Workshop Three: Page Design
PLEASE READ THE WHOLE EXERCISE BEFORE YOU
BEGIN!!!
Goals: If you completed the last workshop,
you discovered some basic constraints of document layout under HTML,
particularly the necessity for tables as the key to establishing design grids for
text and images. In this lab, you will experiment with grids with a view
to improving the layout of a case study.
Rationale: Designers often talk about the
"form/function" dichotomy, with the form (or appearance) of a site usually
subservient to the function (or content). Site designs emerge from initial exploration
of abstract elements such as colour, line, and
shape. As the development work proceeds, the elements are refined to incorporate
text, image, and other content. The appearance of the site is also subject to a
variety of technical constraints imposed by the user, designer, hardware, and
software.
Case Study: A fledging Web design
company composed of two former Waterloo students (non-English majors) is building a site
for a local hospital: TriCity Health Group. The purpose of the site is to give out-patients easy access to
supplemental information on their particular condition, so that they won't be
tempted to call up their doctor or the emergency clinic every time they experience an
unusual symptom or simply want to ask a question. They'll be able to consult these pages and, it is hoped, find
much of what they need to know, including the latest research news. In essence,
the site is conceived of as a cost-effective way to lessen the burden of an
already overtaxed hospital and staff.
Some of the constraints of this site are that it
must be fast-loading, visible on even the poorest monitors, and easy for the
hospital's Web master to maintain. It should be text rather than graphic
intensive. The site organization must be extremely simple and straightforward to
avoid confusion. Thus the home page has an alphabetical index of conditions and
diseases that lead directly to individual pages.
At this point the designer has established the basic layout and colour
scheme, and inserted some sample graphics. Here is what a typical content page
will look
like:
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Return to main page
Print this page
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In the news...
Chronic Fatigue Syndrome is no longer seen as being "all in the
mind." Its true nature is still unclear, but researchers are slowly
closing in. |
| (cfs)
,
also called
POSTVIRAL FATIGUE SYNDROME, OR LOW NATURAL KILLER CELL SYNDROME,
disorder characterized by at least six months of debilitating fatigue
that begins suddenly and is usually accompanied by mild fever, sore
throat, tender lymph nodes, muscle pain and weakness, joint pain,
headache, sleep disorders, confusion, memory loss, and visual
disturbances. Once routinely dismissed as an imagined rather than a
specific physical condition, chronic fatigue syndrome remains
controversial. Indeed, many authorities still question whether it is a
distinct disorder. No definitive diagnostic test has been developed yet,
and CFS is commonly confused with such illnesses as chronic Epstein-Barr
virus infection and myalgic encephalomyelitis. Although a number of
theories about the cause of CFS have been advanced, not one has been
proved. No effective treatment has been found, but only a few sufferers
become progressively worse; most improve gradually, and some eventually
achieve full recovery.
[Symptoms
and treatments to go here:
Symptom 1
Symptom 2
Symptom 3
Treatment 1
Treatment 2
Treatment 3
etc.
Links to
other medical sites]
Elsewhere on the Web...
New Findings
May Make CFS Easier to Diagnose
Many people with chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS) have been through a
diagnostic nightmare of trying to find out what's wrong with them... [Read
on] [RESEARCH DIGEST]
Chronic Fatigue Syndrome is Not a Yuppie Disease
[Read
on] [RESEARCH DIGEST]
Sponsors & Donations...
Readers Poll...
Sponsored by
TriCity Health Group
Mediconsult is brought to you by TriCity
Health Group
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The Soul of a
New Disease
By The Economist
A mysterious epidemic spread through the Los Angeles County Hospital, in
California, in 1934. Nurses and doctors succumbed to a strange mix of
fatigue, muscle pain and emotional distress. The first suspect was
polio--the symptoms were similar, and fear of the disease was rampant at
the time. Yet tests for polio revealed nothing and, bizarrely, the
hospital's patients remained unaffected. A similar pattern of events
occurred in 1955, at the Royal Free Hospital in London. Again, patients
were untouched. And in both cases, most of those who succumbed were
women. |
After viewing the sample page, the hospital
manager is unhappy. She says, "I like the basic information hierarchy of the site
itself, but the look and feel of the individual pages aren't what we had in mind. I'm not
sure all of our patients would even be able to use this material. We want this
site to be a place our patients will want to visit, not avoid."
Instructions: You are brought in to try to
salvage the design (and the contract). Open the actual page
in Composer (or VisualPage
if you are using it) and examine it, making note of elements you think might
have caused the manager to say what she did. Then try to actually implement your
redesign, keeping in mind the
particular needs of the users (audience) and the hospital's purpose and
rhetorical goals. Certainly consider the elements of functional page
design as outlined in Lynch and Horton: visual hierarchy, contrast, clarity,
consistency, balance, page dimensions. If you wish to consider graphics,
typography, and even content choices, feel free.
Note: I'll give you adequate time (app. 45-60 minutes) to
work on this, and then we'll look at what different people have have done.
In the event you finish early, you may want to
tackle another (possibly harder) challenge.
