In this assignment, you will design and initiate implementation of a website. The website will be used to share your HCI topic and evaluation documents with your development/undergraduate team and scientist/client.
Reading List
To prepare for this assignment, read:
Assignment Description
Consultant Website
Design and implement a website for your topic and evaluation documents. Recall that a website is a domain of HCI and your site will be evaluated accordingly. The website does not need to be elaborate, but it should serve the purpose of the users of your website. Users of your website are me (the instructor) the undergraduate students (your development team) and the scientist/client. We use the web site to track the evaluations of the development team applications. Undergraduate students will provide design documents for you to evaluate. When I or the scientists review your evaluations, we will want to refer to the undergraduate/development team design documents, so your website should have links to their documents on a per evaluation basis. Undergraduate students are also users of your web site. They will refer to your web site to find your evaluation of their design, which they need to refine their design. Consequently, your evaluation documents must be posted timely and kept current. All documents should be linked in your website in a format readable by all web browsers. Initially, the website will include a home page with your name, topic name and contact information. The initial website will also contain design support documents, (described described in the next assignment). The documents are to be posted online by the due date. The documents do not have to be a single file, but they should be recognized as a group and easily navigated in the website.
You may use most any tool or templates that you’d like to make your website. It should be a static website, meaning made up of html, jpg and pdf documents. There should not be a database backend. Consequently, something like WordPress would NOT be appropriate. The website should not have redirection, meaning in a .htaccess file. I have two goals for the website:
- A central location to store your design documents that I can zip and save for posterity.
- A media for sharing your documents with your client and team.
I do not expect an elaborate website in terms of styling or design. Your design for the website should pay attention to ease of finding documents.
You will be updating and posting to your website through out the semester. Feel free to modify and improve the design of your website.
Resources
Some resources for learning how to make a website:
In particular, you may want to use Quackit’s online editor to get started on you first web page:
https://www.quackit.com/html/online-html-editor/
And you may study web building and use examples at w3 Schools
- https://www.w3schools.com/w3css/w3css_web.asp
- https://www.w3schools.com/w3css/w3css_demo.asp
- https://www.w3schools.com/w3css/w3css_templates.asp
You will need some tools for building your website:
- Browser – for viewing your website
- Text editor – for creating your webpages
- FTP/SCP client – for uploading your webpages to your www directory on the csl machine
- Terminal – for managing premissions.
I like the atom text editor. It works on both windows, macs and linux machines:
My favorite FTP/SCP clients
- https://winscp.net/eng/index.php – for windows machine
- https://filezilla-project.org/ – for mac and linux
The mac and window machines come with a terminal. For a window machines, get putty:
To upload your file to a csl machine (reference https://servicedesk.mtu.edu/TDClient/1801/Portal/KB/ArticleDet?ID=53584), point your FTP/SCP client to
guardian.it.mtu.edu
Use your school account and password to connect. In the FTP/SCP client navigate to the www/ directory that I have provided for you on csl machines. For example
/group_projects/cs4760/s21/grad1/www/
Where “s21” is for the Spring 2021 version of the course and “grad1” is for grad student number 1. You should replace the index.html file that exist. Upload any additional webpages to this same directory and link them to your index.html page. Make sure that the pages have public read permission.
Initial Content
You should initiate consultant website with some contents:
- Your Name
- Your HCI Topic – this includes both the title and the paragraph description
- The User Goal Document – this is your first design supporting document. It should be a revised version of the User Goals Document that you wrote after the initial meeting with your scientist/client.
Submit on Canvas and Due Date
Submit a link to your team website before the class hour of the due date in canvas.
Grading Rubric
The team website will be evaluate for timeliness, usability and completeness. Specifically:
- Does the website main page and linked documents load into my browser
- Is it easy for me to find the content (for example assignments) and navigate to the document?
- Is the website visually appealing?
- Does the design of the website represent you as an UX Consultant?
- Does the website have any unique design?
As I said before, I do not expect a lot of a design effort from you on the website, but it should work, have clean design and easily navigated.
Prepare for Next Assignment
In your next assignment, you will write your Interaction Design Documents. To prepare for the assignment read: