Daniel Dean Whittaker

My evaluation of the finnished website

2010-05-20T06:11:00.000-07:00

after completign this website i can see how important user testing is. I have never had the need to contact a energy company or go on a website for energy. So this was well out my comfort zone.

how ever i did gather a lot of information on what people would like to see on an energy website. Like how to save energy and most popular how much appliances cost. So i applied this to my website giving the user a graph to show how much things cost if they where on for a few days. Also to show the companies saving i had a year saving rate that you could save with this company. I feel that this was good way for the user to get information and to show why this company is better. i feel like i killed to birds with one stone in doing this.

With design i wanted to keep it simple to apply to a wide audience. I also tried to keep the theme of green running through the site so that it reflected what the campany is about, "being green". I wanted nice images in the site of greenary and the environment to show and give the site a clean feel which i found alot of users liked the images and even stopped to have a look.

Withb the price plans i wanted it to be a quick selection because i found that noone like to read through price plans to find there match. so to keep it in the green field i adopted the a system where you can choose between a leaf, tree and a flower these represented small medium and large. I feel like this was good good choice to add. Alot of users liked it and said they would remember what their plan was if asked when contacting a company. I feel that this was really good for this type of site where they can be information overload and the user never likes to have that

overall i like the site i produced and think it went down well with users. i would change some of the layout if i had the time because i feel like it con look messy on some pages.

Final user testing

2010-05-13T12:57:00.000-07:00

This site is aimed at adults. For this user test im going to use an age range from 20 to 55. I have 5 people i am testing this site on that are friends of friends and don't know me directly. I done this to get better results.

Mark:
Overall it seem straigt forward to get around but the site just seems to squashed and can be confusing. i think the compare part is really good idea.

Steph:
The buttons at the top (navigation), you can't tell that there to get around and blend in with the site.

Maria:
It's good but it looks a bit squashed. and i would like to see reasons why switching is better besides the mony saving.

Tara:
A tour around a windfarm would be cool to see how they work, i like the images.

Ron:
i think the compare is really good because you can see realisticly what u save.

i took some of these recommendations and changed the site in different ways.
on the about page i changed its content. the content was all about the company and when it was created ext....

i found that people did really want to know about that. So i changed it to about been green. this now contains information about global warming and how it effects us i found this to have a better effect on the user.

user testing

2010-05-03T02:21:00.000-07:00

for my flash site i wanted to make it very easy to use without to much text everywhere.
For one of my pages i included an interactive graph that lets you find out information about appliences and their consumption.

the problem i had is that a few users said theres a lot of text on screen which at first is a bit confusing.

i felt that all the text was necessary.

To get around this i coverd the information about the appliences when they are switched off and only get reveled when switched on.

This has now cut down on text which at first was a bit off puyying to the user.

User Testing

2010-05-01T13:56:00.000-07:00

After using testing i found a few problems withe the company logo, Turnpower. I tried to use a windmill for the T but it just didnt work with alot of people said it looked like Yurnpower so i want for a simple design as you can see on the right.

User Testing

2010-04-06T07:05:00.000-07:00

Hi

Today i've put out various questions asking about peoples personal expierences when using energy suppliers,
Q. Could you find out what you needed easily?
martin (friend) A.well i always find to much information on the page i need and get angry when finding what i need.

Q.Do you find the price settings easy to folllow?
dave (dad)A. No it would be good to know what appliances cost what, cos u never know..

Q. what dnt you like about energy sites?
james. (Brother) A.they can be really boring.

i have different feed back from various people and found that they can be boring with to much information. i am going to add a feature where you can find out what appliances use what. i also am going to create a tariff for different homes going by there size ie.. small, medium, large to make selecting which one suits you the most.

because this site promotes green energy im going to make this site look clean and fresh, to do this im going to use clean colours like white lime green.

My ideas for Alternate Energy Suppliers flash assignment

2010-02-25T06:08:00.001-08:00

My ideas for Alternate Energy Suppliers flash assignment
for my site I've decided to make a site for a wind farm.

