BSU > English 3160 > Women Writers > Site Report

Site Report

Purpose:

Our purpose is to highlight women writers and the historical contributions they have made to social causes.

Design:

We envisioned a site that would serves to highlight women writers, but because of time constraints, we had to limit the scope of what we could cover. Our site is not designed to be a full academic research site, but rather a site that would peak the interest of someone visiting the site to explore each author further on their own. We chose our topic as a natural extension of our own interests in women’s issues and our mutual enjoyment of reading. We made up an initial list of authors we though suitable and then had to narrow it down. We have envisioned our site being added to over time, but initially we limited ourselves to a total of nine authors. This gave us each three authors to research and helped establish a visual hierarchy, which was comfortable to work with.

Site Design:

We listed the different items, we wanted on each author during the brainstorming session. We laid out three different authors pages and then narrowed our choice to the one we made the template out of. The template was modified during the actual adding in of the content. We removed an area on historical footnotes on most of the author’s pages because the section would be empty. We had added the historical notes into the text on the author.

Colors:

We choose a mauve and maroon color scheme. We added in the text as black to help with readability.

Visuals:

We made a banner using a scroll and quill to depict a writing theme. We decided to use the scroll and quill with each authors name in it as the buttons to go to the author’s page, which formed a smooth transition. The banner is consistent between each page.
Each column of authors is by one of our groups, for example the first column of authors is by Carol. We used the column format, because there were nine authors and a 3 x 3 matrix works well.
We added in works cited and links to further provide additional readings on the authors. Our long-term goals are to add more authors and to separate them into issue categories, such as education, labor, suffrage, and motherhood.

Problems:

Problems we encountered were mainly technical in nature. A disk would not allow us to open the files on it. We started out slowly and found that we had chosen women that were prolific and very complicated, and that we had a lot to say about them. Narrowing down our work was one of the hardest things to do. We needed to simplify the text, so as not to lose our audience. We encountered a problem with adding quotes (works cited) that we did not realize the work cited needed to be added in the body of the content.
We worked really well together. We each made an author’s page and then voted on the one we used. We each selected our authors and wrote the content. The author’s template was done by Faith. The main page layout was done by Carol. Machelle collected all the photos and made the banner and buttons. Carol was the central point for adding in the text to each page. Faith and Carol laid out the storyboard, site map and navigation. We each critiqued each others work and made decisions as a group before major changes were made. We maintained contact, through email and meeting outside of class time to work on this project. We gave true meaning to ‘literary lunches.’

Usability Testing:

We had family members test each link and they said that our site was easy to follow. All of our web site links opened properly. The pictures loaded smoothly. Each of us checked out the links of the other’s pages.