Assignment 7 - Website Critique
By Karen Wang
24 May 2013
Review of Roommates: Web Series
From my experience, a website for a web-series plays an important role: it draws the user into the storyline of the webseries, and allows them to feel more intimate with the cast and alternate universe of the show. The website design for Roommates shows this well, and echoes the audience’s tastes: young, tech-smart, and college-aged.
The website is generally divided into logical sections: about the website; synopsis, cast, and crew; the making of, etc. One part that is a little confusing is the article entitles “Shooting an Independent Web-series” is located on the homepage of the “Blog” section. You mentioned that having a homepage for each section was kind of annoying, and I agree. I think an option you can consider is putting “Shooting an Independent Web-series” in its own subsection, then linking to each subsection on your “Blog” homepage. To be clear, the “Blog” homepage could consist of just a list of links to each of the subsections: Equipment, Fanpage, and Shooting Your Own Web-series.
I think your project plan is well-defined and you have thought about the long term goals, including a Donation page to raise funds to support the website and web-series. Have you ever seen Dorm Life, which airs on Hulu.com? The concept of your web-series is similar to that. Their website at http://www.dorm-life.com/ includes some more marketing ideas such as selling T-shirts and DVDs. The website doesn’t have a lot of written content, but it might give you some ideas in terms of graphic design. Also, if you have a Pottermore account or make one, it has a lot of written content on the backstory behind Harry Potter that you could potentially emulate on your site.
There are no ethical issues or risks that I can think of associated with your website.
Review of CasinoNoob
Your concept is very clear: a website to teach beginner gamblers how to play different types of games. Your site organization is also well-thought out, with a succinct homepage that contains links to each type of game you are going to discuss. I like the Card Game Rules section that gives a rundown of gambling terminology for complete noobs. It would be helpful if you expanded this to include a wider range of terms, just to make sure you and the audience are on the same page (“ante”, “preflop”, “check”, “fold” are some of the ones I ran across on the Hold’Em Bonus Poker page.)
On the Hold’Em Bonus Poker page, you include a table that contains the information for each possible play, which is really helpful. But since it is large, it overruns the horizontal boundaries of the webpage a little bit. You could potentially turn it into a vertical-layout table, to avoid this formatting issue. I liked that you included a link to an online simulation of the game.
As mentioned, the site layout is easy to navigate. The website design is also simple and direct. Some improvements that could be made are setting the ambience of the homepage. For example, what if you made it seem like the interior of a casino by setting the entire background as the casino picture? (The opacity of the photo would potentially need to be adjusted to allow the text to show up, however).
Your project plan takes into account the future of online gambling, mentioning that more and more people are going online to experience a virtual reality through computer games, Facebook, and possibly online gambling. In terms of potential risks and ethical issues, you may need to include a disclaimer about gambling age restrictions and policies in the US and worldwide (depending on the scope of your target audience).
24 May 2013
Review of Roommates: Web Series
From my experience, a website for a web-series plays an important role: it draws the user into the storyline of the webseries, and allows them to feel more intimate with the cast and alternate universe of the show. The website design for Roommates shows this well, and echoes the audience’s tastes: young, tech-smart, and college-aged.
The website is generally divided into logical sections: about the website; synopsis, cast, and crew; the making of, etc. One part that is a little confusing is the article entitles “Shooting an Independent Web-series” is located on the homepage of the “Blog” section. You mentioned that having a homepage for each section was kind of annoying, and I agree. I think an option you can consider is putting “Shooting an Independent Web-series” in its own subsection, then linking to each subsection on your “Blog” homepage. To be clear, the “Blog” homepage could consist of just a list of links to each of the subsections: Equipment, Fanpage, and Shooting Your Own Web-series.
I think your project plan is well-defined and you have thought about the long term goals, including a Donation page to raise funds to support the website and web-series. Have you ever seen Dorm Life, which airs on Hulu.com? The concept of your web-series is similar to that. Their website at http://www.dorm-life.com/ includes some more marketing ideas such as selling T-shirts and DVDs. The website doesn’t have a lot of written content, but it might give you some ideas in terms of graphic design. Also, if you have a Pottermore account or make one, it has a lot of written content on the backstory behind Harry Potter that you could potentially emulate on your site.
There are no ethical issues or risks that I can think of associated with your website.
Review of CasinoNoob
Your concept is very clear: a website to teach beginner gamblers how to play different types of games. Your site organization is also well-thought out, with a succinct homepage that contains links to each type of game you are going to discuss. I like the Card Game Rules section that gives a rundown of gambling terminology for complete noobs. It would be helpful if you expanded this to include a wider range of terms, just to make sure you and the audience are on the same page (“ante”, “preflop”, “check”, “fold” are some of the ones I ran across on the Hold’Em Bonus Poker page.)
On the Hold’Em Bonus Poker page, you include a table that contains the information for each possible play, which is really helpful. But since it is large, it overruns the horizontal boundaries of the webpage a little bit. You could potentially turn it into a vertical-layout table, to avoid this formatting issue. I liked that you included a link to an online simulation of the game.
As mentioned, the site layout is easy to navigate. The website design is also simple and direct. Some improvements that could be made are setting the ambience of the homepage. For example, what if you made it seem like the interior of a casino by setting the entire background as the casino picture? (The opacity of the photo would potentially need to be adjusted to allow the text to show up, however).
Your project plan takes into account the future of online gambling, mentioning that more and more people are going online to experience a virtual reality through computer games, Facebook, and possibly online gambling. In terms of potential risks and ethical issues, you may need to include a disclaimer about gambling age restrictions and policies in the US and worldwide (depending on the scope of your target audience).