P4 - Create the planned interactive media product.
Click here to access my website.
https://jridgewaybishop.wixsite.com/fryderykvenue |
M3 - Create a graphical user interface combining media elements with user activity
HTML or Hyper Text Markup Language is a coding language that is often used for the creation of websites. It is very suitable for this function as it has a lot of flexibilty in terms of what you can design and buld using it. It is also useful because it can be used alongside CSS (Cascading Style Sheets). CSS is another language that is very useful as a stylistic tool that can be utilised when doing such actions as changing a font, a text colour, or image proportions.
Here is me working through an online HTML and CSS course on the coding website CodeAcadamy.
For my interactive features that are present on my site I opted to make a form that a user can fill out if they want to apply for a job at the venue plus another interactive form for artists that want to perform at the venue. As well as a ticket ordering system that gives a price and a description of the show, before being linked to a secure paypal screen where users of my website could if they wanted to pay me the money for the ticket.
Below are a series of screenshots that go through various parts of my website design.
To navigate my website I decided that my audience would find a navigation bar across the top of my page the most useful thing. I decided this because it gives a large area in which the text for each link can be very large and clear to see. This is also a typical convention of most website GUI navigation systems. Having a well known system is very important when creating a website as many people find that working with things that they are used to creates a more positive experience for them. This simplicity will should also stop users from giving up midway through trying to buy tickets because it should be a straightforward process.
D2: Demonstrate optimisation techniques across the interactive media product
Websites are often difficult to navigate, and can be quite inaccessible to some members of society. Therefore through out the creation of my interactive website I have considered carefully these peoples struggles. These people who can sometimes have a very hard time reading especially off a screen. To address this, during the creation of my website I ensured that not only were my buttons and site links large and in clear blocky text, but also ensured that at no point did my text colours contrast. As I know that contrast can make legibility a lot more difficult.
And thats not all. On my quest for HipHop inclusivity
A potential issue that someone noted who had seen the website was that on one of my pages the heading was in too dark of a colour, this was an issue as it made legibilty that much harder. I immediately changed this to a much more vibrant colour as I thought that it was a major issue that some of my text, especially for a heading was so difficult to read.
I also considered the issue of people being unable to read English or English being a second language. This means that they will find it harder to read and understand what I have written. Bearing in mind that 9598 students at Cambridge are non UK nationals and that the highest number of non UK nationals come from china, a non English speaking country, we can easily see that this is a definite issue that must be addressed (https://www.internationalstudents.cam.ac.uk/applying/global-community/international-student-data). To deal with this I ensured that my writing consisted of short calls to action, that with a simple translation tool or basic understanding of English anyone should be able to follow. If I had a better understanding of how to code I would try and implement a translation tool on my website. I have seen this on others and I think it would really help people to use my website and visit my venue.
The next thing I had to consider was of course the fact that someone with a slow internet connection might have a difficulty in accessing all parts of the website. Therefore I used minimal images as loading them can take its toll on the internet. And when I did use them I made sure to compress them to a size that is reasonable. The compression I used is called JPEG. Developed by the Joint Photographic Experts Group which is where it derives its abbreviated name is a type of compression. It is a form of lossy compression which usually would not be ideal however it is a well know and oft used compression type because it is minimally lossy. In that not too much is lost, giving you high quality images at small file sizes, and therefore small loading times.
The next thing I had to consider was of course the fact that someone with a slow internet connection might have a difficulty in accessing all parts of the website. Therefore I used minimal images as loading them can take its toll on the internet. And when I did use them I made sure to compress them to a size that is reasonable. The compression I used is called JPEG. Developed by the Joint Photographic Experts Group which is where it derives its abbreviated name is a type of compression. It is a form of lossy compression which usually would not be ideal however it is a well know and oft used compression type because it is minimally lossy. In that not too much is lost, giving you high quality images at small file sizes, and therefore small loading times.
In the interest of catering to people with slow internet I put a 20 minute time limit when you buy tickets. As the payment feature requires a time limit I thought I may as well make it as long as possible so that if it is slow someone doesn't have to keep on restarting the payment process every time it times out.