Website Building

Our last project for Digital Communication's class is to build a website! 

Strategy:

As of right now, my strategy is to get a job and begin working after college for a few years, and perhaps go to graduate school after making enough money to pay for graduate school. Therefore, my website's objective will be to attract employers. Of course, I will need a couple of more internships to build my resume before landing an actual job post-grad, and therefore this website will first be showing the skills that I have developed and learned from past internship experiences as well as from my classes here at Furman. I also intend on looking for jobs overseas in Hong Kong, Taiwan, or Shanghai - and therefore I may add Chinese text to let employers know that I am bilingual. It is important to note that I am looking for but not limited to public relations firms, magazines, or advertising companies.

Scope:

Things that I will need in order to brand myself include -

• Contact form (this will include email and phone number)
• Widget that will link to my Facebook page
• Will create a Photography section page that will showcase the photography work I have done for City Weekend magazine in Shanghai and for The Paladin Newspaper
• I will my include my resume that has all my past experiences 
• Because I am possibly attempting to land a job at a magazine, I may also create a section on the website for writing samples
• About me section that will talk about my background and history that I feel like will probably be what sets me apart from everyone else, but won't be too extremely lengthly. Will keep it short and concise. 

5 Inspirations:

I love this simple layout, with four sections neatly on the top, against  a single solid yet eye-catching and bold color. I guess you could call me a minimalist. I also love the idea of the main background showcasing photography skills. It's a show, not tell kind of concept.

Again, I love the simplicity of these little icons (if that's what you call it! :O) at the end of the website that don't distract and are easy to click on, with all the icons placed neatly one after another.

I love this website! It is so cool, so clean and so fresh. 

I particularly like the idea of the very simple logo in the center against the beautiful landscape.

If we have learned anything from our last couple of readings, it is that we want the website to be user-friendly and I believe this website has achieved that. When you scroll down the page, it has a "scroll icon" on the left that isn't too distracting. Also, a little bar at the bottom appears with the company's address and other information.

Website Link: http://www.seattlecidercompany.com/

I also really like this website that does online marketing campaigns and how they show off their past experiences with these three pictures:

Websites

    

   In this week's reading of Letting Go of the Words: Writing Web Content that Works, Redish talks about the important aspects of what websites do to attract their audience. Obviously there are websites that are geared towards different types of people and interests - female, male, sports, music, etc. I went through the list of websites that I typically visit a couple times a day which is really anything from Facebook to different blogs to Pinterest to Facebook. In the end, I went to 8tracks.com, which is an online radio where you can search for music by genre and also create playlists to share with friends. Apparently, according to my sister, this website was like, so last year(ha ha) but I still love it anyways.

One of the main things I got out of Redish's reading was that it is so important to know your audience. For websites like Amazon or something super general, the demographics and age groups and stuff are anywhere from teenagers to people in their 60s and 70s (i'm guessing). But anyways, the demographics for 8tracks.com is pretty much teenagers and people in their early to late twenties, maybe even thirties. You can tell this by the names of the playlists that people upload (i.e uuuuuuuh yeah or "if we were a movie"). 



The point is, this internet online radio is so successful because of how simplistic the website is. As Redish points out, "all of us interpret what we read in light of our own knowledge and experiences." Literally, there are only so many buttons on the home page. There's Explore, which gives you a variety of genres, then theres Login and Signup. It's a complete no-brainer. 

Redish even pointed this out through these cartoon drawings of people with bubbles of what people might say. Literally all of them say the same thing just in different ways - that they want efficiency. Whoever created this website knew it would most likely attract this age-group of teenagers/young-adults whatever you want to call them, and knew that we are probably the biggest age group who would really not want to spend the time trying to figure out how to navigate to places and stuff!

Another thing that I think this site does really well is the fact that they use a lot of visuals without being overwhelming. I may be biased when I say that their use of visuals is really good because I am a visual person, and that is what attracts me first. Every playlist basically has a picture, very instagram-y/hipster-y which is the type of people that this website is obviously serving. 

User Experience

In this week's reading, Jesse James Garrett talks about the everyday gadgets and tools that we use that help us pick up the pace and make things easier for us. What people don't realize is that the hardest part of making these tools are the "user experience." People are attracted to things that spell it out for them, essentially, because that is the whole point of technology - to make things move along faster for them without having to do a whole lot to get there. This is his ultimate definition of the "user experience":

"Not about the inner workings of a product or service, it is about how it works on the inside, where a person comes into contact with it."

