TCO 285 Fall 2002

Final Exhibition of Knowledge

TCO 285

Spring 2003

FinalExam

Instructions

Welcome to the TCO 285 Final Exam. This examination is designed to evaluate your current level of knowledge and skills in web design. There are four sections in this exam that cover everything we have discussed in the web design portion of our class. This exam is worth 200 points toward your final course grade.
Create and link a new page off your website titled “Final”. Please complete this exam electronically and save the file as “lastname_final.doc”. Link this exam file (.doc) to the Final page when you are done so that I can access it and grade it. You are free to add pages or lines as needed to answer questions. You will also create a Visio file and an HTML file; link these to the Final page as well. For the Visio file, save it as a .jpg (in Visio) and link it to the Final page.
You may use any and all resources available to you, except you may not communicate with each other either in person or electronically while completing this exam. Contact me if you need to!
This final exam is due (posted) on your site no later than midnight, Friday, May 2, 2003.

Section I – Differences between Print and Web Design & Mosquito Control – 60 points

Jakob Nielsen wrote an article about the differences between print and web design. His article is located at:

Other references on this subject can be found at:

Indeed, the process of designing content for web distribution is markedly different from that of print distribution. This section will allow you to demonstrate your knowledge of how web design differs from print design.

A Case Study in Print to Web Distribution

Like Macon, Georgia, the town of Wilbraham, Massachusetts faces a mosquito control problem each spring and summer. The town of Wilbraham contracted with the Department of Entomology at the University of Massachusetts to accomplish a Mosquito Assessment in the spring of 1997 and then launched a town-wide treatment plan early that summer. They compiled a document summarizing their mosquito control guidelines and distributed it to townspeople by mail. You can find the town’s original document on mosquito control at this site:

Now that a few years have passed, they would like to take the content from this document and place it on a page (or multiple pages) of the town’s website.

As a new employee of the town of Wilbraham, you are asked to evaluate this material for web development. Your supervisor asks you to do the following:

  1. Write a 4-5 paragraph explanation of how this content will need to be formatted for web distribution and the process you will use to do this; be careful to explain how it will differ from the print design, as some council members are not persuaded that additional websites are necessary
  2. Create a flowchart of the intended content
  3. Create a one-page prototype of a mosquito control web page for the City Commissioners to review (build an actual .htm file). You can build more than one page, but only one page is required for this exam.

Based on the quality of your work, the town will decide to commission a new addition to the town’s website to distribute information on mosquito control.

Write the explanation (Word document), develop the flowchart (Visio; save as .jpg), and build the prototype web page (in Dreamweaver) and post all 3 to your personal ERGWEB site on your Final.htm page.

Section Two – Principles of Design Essay Responses – 50 points

II.Web Design Considerations

Jakob Nielsen said that most users visit websites to do one of the following functions:

  • Compare/Choose: 51%. Evaluate multiple products or answers to make a decision.
  • Acquire: 25%. Get a fact, get a document, find out about a product, download something. (Note: Morrison et al. use the term "find" to refer to these tasks, but I prefer the term "acquire" to differentiate the goal from the method, as discussed above.)
  • Understand: 24%. Gain understanding of some topic; this generally includes locating facts or documents.

Visit at least ten different websites and document your purpose for visiting them as one or more of the above functions. What was the primary reason you visited these sites? What do you think he means by these 3 categories of visit functions? Why is this important for you to know as a web designer? Explain in 4-5 paragraphs. Don’t forget to document the sites you visit (tell me the urls.) One suggestion: format the sites you visit (their urls) and your purpose in a table (in Word, not html.)

Section III. Page Usability Evaluation -- 50 points

Choose a homepage (other than your own) to use for this exercise. You might want to try evaluating a corporation’s homepage, a site with entertainment info, or a homepage from a popular website that interests you. Using Nielsen’s Ten Guidelines for HomePage Usability, evaluate the page you have chosen. Give the page a point for each guideline followed. In 4-5 paragraphs, explain your evaluation (guideline by guideline) and provide the numerical point score. Don’t forget to list the url so that I can view the page as well.

Section IV – Basic Web Design Knowledge – 40 points

The table below contains typical web page components or design issues on the left, and a blank space for writing about the effective principles of web design on the right. Carefully consider how the design principles relate to each web page component or issue. Organize & complete the following table by writing in explanations of how design principles apply to each component. Write as much as you feel necessary to explain the relationship between principles of design and each issue.

Feel free to modify the table format (in other words, don’t unnecessarily spend time trying to fit your text in if it is easier for you to change the table specs.)

Basic Principles of Web Design

Interface Design

Color
Text & Typography
Page Design

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