What I'm going to consider when creating my site?

After my research I have found that my information has to be to the point because people don't see buying energy as one of the greatest experiences, but I want to make it less boring and as simple as possible.
I want to be as descriptive as possible because I want the buyers to see why going green is best.
I will make this site for people who may hardly use the internet and make my site low tec so flash updates will not be necessary.

2010-02-25T05:38:00.000-08:00

Research: Good Energy
Colour.
Good Energy have all green text which and page tabs which give the site a natural feel. By using the green energy motto and making the site look natural really displays what the business promotes.

Navigation.
Like British Gas this site has a familiar navigation layout with a secondary navigation for extra services.

I would like some of the headers that display they page your on, to be larger. Some of the text isn't easily defined from the quotes the company promotes. Which at times makes your location unclear.

Contents.They give a lot of information and statistics about what there supply and how they improve the planet. “They have a Power Of the People” section which really makes you feel like your joining a community of people and contributing to a good cause. I really like the idea of this section and would consider implementing this in my design

They have a flash content which displays information on different ways they produce energy. This

Theme.

This site isn't really themed and in a lot of way doesn't greatly need it. The clear clean look works well but I would of liked more work on the design.

Audience.
The target audience for this site has a wide. It targets anyone with a home and that pay there bills so this site has to be evenly balanced with easy navigation and basic flash player settings.

2010-02-25T05:02:00.000-08:00

Alternative energy supplier

Research: British Gas

Colour.

The colour scheme of British Gas website is mainly blue to go with the company colours. The text is also blue which gives the site a calming feel. All the links are very clear and stand out. The addition green tabs for other information stand out well against the blue and make these promotions clear and assessable.

Some of the sections have there own symbols next to the words. This also works well because It visually shows you what this service linked with

Navigation.

The navigation is very simple with a main navigation bar and a secondary navigation down the left hand side for extra services. I think this navigation is very easy to use and straight forward.

Contents.

his isn't a flash website, there is a lot of flash content. There's this for example it a flash interactive map where you can see your annual saving with British Gas. I suppose this is unnecessary but does show the saving in a clear and easy way.

Theme.
British Gas has the characters from the adverts and use them in the banners. This really does make the site seem more friendly having funny cartoon characters. I like the way they adopt this theme and the way they use it.

Audience.
The target audience for this site has a wide. It targets anyone with a home and that pay there bills so this site has to be evenly balanced, with easy navigation and basic flash player settings.

Designing for the User

2010-02-06T04:11:00.000-08:00

For my flash assignment we choose our projects out of a hat. I got a flash site based on alternative energy suppliers.

The User
My first thoughts are the users and what they want out of this site. Well for starters I see the users of this kind of site being Quite sensable. So I think that i wont make this site over the top and pack with design because, I feel it will be unnecessary and not need for the consumer.

Theme
My ideas on design is a natural looking site with good content on the subject.

flash comparisons

2010-02-05T10:50:00.000-08:00

After looking at flash sites this week i've seen alot that just concentrate on the visual look. Some just took to long to load, others was just unnecessary and was way over the top. I did find this site http://www.mono-1.com/monoface/main.html, i liked this site because it was fun, plain and quick to load. http://www.gettheglass.com/ One of my class mates mentioned this as been a greate looking site but just not worth the wait. I can see after looking up these sites that some designers just try to impress with flash websites but alot of the time it can be done with keeping it easy to use and not making the user wait for hours at a time just for it to load again.

Designing for Dynamic Content

2010-01-28T09:04:00.000-08:00

HI, Welcome to my first Blog,

Today we was shown various images of user interfaces. We was asked to question, user interfaces and ask why it's the way it is? and is this the best way to design it?

We was shown a cooker as a good example. But there is a conflict of design and usability. This shows that some times usability can suffer for space and design.

My Computer

When I first thought about this i was reminded of my own computer at home. The off button is located at the top of the tower. Although It's well lit, i constantly keep turning off my computer when i don't mean to. this made me relise that there are alot of bad designs out there and acknowledging them makes me more aware of bad designs.