Chapter 13 Summary

Greg Gehrman and Jake Vorhies

Chapter 13

Designing Electronic Communication

Objectives:

1. Identify the characteristics and features of effective electronic communication
2. Understand the principles of effective design for various electronic media
3. Analyze key aspects of information architecture: organizing, labeling, and navigating
4. Analyze key aspects of effective Web page/screen design: layout, color, and graphics
5. Understand the standards and tools fro designing electronic communication
6. Understand the iterative design process
7. Assess Web sites for usability and accessibility

Characterizing Electronic Communication:

• Interactive and nonlinear: accomplish tasks, sometimes something as simple as accessing information on static web pages.
• Virtual and open: The virtual spaces allow users to move beyond boundaries at will. Standards and conventions are fluid, leading to varied designs and functionality, and often uneven experiences.
• Complex and dynamic: Integrate diverse components.

Types of Electronic Communication:

· Computers

· Cell phones

· PDAs

Web sites and web-enabled environments:

-The World Wide Web is the largest part of the Internet, a huge network comprised of other networks and millions of individual computers. Internet traffic is routed along a number of backbones, which are primary networks owned by organizations and companies.

Audiences and Electronic Communication:

· Reading and Navigating Electronic Communication- Reading electronic media is not simply reading an electronic display of information; instead, it is interactive and brings with it a number of complications.

o Screen and page size- How much the reader can see at one time

o Legibility- How easy it is to read what’s on the screen

o Responsiveness- How quickly should a system respond to users’ actions

o Navigation-How easily can readers navigate the Web site

o Equipment and service- How much are readers constrained by physical realities

· Navigating Electronic Communication- finding different ways to look through the Web site and arriving at the same page.

Principles and Practices of Effective Design:

1. Information Architecture: The Framework that structures content.
2. Page/screen Design: The look and feel of the information in the space on the screen, another mechanism to help users understand information organization context.
3. Content: Is organized and written differently from electronic communication than for traditional print documents.

Information Architecture:

1. Organizing information:
1. Categories of information available to users are determined.
2. Relationships of categories of information are established
3. Pathways through information are created based on judgments about relationships among categories by the designers
4. Points of interaction are established

2. Labeling Information: Labels are pervasive in electronic communication. Labeling information effectively is one of the most important ways that you can assist users of electronic information, because people tend to scan electronic materials for key words.
3. Navigating Information:
1. Menus: Are generally horizontal or vertical lists of links to sections or individual pages within a Web site.
2. Breadcrumb Trails: Are sequential lists of pages that let users know where they are on the site and where they have been in relation to either the site’s home page or their entry point onto the site.
3. Embedded Link: Are links within text that take users to another page or site.

Page/Screen Design:

1. Layout
1. Content:
2. Identification:
3. White Space:
4. Scrolling:

2. Color
3. Graphics
1. JPG image: Joint Photographic Experts Group
2. GIF image: Graphics Interchange Format
3. PNG image: Portable Network Graphic

Developing Effective Content:

· Writing for Electronic Communication

o Be Concise

o Keep chunks of text short

o Use headings and bulleted lists

o Use active voice

o Consider international readers

o Use an “inverted pyramid” structure for organizing information

o Limit in-text links to other sites and provide information about the links you do include.

· Building Credibility

Standards and Tools

· Markup Languages, Scripts, and Programming

o HTML is a system of tags that, when inserted into plain-text documents, tell Web browsers how to display documents.

· Style Sheets and Templates

o Style sheets contain information about elements such as fonts, heading levels, colors, and backgrounds.

o Templates can also be used to manage the layout of Web pages.

· Style Guides

o Include info about the way that particular info is designed and should be maintained.

Understanding the Iterative Design Process

· Planning the Iterative Process- you need to know its purpose and scope, the overall look and feel, the resources you’ll need, limitations you must contend with, and the schedule.

· Analyzing existing sites

o Can cut your planning time by allowing you to identify what works and what doesn’t.

· Creating prototypes of your Web site

o Involves developing mock-ups of ideas for your Web site and brainstorming those ideas with team members, clients, and possibly potential users.

· Coordinating the Process

o Make sure that everyone in the group know what they are doing

Ensuring Usability and Accessibility:

• Understand the opportunities and limitations of the virtual environment and its potential users.
• Know something about the assistive hardware and software available and be aware of how the design of electronic information could impact the technology your audience may be using.
• Concentrate on good design principles and integration rather than on what “cool” things you can do with programming languages, unless those functions help the majority of your audience receive the information and services you are offering.
• Use various methods for providing information so that you accommodate the greatest number of visitors.

Features of Accessible Electronic Communication:

• Provide alternative representation of information
• Use alternative tagging
• Add transcripts and captioning to audio

Individual and Collaborative Assignments:

1. Identify accessibility, comprehensibility, and usability
• Who’s the sponsor?
• Who are the intended audiences?
• How accessible is the site?
• How easy is the site to understand?
• How easy is the site to use?
2. Compare impact of screen size
• What are the differences in screen display?
• What are the differences in the ways content is presented?
• What is gained or lost in the different screen sizes? In content? In convince?
3. Credibility of Web sites
4. Credibility of nonprofit organizations
5. Assess the usability of your university’s Web site
6. Create a prototype for a Web site
7. Consider privacy policies
• How easy is locating the privacy policy?
• Does the site appear to collect information about visitors? If so, what information is collected? How is it collected?
• Does the site appear to share the collected information? With whom and why?
• How can users “opt out” of information collection?
8. Assess Web writing style
• In what ways does the writing conform to principles of effective writing for the Web?
• In what ways does it fail to conform?