Desk Crits

Desk Crit 1

The idea of a template sounds like a good idea and when you offered it up here. I was enthusiastically thinking, "Yeah! This is exactly what we need." But, after thinking about it some more and especially in thinking about how I would use it for getting feedback for my own projects, I am not so sure a template is the way to go.

I can very easily see myself dropping in a few very specific questions that are reflective of the particular feedback I may be seeking, so would not use a template very often. However, I think that seeing questions that other people have asked in the past, especially newcomers to the studio and also seeing other people's answers to those questions, I wonder if perhaps an open forum might not be the way to go. Especially if one could be developed where you could construct a set of questions, publish your request and those who fill out your desk crit will answer the questions you specifically requested as well as have a chance to add additional comments of their own to the whole response.

I do think that templates can provide excellent starting points and having several examples on hand to look at and gain inspiration from would be a good thing if made available to all in the course, especially when coupled along with the tips that were handed out in last week's class on how to effectively offer feedback to others.

Michael

At 09:44 AM 2/17/2003 -0500, you wrote: Greetings Studio Mates,

I heard a great little saying befitting of Gustafson's bumper stickers.

"The best way to get something from someone is to give them something first."

With this in mind I am developing a Desk Crit Exchange Template that contains both sender and receiver input forms. The idea is that you review someones product and Below is my first attempt. Please feel free to improve it and send it back. I will utilize the various suggestions I receive and post a final version to the listserv for general Studio use.

Thanks for your help,

Kevin

~`~`~`~`~! Begin Template !~`~`~`~`~`~

Subject Title: Desk Crit Exchange

--------- Sender's Desk Crit ---------------

Reviewers Name: Reviewer's Course: 6190, 6200, 6210

Product Reviewed: Designer's Name: Designer's Course: 6190, 6200, 6210

Project Address:

~ Constructive Feedback ~

What are the strengths of the product? <50 words or more>

What are the weaknesses or areas that could be improved? <50 words or more>

What suggestions can you offer to address the weaknesses and/or make the product even better than before? <50 words or more>

Additional comments:

--------- Receiver's Desk Crit ------------

Reviewers Name: Reviewer's Course: 6190, 6200, 6210

Product Reviewed: Designer's Name: Designer's Course: 6190, 6200, 5210

Project Address:

~ Constructive Feedback ~

What are the strengths of the product? <50 words or more>

What are the weaknesses or areas that could be improved? <50 words or more>

What suggestions can you offer to address the weaknesses and/or make the product even better than before? <50 words or more>

Additional comments:

~`~`~`~`~! End Template !~`~`~`~`~`~

I look forward to your input, Kevin

Kevin R. Johnson
Instructor
NMIX 4200 Webcasting
New Media Institute
The University of Georgia
kevinj@arches.uga.edu
(706) 425-3041

Desk Crit 2

1/20/2003 Kenneth Ondracek

The current site is quite good in terms of information presented and layout of the actual information on the pages as well as color choices.

I would focus some attention on the navigation of the site. Some of the material looks geared towards teachers (home page, study guide, activities, etc.), so group this under a teacher's notes section or something similar and offer a link to it. Teachers will quickly find this link and explore as appropriate where-as the students will be exploring the site itself (i.e. probably won't pay the links much mind).

This frees up the home page that's currently directly solely at the teacher for you to set the tone of the site for your intended audience (5th graders), which I personally prefer to do for any home page of a site.

The navigation itself is somewhat confusing, especially with the Timeline button embedded in main navigation at top and timeline era buttons at bottom of time line page that point to other pages within the top navigation bar. What happened with me, was I thought the timeline would give me a quick overview of the site and I could get a sense of where I wanted to go next in the site once I finished the timeline, but realized after I read through the timeline by clicking the "Forward" button at the bottom of each page repeatedly, that I had effectively explored the whole site. So, what I would do is make a timeline with summary notations, which are, themselves links into other areas of the site, that way you have a clearer and distinct separation of the two modes of navigation.

A timeline on your site might also be a unique way of presenting the usual "Links and Resources" page typically found on other similar sites...that is, put notations on your timeline that aren't covered by your specific site and link them to other sites that do cover the material.

To improve navigation, make the Previous and Forward buttons like the buttons in top navigation bar so the user connects the two in his mind or better yet, repeat the navigation bar at the top at the bottom and make the current page highlight the button so the user knows at all times where he is. As it is now, I either rely on the Prev/Forward buttons to step through all the pages, or I read the title of the page, correlate it to the button in the navigation menu and then click the next button in the navigation after I've picked it out. Again, I am speaking from my initial confusion with the site based on going to the timeline page...so perhaps simply eliminating the era navigation bar at bottom of timeline page could resolve my initial "disconnection" of the navigation controls currently present.

Finally, for minor cosmetic attention, make the navigation bar a constant width similar in with to horizontal break above and layout below. I was viewing site at 1600x1200 and the navigation bar stretched all the way across the page while the rest of the material on the site stayed at constant, but much narrower width.

