Memo
To: Professor Eyman
From: Tyler Anderson
Date: February 15, 2016
Re: Final Project Proposal
Purpose
For the past six years, I have been the head coach and lead sponsor of the Freedom Hockey Club, the designated ice hockey team for the school in which I work. Because the state of Virginia refuses to insure the sport of ice hockey, the governing body of Virginia high school sports, the VHSL, does not officially sanction us. As such, we are technically an independent operation--with limited school affiliation and support—that is responsible for self-funding and self-marketing. Over the past six years, I’ve had countless inquiries from colleagues, reporters, and potential fans about where they could find our season schedule, our roster(s), and our history online. To answer such questions, I had to direct each inquirer though a labyrinth of directories to finally reach our LCPS-sanctioned, outdated and limited CMS page, a page that no longer exists because of the platform’s limitations. For the past six years, I have felt that our lack of web presence has drastically weakened our marketing and our recruiting.
That’s why, for this project, I intend to create the first fully functional and user friendly Freedom Hockey website. I aim to provide our program with a platform to solicit recruits, entice sponsors and advertisers, and curate our burgeoning history.
Ultimately, I hope I can design a website that centralizes all of our program’s information in an effort to galvanize the sense of community that I—and so many former players and parents—have worked so hard to create since 2010. Hockey, at its core, is a niche sport that is often wrongfully under publicized or willfully ignored. By the end of this semester, I aim to design a space that not only celebrates and acknowledges the effort so many wonderful people exerted over the past six years, but that also publicizes and markets our program’s events.
Product
· Strategy-My final product will be an informational website in which recruits, parents, alumni, and prospective sponsors can access for pertinent information on our program. My website will be solely informational, not commercial.
· Scope- My website will offer visitors the ability to research recent scores, current rosters, and past statistics; peruse current and former photos; and pinpoint basic contact information.
· Structure- I intend to have one central “home” page that houses several links that will take visitors to other pages of information.
· Skeleton- Across the top of my “home page”, I’m envisioning a horizontal navigational toolbar that has links to “roster”, “schedule”, “standings”, “photos”, and “alumni. Below the toolbar, I’m envisioning a few pictures and a brief write-up about the club, primarily our goals, mission, and history. To the right of the write-up, I’d love to display our program’s Twitter feed.
· Surface-My website will include an up-to-date schedule, a current roster, current pictures, recent scores, an alumni section, and basic contact information. If time and space permits, I may also include advertising video. Our colors are gold and black, so I’m imagining using gold text on a black background, but if my users find it off-putting prior to launch, I’ll be open to changing the color schemes.
Audience
Primary Audience: My primary audience is going to be my current players, their parents, and alumni.
Secondary Audience: Potential players and their parents. Additionally, ,fans seeking game times and events and local companies interested in sponsoring out club will make up my secondary audience.
To optimize the user experience, I plan on field-testing my website with my current players prior to going live. Fortunately, because I teach some of my players, I can easily ask them to experiment with the site’s configuration and to comment on the site’s aesthetics. Additionally, I can ask my non-hockey playing students what they think of my website. Theoretically, these students comprise my “fans seeking game times” demographic, so their feedback would be valid.
Functional Specifications and Content Requirements
Prior to development and design, I’m going to have to consolidate all of the club’s information into one folder. That means I’m going to have to mine alumni rosters, past statistics, and past records from our league’s website. I’m also going to have to cherry-pick engaging photos from our team’s current Shutterfly website.
In terms of development, I think I’d feel more comfortable registering for a web hosting service than coding this page from scratch. To this end, I need to start experimenting with various web hosting sites, and researching which providers best mesh with my strategy and scope.
If I can’t find an affordable or capable webhosting service, I know I have to learn how to do all of the following with HTML: appropriately space and orient graphics and images; effectively design a horizontal navigational toolbar; construct and space tables, charts, and text boxes.
Similar Sites
http://www.loudoun.k12.va.us/Domain/565
This is a rival club’s CMS page. This is what our old CMS page looked like, and I want access to this page to remind myself want I want to avoid. The domain name is not club specific, the page’s graphics are rudimentary, and I believe the links don’t meet the users’ needs.
http://www.freedomicehockeyclub.com/
Because this is the first website that pops up when users search “Freedom Ice Hockey” on Google—and, incidentally, the club shares the same colors as us—this website will be our biggest “competitor”. Interesting, the club doesn’t state where it’s from, so I’m going to make it a point in our title to state that we are VA based. Furthermore, I don’t like the hidden navigation bar in the left hand corner, and I find the size of the images on their home screen disproportioned. Overall, this is the website I hope to top with my final project.
http://www.freedomhockey.com/
This is the second website that pops on Google when one searches “Freedom Hockey”. Again, I’m not totally impressed with the site’s design, and (again) since this site fails to specify that this team hails from Tampa, Florida, I have to make it a point in the title of my page to cite our hometown: South Riding, VA.
Despite the site’s lack of specificity, I do like it’ H1, it’s logo in the right-hand corner of the screen, and it’s rolling images. Its home page is adequate, but I find it’s links underwhelming.
Tentative Project Timeline
Date / Required Task2/17 / Collect and organize current rosters, current pictures, and current standings
2/24 / Collect and organize past rosters, past statistics, and former alumni information
3/2 / Code the first half of the “home page”
3/9 / Finalize home page and navigational bar
3/16 / Code current roster
3/23 / Code alumni page
3/30 / Code statistics page… present and past
4/6 / Code contact page and schedule page and revise
4/13 / Beta test with current players and parents
4/20 / Revise/ finalize
4/27 / Start working on presentation
5/4 / FINISH
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