The Lex Listings

The Lex Listings

This website is a compilation of various job interest along with a detailed resume for potential employers.

Writing the Web and Exploring Usability

What makes a good writer opposed to a successful web producer?

   AND   

This week’s reading comes from Redish’s “Letting Go of the Words”, where there is a discussion of what it takes to display and create an interesting effective website.

FIRST MAJOR IDEAL

RECOGNITION OF AUDIENCE AND THE ABILITY TO CONNECT WITH THEM.

List your major audiences

Gather information about your audiences

List major characteristics for each audience

Gather your audiences’ questions, tasks, and stories

Use your information to create personas

Include the persona’s goals and tasks

Use your information to write scenarios for your sit

ANOTHER IMPORTANT POINT!

                     

Writers are the most important aspect of the web and storytelling experience.

INTERPRETATION IS KEY!

Home pages make or break your site!

Krug

In this weeks reading Krug discusses the importance of being a usability professional and also promoting the techniques that illustrate good website functioning. The importance of the internet in today’s day in age reflects its impact and standings within the world.

Don’t Make me Think!

Here are some key points and elaborative aspects of usability and how it relates to web experience from Redd Harmock of digi blog UX booth.

1. Usability means making sure something works well, and that a person of average ability or experience can use it for its intended purpose without getting hopelessly frustrated.

2. Web applications should explain themselves.

   As far as humanly possible, when I look at a web page it should be self-evident. Obvious. Self-explanatory.

3. Don’t Make Me Think

   As a rule, people don’t like to puzzle over how to do things. If people whobuild a site don’t care enough to make things obvious it can erode confidence in the site and its publishers.

4. Don’t waste my time

   Much of our web use is motivated by the desire to save time. As a result, web users tend to act like sharks. They have to keep moving or they’ll die.

5. Users still cling to their back buttons

   There’s not much of a penalty for guessing wrong. Unlike firefighting, the penalty for guessing wrong on a website is just a click or two of the back button. The back button is the most-used feature of web browsers.

6. We’re creatures of habit

   If we find something that works, we stick to it. Once we find something that works — no matter how badly — we tend not to look for a better way. We’ll use a better way if we stumble across one, but we seldom look for one.

7. No Time for Small Talk

   Happy talk is like small talk – content free, basically just a way to be sociable. But most Web users don’t have time for small talk; they want to get right to the beef. You can – and should – eliminate as much happy talk as possible.

8. Don’t lose search

   Some people (search-dominant users), will almost always look for a search box as they enter a site. These may be the same people who look for the nearest clerk as soon as they enter a store.

9. We form mental site-maps

   When we return to something on a Web site, instead of replying on a physical sense of where it is, we have to remember where it is in the conceptual hierarchy and retrace our steps.

10. Make it easy to go home

    Having a home button in sight at all times offers reassurance that no matter how lost I may get, I can always start over, like pressing a Reset button or using a “Get out of Jail free” card.

Overall i feel as though both readings put much of what is important about the internet into perspective and elaborate accordingly, until next time.

Designing the Web

Approach

What approach will I be taking with this site and what will I use it for?

• Present my work and interest along with many others skills pertaining to the digital communications world
• Using a set of principles concerned with the nature and appreciation of beauty especially in media to convey my interest.
• Broaden my horizon’s by applying more of my skills learned to be on display for public

What can the people get my site and how can society benefit from such?

• I want to create traffic that will make a difference with the info I have provided.
• I feel that there should be another mode of getting in touch with me outside of email
• I want to fully display myself as someone who wants to be a positive influence and is interested in creating a website that will be a space for others to do so
• It will also be an illustration of my experiences and what I have learned from them in efforts to assist my users in learning from them as well

Structure

Key installations and movable buttons that I will potentially incorporate.

• Twitter and Facebook information for contact purposes
• Much like our blogs, there will be a page solely to inform the users on who I am
• Of course a way for the user to move about the site
• There will also be a large incorporation of pictures and quotes in relation to my site and topics

Content

• Work that I have accumulated of the course of the class
• A lay out of my work and experience
• What it is exactly that I wish to do with the skills I’ve learned and wish to use for the betterment of my site and society
• Lots of pictures of me and other people to create a familial feel and that of a friendship
• A variety of interviews and other viewpoints that reflect many perspectives
• Where it is exactly that I am taking my work and how it will be used to help others

The Significance of User Experience

In this week’s readings we are focusing on the use and significance of the web and how it affects us as users and members of society. In chapter 2 there is the title “Elements” which I feel as though is a great start for something as complex and significant as the web.  There is also an aspect of the reading called “The Planes” where there is an overall breakdown of the internet and its various features, so one important feature being for the availability of a market to buy and sale merchandise, in efforts to promote economic venture.  Exploring what should and should not be present within the sites is something that is also extremely important and featured in “The Planes” aspect of this chapter along with the way in which the site will operate with the user and overall community of the web. If not the most important part this is a close second to sites purpose

The planning that is put into the making of each website speaks volumes to the process and how important it is to explore the significance of user experience along with the views of others pertaining to the website and its overall goal whether it be that of a good one or solely to create some sort of  attention that could potentially be seen in a negative light be others about an issue, person, place, or thing.

