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MAT 235 - Web Design 3: Site design and Architecture

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PROJECTS

Communication Brief and Information Architecture

PART 1 - CREATIVE/COMmunication BRIEF (Due 3/4)

As a team, write a creative/communication brief that describes your project and outlines its goals and objectives. The communication brief will help to organize your thinking, clarify your objectives, develop your intended look and feel, and provide you with an design plan. The communication brief formalizes the information that you have gleaned from your research and from your client interview and survey. Your notes from the interview and answers to the survey questions will form much of the content of your brief.

How you write and organize your creative brief is up to your team. You may consider including the following information/sections:

Project Summary: Provide a summary/overview of the project. What are the primary reasons for the design/redesign? Describe relevant general information and/or background information.

Objectives: Specify the communication objectives of your project. What are the website goals? What are the key messages?

Audience: Profile the target audience for the website. Who is/are the typical user(s)? What do the users care about? What will they want to do on the site?

Perception, Look, and Feel: Describe how the website should be perceived. What should users think and feel about site/organization? What are the important branding considerations? Describe the intended look and feel of the website.

Requirements and Functionality: Describe what users will do on the website. What are the action-oriented requirements of the site? What do users want to do (user-oriented goals)? What does the organization want them to do (business-oriented goals)? What are important usability considerations? Describe how the website will work, what it will do, and how users will use it.

Strategy: Describe how your design will address communication objectives. How will important messages or action-oriented items be conveyed? What problems should the website/design solve and what solutions are proposed? What will be the measure of success?

PART 2 - User Personas and Scenarios (3/11)

As a team, create at least two user personas and scenarios to include within your communication brief and IA documenation (you may wish to reference these when discussing the target audience within the brief).

How you create and design your user personas is up to your team. You may wish to consider and imagine the most typical users of a site and then create user personas that include information such as the following:

User Persona:

  • First Name and/or Role (e.g. "Larry - The Student')
  • Demographic Information (age, gender, occupation, etc.)
  • Character/Description (personality, goals, motivations, frustrations, etc.)
  • Tech Ability/Savvyness (web/computer/site experience)
  • Context of Website Use (how, whey, and why would they use this site)
  • A photo, icon, or represenative image. Note that most user personnas include a photograph to visualize and distinguish the personas from each other. This helps give your user a 'real' identity and makes the job of addressing the 'user' more concrete and less impersonal and abstract.

User Scenarios/Task Analysis:

  • Included with your persona, imagine 2-3 different "typical" scenarios in which your user might use this site. Why are they visiting the site and what objective(s) do they have and/or task(s) do they want to accomplish in each scenario.

PART 3 - Information Architecture (3/11)

As a team, design the information architecture for the website. Consider site objectives, user wants and needs, user tasks, and business/organizational goals in determining how to organize site content and structure information.

At minimum, include the following information/sections:

Navigation and Architecture: Within your brief, you may wish to reference your IA documentation and describe your planned navigational scheme/menu and information architecture. How do you plan to organize and structure the content/information on the website? How will this content be navigated/linked together? What will you name/label the content sections? What naming conventions will be used for the pages/content?

Content Outline/Inventory: Specify the content that will be included on each page of the website. Describe all the elements (text, photos, graphics, audio, animation, and any other assets) that will be delivered on each page. Which elements will be global (on every page) and which will be local (unique to individual sections and/or content pages).

Site Map/Flow Chart: Provide a well-designed site map/flow chart that illustrates the content and navigation of your project.

Wireframes/Page Schematics (Note: Wireframes are now optional within the IA package, but ulimtately required as part of the creative invesitations you will do as a team): Provide wireframes that detail the visual arrangement and intended structure of the information on your pages.

Deliverables:

Each member of the team should link to and/or include the communication brief (due by 3/4) and information architecture (due by 3/11) on their sketchblogs. Also, one formal, final PDF version of the combined Brief and IA document should be e-mailed to the instructor (by 3/11) who will forward it to the client for review and feedback.

RESOURCES:

Creative/Communication Brief:

User Personas:

Information Architecture: