Project A Assignment Rationale

I created this website as an online exhibition of the band 'Muse'. In order to effectively display information I had to first explore other similar sites and discover what conventions were used, as well as design patterns and structure. I noticed there was really only one or two websites which gave a detailed exhibition of the band. Some common topics where covered in the websites such as discography, history, musical genre, members and news. The website that delivered this information the most effectively I thought was the Muse Official website (which isn't surprising). They used the convention of a horizontal navigation bar across the top of the screen which made optics easy to access. the website also had an interesting design regarding the deliverance of news, with recent news always being available near the top of the page. A gallery was also a rather common convention that was used that just showed pictures of the band at gigs and on tours etc.

First off I decided to download a simple css template to save some time in designing the website itself. I played around with the html code and entered my own information in. The template used a horizontal navigation bar at the top which i found useful to follow similar web conventions. It also had a news column on the side of the page which I also used to display current news about the band. WIth my site I chose to have this displayed on the right side of every page. I hyperlinked each news point to a detailed article on the muse.mu website. I used the Muse.mu website a lot actually because it the most sufficient information.

On the homepage of my website I did a quick overview of the band and explained their history briefly. At the bottom I used images of each of the band members which other websites had not done. And again the news column is displayed on the right hand side for easy access to recent information about the band itself. Similarly with the discography page, I did a brief overview of the albums and at the bottom of the page displayed images of each album. Above these i used hyperlinks to wikipedia articles on each album. This was simply because wikipedia had the most detailed information on each individual album. The images used are also from wikipedia.

In the gallery I displayed images from different photo shoots and tours around the world. I gathered these images from many different sites on the web. They are hyperlinked from each of these individual sites (apart from the first two). The forum page was done quite basically with links to several forum topics on the band to the muse.mu website. This site was the only site to have forums on muse for some unknown reason.For the tour dates, I did something a little different to help set my site apart from the rest. i gathered around ten tour dates and their location from the muse.mu website and hyperlinked them to their location sin google maps. each of the links takes you to a separate location around the world using google maps.

Week 11 Lecture

Datavisualisation or 'dataviz' is an effective way of displaying information in an organised ways so that correlations and causes can be determined. This can allow people to predict future trends in major issues such as global warming, poverty and increasing population.

Dataviz 'translates' data to humans by taking advantage of some basic human instincts. Humans can easily detect shape, colour, position, patterns and movement.

Week 10 Lecture

Multiplicity was explored at a further level during this weeks lecture explaining how collective activity is far more effective in gaining and displaying information. A good example was given in the book 'The Wisdom of Crows' by James Surowiecki. In this book a crowd was asked to guess the weight of ox. It turned out that the average guessed weight was closer to any individual guess which I found very interesting. The fact that no single person could guess the weight. but together finding a closer weight is a prime example of multiplicity.

The concept of multiplicity is especially prominent today in web 2.0. Wikipedia for example depends on other people from around the world to post articles and edit them accordingly. This gives it a much stronger collection of information than any other site. There was also a really interesting idea called 'Photosynth' that used the site Flickr to gather photos of a particular site around the world and create a 3D map of it that the user can explore. This technology is the first of its kind and is sure to harness the true power of networking and multiplicity.

Week 9 Lecture

This Lecture focused on the concept of Web 2.0. A Web 2.0 site allows its users to interact with other users or to change website content, in contrast to non-interactive websites where users are limited to the passive viewing of information that is provided to them. The term first emerged in 2004. The more people use a service, the more useful and valuable it becomes can pretty much some up the effectiveness of web 2.0.

Week 6 Lecture

This week's lecture had more of a philosophical theme covering aspects including structure, interfaces, conventions, limitations, patterns a the concepts of Tags, Ontology, Taxonomy and Folksonomy.

Structures and patterns can be ways of doing things, everything has a structure/pattern. Interfaces are used to allow the user access to something, making it as clear an easy to use as possible. Conventions are default ways of completing things (the way you do things), but these can e broken. Everything has accordances and limitations for example the interent has a certain set of accordances and limitations. Limitations provide context.

Objects have design patterns (structures) to best suit their use. Ontology is the study of something existing, being or in reality. Taxonomy is the process of classifying something into groups, certain categories for example. Folksonomy is a system of classifying that involves tagging such as machine tagging in computers.

Week 5 assignment.

I have started working on my website. It is a reference page for the band 'Muse'. The website will contain a number of links to blogs, fan sites, forums and official band websites. There will be profiles on all three members of the band as well a upcoming tours, gigs, recordings etc.

Week 4 Lecture

This weeks lecture was about Mashups and API's, talking about their functions and the difference between the two. Java script was also a smaller focus with its many applications being shown. A mashup is basically a remix of data using API's and wrappers which reform data to make it look more presentable. Mashups gather information from multiple locations in order to do this. Example Youtube mashup videos.

Application Programming interfaces (API's) share data through web and and desktop applications and enable them to be changed and improved. API's are useful because they allow other users to change data and functions of applications through crowd sourcing. For example Twitter has a public API so many users have extended the Twitter application like such websites as Twittervision. API's let you change they way someone interacts with a service, for example the webiste Wolfenflickr.

Java script adds graphics and animations to websites...