Cameron Moll discusses the importance of site objectives when undertaking a project to improve an existing web site.

  • Carsonified / Think Vitamin Redesign
    Mike Kus realigned the Carsonified web site in July 2009. While I am not personally a big fan of the new design, the blog post does a great job walking through the design process and showing how Mike tied the whole project to Carsonified’s objectives.

  • Erskine Design Redesign
    I consider the current Erskine Design web site to be the best web-design company web sites I have seen. In this article, Simon Collison walks through their business objectives and how those translated into this stunning web site.

Once you have watched or read these materials, 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 material … “:

  1. T/F? Many creative professionals feel the need to continually redesign their web sites.
  2. T/F? Cameron Moll describes the change in packaging from iLife ’04 to iLife ’05 as a “realign”.
  3. T/F? What Cameron Molls calls “redesigns” (which he recommends against) are often justified by appealing to the emotional response to the aesthetics of the existing site.
  4. T/F? What Cameron Moll calls “realigns” (which he recommends) are justified by appealing to site objectives and users’ needs.
  5. T/F? Cameron Moll insists that it is never appropriate to completely refresh the visual design of a web site from the ground up.
  6. T/F? Cameron Moll mentions 31Three.com and MarchOfDimes.com as two examples of sites that successfully realigned in 2005.
  7. T/F? Carsonified decided to move their Think Vitamin blog — previously a separate web site — into the Carsonified web site.
  8. T/F? The design goals for the Carsonified redeisgn were to make the site “striking, beautiful and to buck current web trends.”
  9. T/F? Mike Kus began with hard edged graphic design but then realized that this did not fit Carsonified’s personality.
  10. T/F? Mike Kus saw two book-cover designs at a local bookstore that completely changed his ideas for the Carsonified redesign.
  11. T/F? Mike Kus identified ten different stages of the Carsonified design process.
  12. T/F? The main pages of the Carsonified redesign showcases hand-drawn illustrations of animals.
  13. T/F? The main Carsonified site is not built in WordPress, but the Think Vitamin blog is.
  14. T/F? Erskine Design began as two college students working in their dorm room.
  15. T/F? When Erksine Design redesigned their web site, they wanted to include a blog and import their tweets from Twitter.
  16. T/F? Erskine Design treated their own site redesign project the same as a project for a client, using the same amount of staff and the same project management tools and techniques.
  17. T/F? Erskine Design spent weeks writing their 25-word opening statement.
  18. T/F? Erskine Design built a prototype of their site in a WordPress.
  19. T/F? Erskine Design used their web site to help improve an offline business process, their client inquiry workflow.
  20. T/F? Simon Collison described the Erskine logotype as “focused, professional, and efficient.”

DUE Wednesday, May 02 – 3 points
(Thursday NOON deadline)