Startup: develop a company website

• To get an overview of the type of site you should be building take a look (Competitive analysis ) at some other interaction design sites. Your website should be similar in style to other companies that work in the area.
  • Adaptive Path
  • 37 signals
  • Cooper
  • Swim
  • IDEO
  • Interaction design
  • Open interface
  • Quarry Integrated Communications
• Use Google to find other similar sites
• Use Excel to create a comparison chart of the content these sites provide. Post on site when complete.

"Customers think that they are the centre of the universe. Customers come to your website to get their needs fulfilled. They will only think you are great if you meet their needs in an efficient and cost- effective manner." Gerry McGovern Newsletter 8 Sept 03 Websites: Think The Way Your Customer Thinks

• Create a user profile for your site
• Create personas: From your user research, create at least two personas of your prospective customers
• Post the personas on the unit blog for feedback. Compare yours with other students.

• Use open source sitesto speed up the process
• Website Content
  • Some of the content your site could include:
    • About the company
      Design processes
      Staff (expertise and skills)
      Technologies
    • The site must include the following content
      What is Web 2.0?
      What are ePortfolios?
      What is Interaction Design?
      You will need to decide where and how these can be incorporated.
    • Your site will eventually incorporate a Blog.(Please design for it)
    • Each week more content will be added to your website so it should be designed with navigation options that can readily expand- particularly in the design processes section
    • All content on the website will be assessed as part of Assessment 1.
• Technical considerations
  • Site must conform to W3C XHTML Strict Doctypes (XHTML 1.0 or HTML 4.01) and CSS specifications.
  • No table based layouts can be used as mobile access will be necessary
  • UTF 8 encoding is required
  • Site should work across all platforms and browsers
  • Site will be uploaded onto Nutmeg server which has access both on and off campus
  • All work must be valid and accessible (WCAG AA specs) for both people and devices