Usability & Website Design
This section contains courses that taught me a lot about usability, user-centered design, web design guidelines, interaction design and coding websites (XHTML, CSS, etc). For each course, I give a brief description of some of the assignments I completed and I also showcase at least one sample of my work. Most of these courses involved group work, so some of the activities required group documents. For those samples that are part of a group document, I will note which portion of the assignment that I completed.
If you are interested in learning more information about a particular course, click the full description link where you will be taken to a page with more in-depth details about that particular course. Most samples are in PDF, so if you do not have Adobe Reader, you can download it using the button below.
LIS4277 - Usability Information Systems
Fall 2007
Instructor: Dr. Ian Douglas
This course taught me a lot about usability, user-centered design, and how to go through an entire design process. We had two projects in this course. The main project was to develop an interactive prototype for a mobile game day experience for FSU football fans. This assignment was more than just creating a website. In a group, we had to go through an entire design process. We had to do a brainstorming session, develop a paper prototype, create a report, present our work and showcase our final interactive prototype. A second assignment, which was completed individually, involved completing a heuristic analysis of the Florida State University’s library website.
Skills Acquired
- User-Centered Design Guidelines
- Prototyping
- Heuristic Evaluations
- Usability Testing
Read the Full Description for LIS4277
Samples
- Interactive Prototype - This is the interactive prototype my group developed. I coded the site using XHTML and CSS, bringing to
life the ideas created by the group. This website contains two pictures of cell phones. One is a smart phone and the other is a popular
Motorola Razr. This site was just a page that allowed the group to emulate two phone sizes so we could showcase our prototype in its intended
sizes.
View the Interactive Prototype
- Heuristic Evaluation - This is the heuristic evaluation, or an analysis of a website based on usability and design guidelines.
This is my analysis of Florida State's Library website. The results from the user testing were collected as a group, but the remainder of
the document was written individually.
Download the Heuristic Evaluation (PDF) - (307 KB)
LIS4930-07 - Web Programming PHP
Summer 2008
Instructor: John Marks
I had worked with PHP a little bit coming into this course, but by the time it was finished I felt I had gained a very good grasp on the language. I left this course with an intermediate knowledge of PHP. The course had several small assignments, and two bigger ones, one being a final project. The small assignments were mostly simple programs that worked with loops, functions, variables etc. The larger assignment, a bit more complex than the smaller assignments, was to create a database and a PHP page that would allow a user to delete and add employees to a database. Then there was the final project, which was done in groups. My group and I decided to make a survey generator for our final project. Here is where I learned a great deal about how to use PHP and MySQL to make dynamic websites. I did the bulk of the programming, with my group mates assisting me with planning and figuring out what needed to be done. My group mates also worked out the bugs and helped add comments into the code. Overall, I learned a great deal about PHP from this course and I now feel I have good solid foundation.
Skills Acquired
- PHP
- MySQL
Read the Full Description for LIS4930-07
Samples
- Survey Generator - This is the aforementioned Survey Generator, the final project done by my group. This was the first time I had
to do a coding assignment within a group. For this project, I did the bulk of the programming and syntax. However, we worked together as a
group on the whole thing. We combined our knowledge and strengths to work together to solve the problems we faced.
View the Survey Generator
- Survey Generator Source Code - This is the source code for the Survey Generator. All files included are text files. The files
for the website that the survey generator is embedded into are NOT included in this zip.
Download the Survey Generator Source Code (ZIP) - (15.3 KB)
LIS3267 - Information Science for Information Professionals
Spring 2007
Instructor: Christopher Landbeck
We had several activities in this course, but there were two assignments in specific that focused on usability. The first one was a website critique where, individually, I had to review a particular website focusing on four major design guidelines: proximity, repetition, alignment, and contrast. I also had to review the site based on certain usability guidelines. This was my first website critique and I feel I learned a lot about how to evaluate a website and its design. Secondly, in a group, we were required to design a prototype website that was a redesign of the College of Information’s website.
Skills Acquired
- Usability Guidelines
- Usability Testing
- Design Guidelines
Read the Full Description for LIS3267
Samples
- Website Critique -
This is an evaluation of a website in which I had to review the site using four major design guidelines: proximity, alignment, repetition, and
contrast as well as looking at the usability of the site. This was my first real evaluation of a website.
Download the Web Critique
(PDF) - (28.4 KB)
- Prototype Website -
This sample is the prototype website that I designed for my group. This is the website that we conducted the usability test on. This was the
first site that I really designed that focused on design and usability guidelines. Also, there is the actual usability test document and the
results from the test. Both the test and the results were completed as a group. However, the document showcases the skills the entire group
learned during this project.
View the Prototype Website
Download the Usability Test & Results (PDF) - (34.9 KB)
LIS4301 - Electronic Media Production
Spring 2008
Instructor: Jane Barrager
This course focused on design, and the common rules and guidelines to follow when designing not only websites, but ads, logos, etc. This course focused particularly on four key design concepts: proximity, alignment, repetition and contrast. By the end of this course, I felt I had learned a great deal about design and how to create professional designs. I learned how to create logos (mostly logos just using letters) and websites that focus heavily on the aforementioned design guidelines. One of the major assignments in this class was to redesign a website making sure to abide by all of the design guidelines as well as the guidelines for accessibility and typography.
Skills Acquired
- Design Guidelines
- Logo Design
Read the Full Description for LIS4301
Samples
- Web Redesign - For this web redesign, we had to take a current website that broke every possible design guideline and create a new
layout. This layout had to be created using Photoshop, with each item, text layer, and element on their own layer. This assignment was my first
real attempt at creating a wireframe. Note, that the PSD file is also below which can be viewed in Photoshop so that you can see all layers,
styles, and fonts.
View the Web Redesign (JPEG)
Download the Web Redesign (PSD) - (1.47 MB)