Technical: www.fayettevillcap.org website
The purpose of the fayettevillecap.org redesign presentation was to exhibit the design skills I learned in the User-Experience II: Theory and Management course. I redesigned the website for mobile devices. The users of the website would be 12-18-year-old cadet members, and adults. This project was an individual assignment. I chose to display this project in my portfolio to exhibit the following outcomes:
- respond appropriately and ethically to different rhetorical situations,
- evaluate how each genre shapes content and usability.
For responding appropriately and ethically to different rhetorical situations, I considered the website for both 12-18-year-old and greater than 18 years old people. The genre I looked at was mobile websites. This genre shaped how I displayed content and designed the user’s interactions. I learned when working on a mobile website, the placement and design of content has multiple audiences.
Multi-modal: Texts and Technology portfolio website
The multi-modal project in my portfolio is the portfolio website project. This was an individual assignment. The audience for this project was Dr. Lonie McMichael, my Texts and Technology instructor. I chose to display this project in my portfolio because it met the following outcomes:
- engage in a critical perspective of technology, its uses and contexts
- focus on a defined purpose.
Engaging in a critical perspective of technology, its uses and context allowed me to not be limited by technology. Focusing on a defined purpose allowed me to evaluate what kind of experience I had in user experience. Seeing what the limitations of technology are and what I had to present allowed me to see that I still have much to learn.
Choice - Professional and Technical Writing Program Website
The collaborative project in this portfolio is a usability report. The purpose of this usability report was to gather user feedback on the Professional and Technical Writing (PTW) program website. The program co-chairs, Baye Herald and Dr. Kevin Van Winkle were planning on using the advice included in the usability report to improve the program website. A secondary audience of the usability report is other PTW faculty. Through analysis, my group considered the following to be the audience of the website: UCCS faculty, UCCS students, faculty from other institutions, and potential transfer students. The primary testers of the usability test were students. The categories of students we used to determine our test participants were pre-major/minor, PTW class/UX class, Post-PTW/UX Class, and PTW/UX Minor or major. This project was the collaborative work of a group of three students, a mechanical engineering student, English - rhetoric and writing student, and me, an electrical engineering student at the time. I chose to display this project in my portfolio because it met the following outcomes:
- develop and administer usability tests,
- participate collaboratively with others in the iterative process of research, discussion, negotiation, writing, and editing.
The process of developing a usability test plan allowed us to think about the test and potential problems. In turn, we were able to standardize the testing trails and minimize some testing errors. By working as a team through the research process we were able to create a more well thought out testing plan and consider many situations.
Professional - Web Accessibility for Visual Impairments
The professional project in my portfolio is the “Web Accessibility for Visual Impairments” project. It was designed to present a website related topic to my ENGL 3130 – Web and Print Document Design classmates. This project was an individual assignment. The deliverables for this project were a paper and a poster. I chose to display this project in my portfolio because it met the following outcomes:
- write in multiple genres and produce a variety of common deliverables,
- produce appropriate text and graphics for displaying research data and findings.
When writing in multiple genres, the information content is similar, just the presentation is different. When the content is fitted to the expectations of the genre, the users will understand the information more. Producing appropriate text and graphics helps the user understand what the main ideas are and how the information is related to the graphics. The “Web Accessibility for Visual Impairments” project allowed me to understand that information must be restated to make sure that people can understand the information. Hopefully web developers will be able to design their content to be accessible to all people. This project taught me that well-structured information can be easily reformatted for different purposes, but I must know the intended audiences to do the reformatting properly.