Week 2: March 23 – March 27

For this week, I began designing the advertisements for some press organizations for the Web site of the Global Journalist. I came out with the drafts of two ads, one for the International Press Institute and one for the Committee to Protect Journalists.

I used the Adobe Illustrator to trace the logos manually to reproduce the effects as accurately as possible. I decided to stick to one size for all the ads 250 pixels – 350 pixels, so that the layout will stay consistent.

In my first two drafts, I only had the logo and their full names in them. My supervisor Pat Smith’s recommendation was that I needed to have a short explanation of what the organizations were about. This is a valid point, although I originally assumed that it is quite clear with their names what they did.

However, as there are as many as eight organizations with somewhat similar functions, explanations will be useful to distinguish them one from the others. Jacob Nielsen * (2004) commented that users appreciate the ad that tells them what would happen when they click at it and presents enough information without making the reader having to leave the page.

On the other hand, I believe I will need to find the shortest explanations possible, because a lot of text on the ads is not helpful to keep a reader’s attention on the ads. I want to make the most of the shape of the logos to bring appeal to the ads.

I personally felt that my first attempts with the ads are a little simplistic. On the other hand, I am guarded against experimenting too much (for example with shapes and colors), as I am not sure how that will go down with the organizations. As I look at their Web sites, the way they advertise is also very simple.

I am also thinking about what I can do to improve the look of the site. One thing I noticed is many stories do not have photos to go with them. What I am thinking is whether I should create a library of maps of countries and territories. This is what the BBC’s Web site often does when they do not have photos, for example for breaking news stories, when the photos have not come in yet. They also use maps for the countries’ profiles.

*Nielsen, J. (2004) The most hated advertising techniques. http://www.useit.com/alertbox/20041206.html

RESEARCH
I built my first Web site with 5 different versions for different ad positions. In this layout there is only text for the news stories and the ad is the only picture available on the Web site. There are 5 different positions for the ads: top, bottom, middle, left, and right. Below are the images of the bottom and top positions for the ads:

Week 1: March 16 – 20

During this week, I got acquainted with the CMS of the magazine Global Journalist and updated the World Watch map. I also sought out advice about the possibilities of making an alternative to this map from Mary Nguyen, the infographic professor, and the Division of Information Technology technical trainer Sean Patron.

The map (http://fmatlas.com/view/globaljournalist/20090322_ww03222009), despite being criticized as being not the best-looking one, has undeniable benefits. It is easy to follow with the bubbles above the countries. It is also very easy to update and does not require any particular IT skills.

Nguyen pointed out that the texts on the maps were too long and should be shortened to a short headline with a link or a very short paragraph. It is not a good idea for a reader to have to scroll down to read.

Both Nguyen and Patron said that creating another map, in this case it should be in Flash, which allowed Global Journalist staff who do not have to know about Flash, to update it easily, will be challenging, as I will need to incorporate a database, so that other people can easily update the map from outside the Flash program. I decided to study this issue further on.

RESEARCH
I needed figure how to carry out a survey on whether and how different ad placements on a Web site could influence readers’ attitudes towards it.

My original idea was that I would turn my Web site layouts into images and put them on a survey Web site, as I did not know how that could be done otherwise.
However, after seeing what my former classmate Mark Lewis did with his survey on Web sites and attitudes towards content presentations, I decided to follow suit in his method of putting a web site on the Bengal server and make a link to the survey. It is no doubt much better and more realistic, if a reader has access to a real Web site rather than just its image.
http://bengal.missouri.edu/~malnq2/project/A-Intro.html