March 2009 Archives

Compared to the current website, I like the mock-up designed by Dr. Jerz much more. Pictures are a great way to break the monotony of type, and the lack of big, white spaces makes the website seem a lot more substantial. The games are also a great feature and will help give students an entertaining reason to stay on the site (or visit it at all). The Speak Out! Forum is also a cool idea; I like the idea of giving students a place to express their views on issues, and including pictures would help the student body get to know each other visually. Of course, that could be a bad thing if someone gets offended by another person's remarks, but that's the risk said person takes when publicly expressing opinions. The best thing about this mock-up is that it seems simple enough to attain in our Media Lab class. Aside from the game, which would probably be Flash, this looks like a bunch of simple HTML work that wouldn't take a website design expert to build. I think the best thing about it is that it seems to present all of the information from the current issue right on the homepage instead of having it buried within the website like our current site. I think that is one of the biggest flaws with the setup of our current site.

Overall, I support it; it's dynamic enough to look like the online version of a newspaper.

http://www.swftools.com/tools-details.php?tool=1861503200