The Good, The Bad and The Ugly – What Makes a “Good” website?

1. The Good, The Bad and The Ugly – What Makes a “Good” website? Web Design – Section 2-1 Part or all of this lesson was adapted from the University of Washington’s “Web Design & Development I - Version 2.0” Course materials

2. Evaluating Websites Objectives • The student will: • Be able to critically evaluate web sites based on purpose, design and usability. • Be able to identify the major criteria that experts use to evaluate web sites and apply those criteria to your own evaluations

3. First things first • It is tempting in a web design course to plunge in and start right away creating and developing web pages. • However, since our goal is to learn to develop high-quality websites, we first must spend some time developing an understanding of what "quality" means.

4. First things first • This is important because if websites aren't developed with quality in mind, visitors might be unable to find the content or features they're looking for, or they might be unable to access or use these features. • Users don't give websites many chances. • If they don't like a site, they may leave quickly and never return. • If they like a site, they'll return to it again and again, plus they'll tell others about it.

5. First things first • In addition to understanding website quality, you must spend some time planning a website before you begin to develop its content. • Just as there are pre-writing steps that ought to be done prior to writing an essay, there are pre-coding steps to do before you create a website. • Planning ahead will reduce the number of mistakes you'll make while constructing the site. In the work world, this will save you time and money.

6. Evaluating Websites –Questions to Consider • Why do you feel that some websites are good? • Why do you feel that some websites are not so good? • Do others agree with your opinion? • Does anyone disagree? • Who is the target audience for a particular site? • How might website quality be judged differently across different audiences? • Are there some qualities of websites that all audiences would agree are good? What are these qualities?

7. Good or Bad? • http://www.lingscars.com/ • http://cheese.com/ • http://www.counterspill.org/ • http://www.mrbottles.com/ • http://www.beetle.com/ • http://www.digett.com/san-antonio-web-design/

8. What the “experts” have to say… • WWW Cyberguide Ratings for Web Site Design • http://www.cyberbee.com/design.pdf • The Webby Awards - Examples of websites that for various reasons have received critical acclaim • http://www.webbyawards.com/ • Ten Usability Heuristics • http://www.useit.com/papers/heuristic/heuristic_list.html

9. Creating a Rubric • A rubric is an explicit set of criteria used for assessing a particular type of work or performance. • A rubric usually also includes levels of potential achievement for each criterion, and sometimes also includes work or performance samples that typify each of those levels.

10. Rubric

11. Rest of Today • Divide in to teams of 3 or 4 (no more than 4 on a team) • Complete Homework Assignment 2-1 • As a team you will create a rubric to evaluate websites • Individually you will access 5 websites • As a team you will combine the results • Each team will put their rubric on wall chart and present it to the class