The first part of this assignment was to write a comprehensive competitive analysis. I started by trying to find three very different music websites to analyse. The three I found were the Nokia Music website, Woolworth’s Download website and Bleep.
I decided not to competitively analyse the iTunes website at this stage because I had a lot of ideas in my head and didn’t want to design something similar to what they already had. I had never really used iTunes before but knew that it was quite a dull website with a lot of content.
I was glad I did this in the end because the three websites I chose had three very different approaches to selling digital music. This allowed me to work out what they had done best and point out some of their flaws. This meant I had a lot of design ideas already in preparation for the final product.
It was at this stage I decided to built a website to hold the three reports. I had posted them on my blog but wanted to do more than just another blog post. I thought a website would give me more design options and much more flexability. I designed it specifically with printing the page straight from the web in mind, and I think it works well.
I found the sound effects report a much harder report to research than the visual cue one because I think sounds on websites are somewhat outdated. Developers don’t tend to use sounds on websites in today’s market.
Sounds are generally used on flash based websites where there is some kind of movement and interactivity with a user.
Sounds in my opinion tend to distract a user rather than alert them especially if they are unfamiliar with that sound. This is why I decided to research system sounds rather than sounds on in net. I feel they really suit their purpose because they are standard on all PCs so system sounds are more familiar to a user.
I would say I came to a good conclusion with the sound effect report in that unless there is a set standard for noise alerts on the internet, like there is a system sounds, I don’t think it is good practice to include sound effects onto a website.
Visual cues were much easier to find on the internet because every site uses some kind of visual cue even if it is subtle, such as a change in font size or weight. I found visual cues can be almost anything that stands out on a web page.
I think this was an interesting report to write because it did highlight a number of ways to draw a user’s attention to certain area of a webpage. This gave me a number of ideas for my own website that I could use for my final product.
I was glad to have all the reports finished after just two weeks of this assignment. This meant I could get on with developing an eye catching website that would hopefully make my portfolio stand out to potential employers/clients.
I had lots of design ideas and wanted to get them onto paper a soon as possible for this assignment. But first I thought I better have a look at how iTunes was designed at the moment. This was mainly to see what things I should include on my website. I decided to look at iTunes music store and the iTunes music homepage.
I printed a number of pages out with grids on to design onto. This is something I will do again because it looked more professional and will mean I can scan them in a lot more easily.
I was happy with the designs I produced and decide to develop three of them twice to try find the best one. I did this first in the sketch book and then digitally and posted them on my blog. I received only one comment on the designs but it turned out to be a very important one.
Scott said “Would you consider matching the graphics more to how
the ipod branding is used now? I had a quick look (link
to: store.apple.com) and instead of using a flat
colour they use a photographic image or a pattern with a colour dropped
over it”. I had a look at what iTunes had done with the gift cards
and couldn’t understand why they have used a very interesting graphical
image for the cards but left the site plain.
Before this comment I was undecided whether to develop idea 1 (the equaliser effect) or the third design (the four colours) digitally. I took Scott’s suggestion and applied it to the banner and it worked really well. This is the first time I have really used layers in my design and I think it looks a lot better than just a flat colour.
Once I had the header for the homepage the rest of the site fell into place. I purposefully tried not to have too much text on the website because I don’t think a user will read the content, they would just skim over the images.
I new the sub pages had to be different but because I wanted to change the banner and colour to suit each genres I decided to keep the layout exactly the same. I think this kept a certain amount of consistency throughout the pages even if the colours had changed dramatically.
I think I have developed an eye catching website that a user would not get confused using. I have made the search a prominent feature on the website and there are a lot of album choices that can be displayed on each page. I think these are the two main things a user will want to see if they click on a genre link.
If I were to do the assignment again I would have planned my time at the start of the assignment the same but given myself more time for the development of the sub pages.