Project 3- Website Redesign: Reflective Post 2

The next step in this project after we were assigned groups was settling on a website to redesign. I was actually the one who stumbled across the website we would end up using: the webpage for the University of Rhode Island Student Entertainment Committee. This website was a mess. It was in stark disagreement with all the major elements of a quality website that we read about in the Non-Designer's Web Book, lacked key information, and was just overall an unpleasant website to look at. It was in fact very painful to look at in many places. Me and my group mates agreed that this would be a good website to give a makeover. The next thing we did was we each posted our own design analysis of the website on Sakai forums. These analyses were based upon the major characteristics of a successful website (Alignment, Proximity, Repetition, Contrast). Secondly we all posted a Rhetorical analysis of the website, in which we evaluated the site's target audience, purpose, stance, genre, and media/design. I found both of these forum posts to be extremely important in the process of our redesign of the website. For me personally, these two posts allowed me to become increasingly familiar and comfortable with the idea of re-designing a website. I think I would have had a very difficult time if I had to jump right into the process of actually re-designing the site without first completing these posts. Furthermore, I think these posts allowed my group as a whole to establish a unified set of objectives and course of action into how we were going to tackle the problem of redesigning this site. This aspect of the project I feel allowed us to organize our thoughts and establish a clear-cut plan for redesigning the URI SEC website.

Soon after this we met in class with our groups to discuss our plans. We looked at our site together and discussed further details of how exactly we would approach our problems. During this class we were all given the task of completing a draft of a site map for the next class. We would then choose the site map that we felt was the best done, and that would be further revised for the final draft of our project. I struggled with the site map. I was thoroughly confused about the proper way to go about making one, and the product I ended up producing showed this. My site map was disorganized and hard to read, and was highly reflective of the confusion and frustration I felt in creating it. Ultimatley we decided that Zach had created the best site map draft. His way organized, easy to look at, and just made the most sense. Next in class we decided who would do what for the final draft of our redesign project. It was decided that I would be responsible for creating a revised site map based upon Zach's draft. I was initially a bit concerned due to my troubles with my site map draft, but I was confident that with more time and focus I could do a good job on creating a revised site map.