Design reference (Assessment 1)

Here's my detail:
Name: Guan yi (Antony) ZHAO
Student ID: u3016369
Email: zhao_guanyi2000@hotmail.com

My Five Reference Sites:
(Please be noticed that all the images could be enlarged by clicking on it.)

1. Web Designer Wall
Link:
http://www.webdesignerwall.com/trends/2008-design-trends/



2. WPZOOM
Link:
http://www.wpzoom.com/



3. Viger Advance
Link:
http://www.viget.com/advance/



4. Design Sponge
Link:
http://www.designspongeonline.com/



5. Olliekav
Link:
http://www.olliekav.com/



The Seven Characteristics (Conventions):

1. VERTICAL Scroll Bar:

Scroll bar is a very common convention. And mostly important is that scroll bar is vertical and not horizontal. Since almost all computers's mouse scrolls are vertically designed, a horizontal scorll bar is just so confusing. You wouldn't want the audience to miss something on their screen.

2. HYPERLINKED Site ID:

Site ID should be hyperlinked to the home page and right on your screen where you can see it straight away. If you had no idea where you up to or got completely lost, you could easily click on it and get back to where you started to look again.

3. CLEAR Search Bar:

People need to search something when they can't see it, and in order to search, they need to SEE the search bar of course. So that is why it's important not to make it hard or unable to find.

4. SIMPLE Navigation:

Navigations should also be easy to find and understand, just like the signs in the airport. To do that web designers have to make it neat and simple so that the audience may find their way to what they wanted easily.

5. Subscribe RSS:

RSS is optional, but better have it so web designers could simply offer the audience to subscribe the information on the site.

6. NICE Colour:

You don't want to make your audience dizzy by using too many fancy colours, do you?

7. NEAT Banner:

If all the 6 characteristics above could be located very neat within the banner area, the audience would find the web site very aesthetic and functional. That is why I refered those five sites, they all showed all the characteristics very well.

Here is the proof:











Bibliography:

KRUG, S. (2006). Don't make me think!: A common sense approach to web usability. (2nd ed). Berkeley, CA: New Riders. Chapter 6, 'Street signs and bread crumbs', 50-93.

HINCHCLIFFE, G. (2009). Designing for Web. Lecture notes distributed in the Uint 8178 Web Design and Production. University of Canberra. Online lecture on 26th Feb.

Design Thinking (Steve Krug's "Trunk Test")

Before doing my own design reference, it's good to get a clear orientation. What is a good/bad web design? About half years ago I was asked this question in the Networked Media Production class, and I had almost the same thought with Steve Krug's Trunk Test (without reading his book of course). And now, within my Web Design & Production unit, I had a chance to study his theory more carefully.

Here was my thought:

Can you find yourself where you are? Or you're just completely lost? How can a webpage be designed visually and functionally to guide or lead readers?...blah-blah...

Here's Steve Krug's thory:


(Krug, 2006)

And

The Trunk Test:

"Here's how you perform the trunk test,Step 1 Choose a page anywhere in the site at random, and print it.Step 2 Hold it at arm's length or squint so you can't really study it closely.Step 3 As quickly as possible, try to find and circle each item in the list below.(You won't find all of the items on every page.)CIRCLE:1. Site ID2. Page name3. Sections and subsections4. Local navigation5. "You are here" indicator(s)6. Search"(Krug, 2006)


(Krug, 2006)

Bibliography:

KRUG, S. (2006). Don't make me think!: A common sense approach to web usability. (2nd ed). Berkeley, CA: New Riders. Chapter 6, 'Street signs and bread crumbs', 50-93.

What skills do I have? (+ some of my own works)

I've got some basic skills of the following softwares:

Adobe Photoshop SC3



Ulead Vedio Studio



Final Cut Pro



Adobe Flash SC3



Adobe Audition 2.0



Overture 4.0



And

MIDI to MP3 Converter



Here is some of my own works:

Images:

Your love flows gentaly like a river:







I coloured the tree:







Songs:

Chinese Nocturne
(It's a cover version of Jay Chou's Chinese Porcelain)

Download Link:
http://www.fileupyours.com/view/184189/Chinese%20Nocturne.mp3

Lovin' U

Downlaod Link:
http://www.fileupyours.com/view/184189/Lovin%20U.mp3

Please be ware that all the content above is all rights reserved,
and the songs is only for listening, please do not put them in other use without permission.

Blog Theme + Self Introduction

Blog Theme:

Well there's nothing to say about the theme of this blog, you can see it yourself^_^

However, what I wanna have a discuss is the theme of my Chinese blog.
http://hi.baidu.com/zoan_cafe
In addition, if you go there and you will hear singing in the background music.

Here we go:
You'll see in this pic:
Personal Profile;
Navigation bar;
News Post Board;
Calendar;
Blog Pet that wodering around(Flash).



and this one:
Links that sends me your regards letter, message, gifts and even my personal chatt software;
Silde Show of my Cartoons;
Background Music(It's me singing, hope you like it^_^);
My blog post(the lyrics that I wrote);
Links to my message board, my album, and my upload share;
Labels.



and the last one:
Weather forecast;
Search engine(named Baidu, quite popular in China);
RSS and statistics of how many people have seen this page;
and a statistics of who have been here with the same blog system.



In addition, here are some photos shows some other fonctions of my blog:
Statistics in Dashboard:

Friends list:

Complete Personal Profile:

Album:

Blog only:


Self Intro:

Hi there, my name is Guan Yi ZHAO. Well, you can call me Antony, this solves the “pronunciation” problem (^_^). I’m now doing my second year in Bachelor of Media Arts & Production at University of Canberra.

As self experience, I’ve been writing lyrics for 8 years (however, the language I use is in Chinese, not English.), and I’ve been practicing for song composing about 2 years (honestly, I‘m not very good at it.). I have earned some skills with a music writing studio called “Overture” and of course with some other software such as Photo Shop, Final Cut Pro, Ulead Video Studio (it is similar with Final Cut Pro), Adobe Flash CS3, Midi to MP3 Transition Program and etc. And I’ve done some drama acting (I’ve got 4 Merit Awards for this) and singing (in tenor vocal range) classes in Hawker College. In addition, I also play piano and draw cartoons as my interests.

Before this blog, I’ve been managing a Chinese blog for 2 years already. I opened this new blog just to ensure everyone won’t get any problem with the language. However, if you understand Chinese or maybe just being interested, please feel free to explore that website:

http://hi.baidu.com/zoan_cafe