Making Do When the Web "Team" Is You
Making Do When the Web "Team" Is You
Stephanie Leary
The Texas A&M University System
Download the handout (PDF) »
Some web teams.
Your web team. (Lucky you.)
Methods & Tools
- Planning
- Web standards
- Design standards
- Automation & recycling code
- Beg, borrow, and steal
Planning
- IA
- Standard design & template
- Owner questionnaire
- Clear & non-negotiable project requirements
Design Methods
- Web standards
- All CSS, all the time
- Minimize images
- Enforce design standards
- Design for Mozilla, fix for IE, ignore NN4
Site Research
- Survey Monkey / Zoomerang surveys
- Urchin traffic analysis
- Websort.net card sorting
- Focus groups: psych department?
- Goal: no humans (or, at least not you) involved in generating reports
Usability Testing
- You and the receptionist
- You and some random professor
- You and some random student worker
- You, a laptop, a café, 2 hours, and $40
Beg, Borrow, and...
- Design showcases
- Free stock media
- Blue Vertigo (stock everything)
- Navigation and layout builders
- Color schemes
- Survey questions
- Web Redesign 2.0
- The Unusually Useful Web Book
- UwebD archives
Resources
Tools
- validators & link checkers
- size & content ratio checkers
- Lynx viewer
- browsercam.com, browsershots.org, SiteVista
- PDA simulators
- Word cleaners
Ready-Made Stuff
- CMSs
- blogs
- free scripts
Automation
- Dreamweaver snippets
- Photoshop actions
Case Study Part I
- Chunking info mirrors directory structure
Case Study Part II
- Breadcrumbs utilize sensible directory names
Case Study Part III
- Navigation utilizes well-written page titles and the inherent relationship between files in a directory
Books
- Web Redesign 2.0 (workflow hints, documents)
- Don't Make Me Think (testing)
- The Unusually Useful Web Book
Tips?
What tips do you have for your fellow soloists?
Thank you to everyone who attended!