 I love the internet and i am so excited to explore the process of creating and evaluating websites in efforts to expand the user experience of websites like the ones my fellow bloggers and i will create and with the websites to come in the near future that will affect the shaping of society and its overall morale pertaining to the way in which information is communicated and and also process this information in a way that is productive. Instead of solely entertaining or only available to certain groups.

Or more importantly websites that can only be used for the regular everyday person. Lets explore ways to expand the internet user experience to the absolute depths and ends of the user comprehension.

The Dilemma of the Successful Black Man

The influence and views of young black men will be featured, and examined to see how society has challenged them and shaped the way in which they view their opportunities.

Point of View and the Human Perspective

• •  Douglass & Harnden 

There are many different aspects in the way in which you can tell a story. With all of these different perspectives comes the question of which one of these is the most effective way to communicate would large audiences?Douglass and Harnden explore these perspectives in this weeks reading “The Art of Technique”.

 

Much of what we see on television is depicted through a lens that has been created for us and not seen through a conclusion that we have made for ourselves. The perspective of the storyteller is one of the most important perspectives that i feel is mentioned due to the wide array of storytelling taking place in everyday communication. Story telling is the most basic ideal of relaying information that there is. Before we had any other form of communication there was the telling of stories by friends and family to even help us figure out exactly where and what we come from.

 

Point of view in the dictionary is described as the perspective in which ideals are seen.One of the first point of views to be featured was the first person point of view which is the most common in the fact that it consist of a personal account of an event, encounter or idea.

 

Alot of what we know as a society comes from the thoughts of our first person perspective but has been filtered by the likes of others. I for one have seen many different aspects of life but have changed the way that i mentally process those events by the way in which i have allowed others to educate and voice their perspective on exactly what it is i feel the significance of this event was.

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Overall i feel as though this was a great and extremely informative relevant reading that i enjoyed to read, and also took alot away from. I would encourage anyone interested in enlightening themselves to the techniques of the media explore more readings from that of Harnden and Douglass just as my blog followers and classmates have in order to get an extremely informative account. Happy blogging!

Video Final Storyboard.. The Dilemma of the Successful Black Man

The Aesthetics in Editing

The Aesthetics in Editing

In “Visual Storytelling: Videography and Post Production in the Digital Age” by Ronald Osgood and Joseph Hinshaw there is a relevant discussion of production and the way in which the media refurbishes images that we are exposed to each day with the sole purpose of evoking some sort of specific emotion from the consumer. From adding certain types of music to applying various visually stimulating effects, there is no limit to what can be done to an image, video, or man-made sound. In class we discussed the aspect of B-roll which is basically the background/extra footage used to emphasize a point within a video.

 

The way in which these images are conjured up, displayed, and presented overall have a lot to do with who the consumer is. The ultimate question is always who we want to spend money on this image, these things, and this ideal that we have portrayed to be the current life. Hinshaw spells it out for us and dissects the fact that it all boils down to the aspect of psychology. Honing in on what mentality should be displayed in order for the images projected to be successful for the brand, group, and various sources. Overall I felt that this reading was extremely informative and interesting to read.

Media Mondays Podcast Sexualization in the Media

Open Sky Pt. 3

 Paul Virilio in the remainder of the Open Sky ​elaborates more on the different aspects of current technology that can be seen and developed to simultaneously help and hinder society. 

In the last part of this reading much of what i didn’t understand in the first section was refurbished in my brain and also brought to my attention was something else that really threw me for a loop was the incorporation of some sort of spying or practice of training our vision to respond in a certain way to specific images. 

And Virillo also put into perspective some of what i thought was somewhat sensational adding that this sort of eye training was developed solely to control us subliminally in some sort of way.. and that way is through the use of modern technology. Although when this was first presented to me i viewed this as far fetched but as i began to ponder such ideals and really delve deep into the overwhelming use of technology within our society today and how it could potential mean the fall of responsive interactive society within itself.​ 

Commercials, movies, and other forms of advertisements are mentioned along with the thoughts of mind manipulating in this reading on a level that is actually understandable and alarming due to the validity of what Virilio is saying. Along with this Virilio eventually concludes with the thoughts of making what is important here in the states or somewhere else, such as a certain product or more widely known social media outlets is made important and filtered into what is right for that location based off of global issues and cultural significance What i have read in Open Sky has really posed alot of questions that 

have forced me as the reader to dissect and reevaluate what i see myself doing as a media and technological consumer.

Questions posed pertaining to this reading include: 

1. How has technology contributed to the detachment of human connection?
2. What is the most significant perk or positive attribute of technology that is worth this loss of connection?