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Prototype |
There are five main phases that we intend to adhere to during the development of the Theatreland on-line. These are:
The break down�s of each phase is detailed below. The workforce during these phases would be both the designers and engineers involved. Both of these teams would work closely together, both concentrating on their own various areas. A Time / