What you will find as the Expert!!
This is a common issue that you will come up against. You need to educate your clients to the fact that you are the professional in this area and that they are paying you for your experiences and knowledge.
At times you may find that the client explain's a set of designs that appear to be logical in their appearance, however, in practice are impractical and in extreme situations, they are not implementable.
It is the time that you spend at the design stage that saves you time later!
When with your client the expression of the desired design can get lost in translation, you may interpret things slightly differently to how they intended it.
Close your eyes, clear your mind.
You are standing in a field, in the distance are some mountains, there is a tree in the field, underneath the tree are some animals.
Lets discuss the result! (5 min's)
Here is an example of tackling the design of a webpage, it is well worth remembering that in your situation, you should think about your ability and the site that you can create in your assessments.
Balsamiq
Play around with the mockup editor that you have found, or play around with others to create a simple design of a page or pages for a website that you could use as a CV or self-promotional portfolio.(25 min's)
Identification of need: nature of interactivity eg online transactions, static versus dynamic; client needs and user needs eg image, the level of security, development timescales, support, maintenance contracts, costs, visibility on search engines; end user need eg appropriateness of graphics, the complexity of the site, delivery of content.
The client is the person/organisation who runs the site for their own gain be it monetary or membership They need you to design a site that will promote their wares
The user needs to be persuaded to come to the site and then return again and again It is hoped that they will ‘Bookmark’ the site and tell others to use the site
Can anyone access the site and for most commercial sites this is the case Is there a need for passwords at the start or for special sections?
These need to be decided with the client at the start of the project and should be written down and agreed by both parties. Failure to do so could bring about legal action where both sides rely on spoken text to try to prove who is right. This could be very costly Support and Maintenance Contracts need to be agreed at the start to ensure that both parties understand what is required Pricing is difficult until the developer has produced a number of sites for various clients charging can be
Other elements are likely to be
It is key that every effort is made to ensure that all users are considered in the creation and design of a website. Users to the site may suffer from disabilities that are common, such as colour blindness and blindness. It is your responsibility as the developer and designer to take this section of society in into account when planning a site.
There is a number of legislation that covers this area, this includes, The Discrimination Act.
Information for developers can be found in the following areas,
WAI = Web Accessibility Initiative.
Bobby Compliancy
Easy win's in ways to make your webpages and sites accessible to all would be to include the following,
Meta tags - These tags are used to allow web crawlers to index pages accordingly. Meta Tags look like the following,
<meta charset="UTF-8"> - This outlines the character set that is used on the page
<meta name="description" content="Free Web tutorials"> - This is the description of the content on the pages
<meta name="keywords" content="HTML,CSS,XML,JavaScript"> - This is the keywords that best describe the site and are used as part of the indexing of the site
<meta name="author" content="John Doe"> - This is the creator of the site
The information covered on this page covers the knowledge and understanding linked to the criterion in the table below.
| Links to Assessment Criteria | Description |
|---|---|
| P4 | using appropriate design tools, design an interactive website to meet a client need [CT1] |
| M2 | explain the tools and techniques used in the creation of an interactive website |
| D2 | discuss the techniques that can be used on web pages to aid user access to information |
| Functional Skills English | Reading, Writing, Comprehension, Problems Solving, Nouns |
| Functional Skills Maths | Compression,Reduction |
| British Values | None covered in this session. |
| Equality and Diversity |
Links to Learning Outcomes |
Links to Assessment criteria |
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|---|---|---|