LIS 2635 Final Website PortfolioDecember 13, 2010

Grace Lu

Lu Botany Archives:Documenting our Garden Activity

1

ReportProject Goals:Create a public archives site to document

our family’s gardening activity. Provide educational content to local users

who also have an interest in gardening and botany.

Allow users to search the archive by plant or by year.

Allow users to leave feedback, comments, and questions via an interactive form.

2

Audience:The core audience will be family, friends, and

then local users who find the website via a search engine.

Perception Educational – accessible, thoughtful.Inspiring – creative, joyful, aesthetically

pleasing.MessageThe Lu family appreciates botany and wants to

pass on this archive to posterity for the sake of botanical education and a public family record.

The Lu family encourages gardening and botanical education in their local community.

3

Report

ReportCompetitive AdvantageThis website seeks to rejuvenate interest in

botany and to build a virtual community for local gardeners. A handful of national and local magazines have an Internet presence, but none of them focus on building a forum for local community on the Web. Also, many personal gardening websites are not maintained or have become obsolete due to the lack of a virtual community.

4

ReportPage Layout The page layouts will be minimalistic,

encouraging quick searching and navigation. This reflects the simple purpose of the site: to store digital records that are searchable by two ways and to provide an educational and personal source of family gardening activities.

A wire frame of the home page reflects this simple design. Images are used to show samples of the photos the archives will contain, as well as to create a visually appealing first visit to the Archives that will promote a user’s interest in searching or browsing the archives.

5

Page layout: Wire Frame

Lu Botany Archives

Plants by Year Plants by Name About Us

6

Main image

[to be updated monthly]

Plants by Year – additional info

Plants by Name– additional info

About Us – additional info

Main text

[to be updated with image]

Image for Plants by Year link below

Image for Plants by Name link below

Image for About Us link below

ReportStructure: Labeling, Organization, and Navigation Labeling. There are two menus – one is merely for functionality

and the other is for visual appeal. The first menu is at the top – it is a horizontal navigation bar that is present on every page of the site

Organization. The site is organized by search function – the user may either choose to search by year or by plant name, depending on how they would like to browse the site. There is also an “About Us” page that provides anecdotal background on the owners of the archives. The about page also contains a comment box where users are encouraged to leave feedback.

Javascript was used to add some interactivity. There is a button below the Comment Box on the “About Us” page that encourages users to leave feedback.

Navigation. The user will search primarily by either scanning by year or by plant name. This is the main navigation of the site. As the archive grows, more sophisticated search functions will be considered. But again, the navigation should be simple. See the site map on the next slide.

7

Structure:Site Map

8

ReportAestheticsSince the purpose of the website is simply to

document, clarity and simplicity are of utmost aesthetic importance. There are only two fonts used: Engravers MT and Rockwell. (These are the same two fonts used in this report – Engravers MT for the headings and Rockwell for the body text.) Both are serif fonts that are quite readable and not too small.

The images used for the website were all personally photographed by the owners. They tend to be close-up shots, not cluttered, and simple.

9

ReportTrustThe “About Us” page is primarily designed to

promote trust of the website, along with frequent updates on the homepage of the main image and text (large image and small text box overlaid on the image). Thus, the user will, at least, see that the owners of the site are transparent about their identity (to a reasonable degree), interested in maintaining an active website, and purposeful in publishing a website. Websites that provide ambiguous contact information, have been abandoned, have hidden commercial purposes, or have atypical policies lend themselves to suspicion.

10

ReportSocial DesignThis site will allow subscription to the site’s

main page content via RSS along with user submission of feedback, comments, and questions.

User EvaluationI used a Google form to publish a brief

survey for users to provide feedback.

11

User evaluation

12

The user evaluation survey was created using Google Forms. It was comprised of simple questions to obtain information about what users thought of the site’s structure, navigation, and aesthetics.

This screenshot shows some of the questions on the survey.

User evaluation

13

Here are two sample results from the survey: Both survey responders noted the potential for more organizational structure, but they also

said that it did not obstruct present viewing, searching, and retrieving of information. This would certainly be important to remember as more images and data are added to the archives.

The first survey respondent commented on the lack of a better search function on the second page of the site.

The second survey respondent viewed all the pages of the website and found it easy to navigate and view data. This is probably because it was not cluttered with too many images or information.

This screenshot shows two replies from the survey.