Another interesting thing that he mentions is the "form follows function" concept, where the design of the product is dictated by its functionality. An example I can think off the top of my head are like the Android phones versus the Apple iPhone 5's, versus Blackberry's (if people even use them anymore?) I personally have used all three of them, and have found that they are good and bad in different aspects. For instance, the Android is probably appearance-wise the most appealing, as it is very futuristic-feeling (hence why Apple probably felt the need to add the somewhat unnecessary fingerprint-scan security function on their latest phones). However, I didn't stick with the Android that long despite its pretty exterior, and even interior because it was so complicated to figure out. I couldn't navigate to even the simplest things and that made me extremely frustrated! The iPhone I would say is probably the most user-friendly, because everything is literally right there on the screen, and its simple designs take you anywhere you need to go.

                                        

                                    

In Chapter 2 of The Elements of the User Experience, Garrett talks about the user-experience I believe specifically in the case of online-shopping. Now, I am definitely no stranger to this experience, but when I think about it, there are only a specific number of websites that I am actually willing to buy from. For instance, there is a website called Taobao.com, which is essentially the Chinese version of Ebay. You can buy things, sell things, and you can even talk to the store owners or customers that are interested in selling you or buying your products! What I love about this particular website, is that when you search for a product, it gives you links to similar items at the top, or it helps you narrow your search. I think it's actually a pretty smart marketing tactic, in that it makes you want to buy all these things that you maybe wouldn't have thought about buying before. I haven't really experimented too much with buying stuff on ebay, and I generally don't like to do so because I know that they do a different thing where they auction it and there is only a limited amount of time. I also don't like that it shows you how many people are viewing this item, because it adds on so much unnecessary pressure! The whole point of online shopping should be fast and easy, so that you can do it in a short amount of time and not have to worry about the technical difficulties.

Generous Garden Project Video

Online Editing

    In this week's reading, Carroll talks about the importance of mastering online editing and all the many components that people tend to forget that differ greatly from editing other types of publications. One of the things that he explained is one of the most important things to remember is the appearance aspect. When novels, books, essays, or other types of writings are published, the appearance aspect obviously wouldn't be as important because most of what the viewer sees is merely text, other then the front cover. In my own experiences, when I created this blog, my own personal blog, and a group blog for another communications class (mediaandsustainability.blogspot.com) I realized that I was definitely more caught up in what the layout and styling aspect of the blog would be instead of the actual content. One good thing about online writing though is that I feel like I can be myself more have more freedom and not bound to specific boundaries or structures in writing that I would have to submit to a professor.

   On page 121, Carroll talks about how to edit a text chunk in a way that is more pleasing to people and essentially more "readable." As we have learned from the article written by Carr who questions our intelligence with this fast-paced development of the digital age, people tend not to care too much for actually reading, or at least not lengthly texts when they are reading online. Hence, Carroll says the best way to be informative about a subject, but at the same time grabbing peoples attention, is by taking advantage of bullet points. It's funny because this reminded me of BuzzFeed which I absolutely enjoy using as a source of procrastination everyday. BuzzFeed covers everything from funny pictures, cute gifs, somewhat "informative" videos, to actual long and lengthly articles. I don't know how many people actually go on that website and actually sit down and read those lengthly articles, but I know for certain that I am not one to do so. Though I once enjoyed reading for pleasure, my attention span is no longer the same.

   Anyway, I'm starting to stray a little off topic. Another thing that stuck with me as I was reading this was how many more people are involved in the process of online editing. For most websites, there are so many tabs on the website that link people to different things such as on news websites there would be different categories (sports, international, political, etc) and websites such as buzzfeed or reddit would have categories such as (new, entertainment, life, etc). All of these components have to be updated every single day. Most people probably don't even check those websites every single day (actually, I probably do...) but there are still a good few that do, so it is those peoples jobs who created the website to make sure they still have all these viewer's attention. 

