Thursday, April 06, 2006
Design Ideas
When I say front-end I specifically mean the main page, the home page, the start page which sits in the root folder and named index.html.
Essentially with a project of this kind we need to understand whom our target audience actually is, we need to understand the demographic, where these people are coming from and what they are seeking, we need to understand what type of person the site is designed for and what type of content that target audience would be stimulated by.
Moving on then, I feel we can draw up two main target audiences here.
1. Potential students interested in our courses.
2. Employers and other persons with a vested interest in what is taking place within the audio related areas of Technology at BCUC.
Those two items above are the main themes I personally feel this site should cater for. This leads us on to thinking about the actual content we should display in order to meet the above needs.
I think our greatest asset is YOU, the current student, it is exactly what you are engaged with, producing, understanding, creating, examining (enough buzz words) that is to be explicitly shown off on Auxmix.com. The site is a SHOWCASE for your talents and abilities (which will grow in magnitude), which enables (we hope) the above target audience to, for want of a better phrase, "a piece of the action".
So what content do we need?
Here is my list, feel free to add anything:
- Blog (heard a good film recently? - tell everyone why. Found some good audio samples for an animation? Strange noises on the bus?
- Podcast (great idea this, essentially a student time-shifted radio show)
- Moving images (created a cool animation?)
- Music (mixed a tune?)
- Course outlines and module details
- Sponsors (who's helping us out, shops companies etc)
- How to apply
- Ability to create an account profile (this is so we can notify people in
the future by sending a newsletter)
I think the list could go on, though that's enough for starters.
Now I think the way forward for the initial design is to come up with a template that enables the content to be imported into varying content areas. So for example clicking on a link in say the top navigation menu would change the content below, though the nav menu stays the same. Having the design this way allows for expansion and importation and integration of the content required.
Moving on further I know Martin is looking to have some of you design for this, or possibly anyway, but bear in mind you need to finalise what will you are being assessed on as I am acting here as an industrial person who is indicating some site design needs.
Please feel free to open up the discussion, anyone need a blogger invite please e-mail me.
Chris