Regards,

Michael

At 08:17 PM 1/19/2003 -0800, you wrote:

I plan to revamp a web site, for my 6190 project contract, that I originally created in an introductory computer course. My goal is to make the new web site more interactive, fun, and appropriate for a 5th grade classroom. I will be using Dreamweaver MX (the old site was Dreamweaver 4), Flash MX, and Fireworks MX (old site was photoshop). I also plan to try to use some instructional design and technology that I will be learning in this class. I would appreciate any and all feedback about how to improve the old web site which I have posted on my Studio link on the Studio Web page. The URL is

http://www.arches.uga.edu/~krypizza/Puebl1.htm

I do not plan to start the new site until I have learned the tools after week 8 or 9, so any feedback up to that time would be greatly appreciated!

Thanks for your time and effort!!

Kenneth D. Ondracek

Desk Crit 3

Hi, Ginger:

You sure have been a busy bee with churning out web-sites since last Semester!

Anyway, I took a look at your Pass the Salt...NOT site and thought that you had come up with a great overall design. You did a good job of combining a unique background with the main area. Here are my suggestions for improving the site:

Always keep the main menu links visible throughout your site so that if users become "lost" on your site, they have a way to get back to familiar grounds.

On the Menus and Recipe page, for the non-obvious things (like English muffin with jam), provide direct links to healthy recipes. For some items, like low-fat milk, provide a link that takes you to a page describing the different milks and what makes one more healthier than the other.

Do something similar on the page where you list foods to avoid, providing links for each item to factoids (like salt content, what products item is widely found in, probable substitutes, etc.. For example, you list "Cheese" as a food item to avoid. Does this include all the 1000's of different cheeses out there or are there healthy cheese choices? Since its such a broad category, link cheeses to a page that's all about cheese from a salt content standpoint. And another thing, what the heck is hydrolyzed vegetable protein ketchup??? A link to a page describing this would definitely be beneficial to me as I am sure many would like to not only know what brands of ketchups fall into this category, but also I have to assume there's something more harmful to you than just the salt content in this product just by the name alone!

I'm sure the last couple thoughts may sound a little more ambitious than you probably want to get into, but if the surfer is clueless as many folks seem to be, such features turn the web-site into a truly interactive, exploratory learning exercise.

One thing I know about those Best Bets you listed regarding "low-sodium" alternatives which also often mention being fat-free, is that they are often chemical warehouses in of themselves that may cut down on salt and cholesterol, but pack a lot of calories and preservatives, so yet another link to expand upon this topic would be good.

At any rate, you have a good start on what could potentially be a great site. I am sure you gather from my above comments that my common gripe about health sites is that they tell you what to do without a whole lot of explanation behind their statements and I would like to see a site that lends itself to being explored, but having the simple top-level interface you currently have going, especially with the calendar/recipe page.

Oh, and speaking of the calendar itself, it might be interesting to do some research on a typical American diet and then start with that calendar and slowly, but surely whisk one bad choice away each week until a few weeks into the calendar, you're on a healthy diet. In doing so, you can make each week into a lesson in of itself on each item you're substituting/replacing that particular week and the dieter doesn't get totally frustrated trying to start an all-new diet overnight.

Michael

At 11:33 AM 3/8/2003 -0800, you wrote:

Hey - if anyone would like to voice their opinions or make suggestions for improvement to my "Pass the Salt...NOT" site, I would appreciate it. It is in very much a rough draft stage. It is for my son who is now 25 and had three open-heart surgeries about 4 years ago. He finds it difficult to follow the regimen that was suggested by his cardiologists for a low sodium, low-fat diet, shopping and checking food labels, exercise, etc. (his favorite foods are ham sandwiches and pizza of course) So I thought a simple webpage for that age group (18-30) might be a good idea.

http://www.arches.uga.edu/~gwillson/6190/YoungHeart.htm

Thanks ~ Ginger

Desk Crit 4

Saeed:

First question...do you spell your name Saeed or Saeid? I've seen it both ways, so just curious.

Anyway, I took a few mins to look at your project: The login page looks good. When I log in as Karen, I had this thought:

The page comes up with a dropdown list of users. If you will have a fairly limited number of users, then display these guys in a table format sort of like the people page on the Studio with edit/delete links for each one. I think such a change will make it a little easier to scan the list to see who's missing or who needs changing as you could also display more than just their name in a table format.

When I choose to edit a user, your edit form looks good. I noticed you specified that maximum characters for a particular field was 250 characters. Use the MAXLENTH attribute on inputs to enforce this requirement. Check out the INPUT tag on the following HTML reference site if you need more info.

http://pages.cthome.net/samhopewell/htmlref/index.html

It was unclear to me whether you intended this site to be used by your users themselves. If that is the case, I would definitely suggest providing explanations of what each entry field is (for example, what is Content A and Content B?).

Ok, I just logged in as Orey and see that you do intend your users to edit their own profiles, so definitely try to be descriptive about what it is you want your users to enter.

It looks like from the design of your site that you intend for there to be an "administrator" of the site (Karen?) who would do initial user adds and fill out information about the user for the most part and then the user can compliment what Karen does by changing or adding to what's in their profile. If this is the case, then having one entry form with instructions that the bottom portion is not required for non-faculty is fine. Otherwise, I would give some thoughts into breaking this down into two forms...one to collect the basic information and one for the extended information. I would then add a "profile type" flag to the database that determines whether the user can add all that additional information and only then show the expanded fields for entry.

Hope this helps.

Michael