Just as I finished this blog post..I came across a link a friend had posted on Facebook with a funny gif! Thinking it was probably buzzfeed or some other silly website like that, I clicked on it, only to find out that it was a link to Huffington Post! Weird..it's an article about personal hygiene (not surprisingly) but it was surprising that they are using gifs now!

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/11/08/personal-hygiene-facts_n_4217839.html?utm_hp_ref=mostpopular#slide=2276894

Point of View

       Douglass and Harnden discuss the importance of the three types of POV's : first, second, and third person and how that relates to literature, and then to film. Overall, generally I feel like all three types of POV's are much easier to convey in literature than in film. As an ex-English major wannabe, I've taken dozens of writing courses to improve on short story and creative writing, as well as poetic skills. If I've taken anything away from any of these courses, is that it is so incredibly important for the author to include details, details and more details. With text, obviously anything above a first or second grade level book wouldn't have pictures, therefore the more there is a need for the author to essentially spell it out to the audience. If one character is jealous of another character, an amateur author (such as me!) would probably write something like, "she was jealous of the way he looked at her friend Maria." According to my peers and professors though, a better way of writing a sentence in which "she" was jealous of "him" in the way that he looked at Maria, would be something like "She couldn't help but feel crushed as she watched him gawk adoringly at Maria." Or something like that. My point is, a lot of that would be so much easier if say, in a movie, the jealous female lead here would be able to convey that in her facial expressions. Which also makes it harder for her as well, as it would be weird to caption somewhere in that scene "she was jealous."

          Anyway, enough of my ranting. Another thing that I noticed as I was reading this was the idea of the second-person perspective, and how Douglass and Harnden propose that this technique is used as means of addressing the audience in "you" form. As in "here is the product that you should buy," or "here is how you do this!" In my Intro to Mass Comm class, we had recently just talked about advertising and how a lot of billboards or commercials will address the public audience as "you," which is a strategy to make anyone that is watching feel like they especially went out of their way to send them that message, when in reality it's just for anyone. Recently (and embarrassingly...), I started, or really I should say attempted, the Insanity program. Shaun T, the director and creator of the program that also leads all the work outs in the weekly videos, addresses the customer as "you." I thought about my own experiences with the way that he addressed "me" as a consumer while I was attempting to follow along his ridiculously intense work outs. Not that I didn't realize he wasn't actually addressing me, I do have to admit as I was working out, I was so consumed in following the steps that it didn't really dawn on me that it was just a strategy so that consumers would feel like he was engaged with them and keeping it personal. Though I now do feel a little cheated, I do feel like it is a smart and strategic move in terms of marketing.

Visual Storytelling

     In this week's reading, Osgood and Hinshaw talks about the process of making and producing a video, specifically the importance of editing. This was so exciting to me as literally I've seen pretty much every episode of my favorite show Friends, yes, all 236 episodes of the 10 seasons that aired. Of course I watch like a trillion of other shows religiously as well (how i met your mother, big bang theory, new girl, etc) but in light of this being the first show that got me into essentially replacing life with television, I decided to use the show as my inspiration for examples of this reading.

      One of the most important things that Osgood and Hinshaw touched on was this idea of a montage, which Friends uses, as most sitcoms do, in the beginning of the show for their introduction before the actual show begins. What I never really paid attention to before is that the way that the producers filmed these actors and actresses and positioned them on screen was very strategic, in that it had to follow the rhythm of the song I'll be There For You by the Rembrandts. It follows it so closely down to when the text "Friends" come on screen, to when the actors open the umbrellas, and finally at the last minute when Monica turns off the lamp at the end of the song, in perfect harmony as the singer sings his last word.

Later, Osgood and Hinshaw talk about Continuity and the many different types including physical and technical. Immediately I thought about the scene in Mean Girls that I was watching (for the upteenth time!) with a friend, where Janis Ian and Damien watch a horror movie while Cady is at someone's Halloween party. I love this scene because Cady walks into the room they are watching the movie in, all decked out in her "runaway corpse bride" or something creepy costume, right as Janis and Damien's horror movie is at a scene where something terrifyingly suspenseful is supposed to happen. Anyways, my friend pointed out that in the first scene as Cady walks in, Damien throws up his bowl of popcorn in the air, obviously making all the popcorn spill out of it. In the cut following, his bowl is all of a sudden filled with a fresh bowl of popcorn again.