More related images and inspiration

Possible Structures

Alicia and I chose our favorites of the possible page structures. Like the stars?

Barbie McClure

Barbie is 23 years old. Her grandmother’s house was recently destroyed by a tornado. As a result of the damage, her grandmother’s collection of paper dolls were ruined. Barbie wants to buy a new set of paper dolls for her grandmother. She also has some photographs that survived the tornado that she wants to preserve and share.

Barbie will be interested in pursuing the Buying page as well as the Community page.

PATH ONE BARBIE MCCLURE:

home > buy > browse > category > figures > dolls > paper dolls

PATH TWO BARBIE MCCLURE:

home > community > photos > submit

Ed Walker

Ed is a 55 year old toy collector interested in condensing his collection of cowboy memrobilia. He is also looknig to expand contacts with other toy collectors, and he loves to tell stories. He has a slight aversion to the internet, but he knows it is a good communicative tool.

Ed will be interested in pursuing both the Selling page as well as the Community page.

PATH ONE ED WALKER:

home > community > message board > submit

PATH TWO ED WALKER:

home > sell

Sitemap

To suggest

 Andy Warhol meets Mr. Potato Head

Gary Taxali meets Cracker Jack

The audience should feel: nostalgic, young again, comfortable

The quality of the Web site is: simple, playful, classic

The design, visually, is: half-tone, homespun, spot color, “loved”

1950s Toy Adverts

Here's a little inspiration for our Web site.

A video of "Lost Toy Commercials"

Timeless Timewarp

My partner and I decided to take on the task of redesigning Timewarp Toys. Follow this link ONLY if you have no precondition to epileptic seizures.

The idea is - vintage toys, buying, selling, and learning. But you wouldn't know that by the site. Trust me, it is a bit trippy.

While this site looks like an intergalactic mushroomfest, here are some of the sites that are related, and it seems that they do the content management a little better:

Grasshopper Toys - while this may not be ideal, the navigation is a lot easier to deal with

ebay - although it is not very content specific, the function is similar

Livejournal vintage toys - the purpose is very different, but I believe the photography could be useful

And here are some sites along the same vein that, just like timewarp, have more than a few issues to work out. Basically, if we get a D in this whole Web design thing, we would be the best vintage toy site on the net:

Where the Toys Are - site for a physical store, but their online content mimics Timewarp

Toy Info - at least this one has an alphabetical order

Question

I was just wondering, do you think all of these tools like dialogue boxes and global search bars are just lazy shortcuts, or do they serve some higher purpose that designers couldn't solve otherwise?

Readings and thoughts

Sorry, Andrea, I couldn't find reading four. You may have a broken link, or there may be something wrong with my computer.

Recipe for the successful Web site: the best thing I got from this reading is NOT to design Web sites for everyone. design it for your audience. while we may think that this is only true for of-line media that is not geographically accessible to everyone, the Web becomes increasingly specialized. that is, unless you are google. by the way, this site has a GREAT set of links.

Order of Order: nice name, to start. but I was sad to see that AIGA does the cheesy thing where you make the first letter of your article huge. I find this sad. 

Contently speaking, I love the idea that we can arrange the world exactly how we want it. I wonder what dewey decimal would have to say about that. but truly, organization is so personal. this is why search bars are so popular. if only I could get one of those for my closet.

Designing Interfaces: sorry for all you anonymous, non-KU design school people, I don't have a link for this reading. and it is much more complex and technical than the others, so I won't try to sum it up for you. I will attempt to extract some nuggets.

1. Think in the perspective of the user. Run through the site in their shoes, not yours.

2. Keep your viewer comfortable. Don't change the setting. When you are dealing with complex information, don't worry about getting bored. Worry about getting lost.

3. There are so many mechanical tools used in Web design to direct a user, eg: scrollbars, escape hatches, breadcrumbs, dialogue boxes and unlimited color without fear of printing costs, that it may even make you feel like God. However, with all of these controls, we do have a lot of competition.

4. Sequences are tricky, because people like to know where they are in relation to "finished." So, give your user a reference point, always.

In addition to the readings, I'll be keeping a list of sites that inspire me. Here goes nothing:

MoMA - very elegant and simple. navigation is effortless

Tlbox - a tool for Web designers, both content and construct

iTunes - even though it is not a Web site, this program has taught us all a LOT about content organization

Moodstream - you can actually create mood boards with this site. Great ad for getty, and well-organized, too.

TED - everyone loves TED. I love TED not just because he is cute and well organized. I also appreciate the fact that it loads a lot faster than any other site that won a Webby.

Mercedes-Benz - the interactivity is amazing on this one

Content is KING! or whatever

Browsing through the blogosphere, I came across many opinions, many strong opinions, about Web design. It seems that everyone is an expert on how Web design should be done, as they should be. Isn't this stuff just designed for us anyway? So if I like it, it must be good design.

While I believe this is true, we must remember that there is a whole slew of hits on company Web sites every day. And you know what, most of them are useless. 

Web sites exist for a reason, whether it is to sell products or get people's eyeballs on the ads, someone is paying for that domain name, and the (usually) have a good reason for it.

Good design doesn't just get eyeballs on the page, it controls the direction of they eye, the location of the click, and so on. Makes you feel powerful, huh?

What I am trying to say is this: quality not quantity. You may get a lot of hits on your site for pasting up the latest celebrity crotch shot, but what will you do with those hits? Will you make money? Bring about governmental reform? Quite a task