Week 4

Workshops

This week we were introduced to a new task, to do with audio and web pages. I have developed an audio player that plays five ABBA songs with a changing display and several options for the user. We worked through setting up the page in a really effective way, using diagrams for the divs and other elements. I managed to set up the layout for my webpage and display all of the options how I wanted. 

My layout was particularly important to me as I wanted to implement the ideas from the lecture into my work. I think I managed to do this well by having it all laid out in a way that makes sense to the user. It was easy to implement the audio by converting YouTube videos into mp3 files that I then added to my visual studio files. I added images as well to make it more user-friendly. I’m happy with how my audio player looks for the time being and hope to implement more features to improve the design and usability. 

Lectures

In the lecture this week, we were introduced to the importance and principles of interactive design. We were introduced to several laws by different computer scientists to do with web design. The laws covered things like complexity reduction, mistake proofing, familiarity, etc.  

We also learnt about Don Norman’s seven design principles and how they can relate to web design. We then tried to create web/ app designs based on one of his principles and an idea. My group had to create a recycling app using conceptual models. We produced an idea that not only implements not only that principle but others that fit our design. 

We were then introduced to Nielsen’s ten usability heuristics. These are ideas that we should definitely try to implement and think about when designing web pages.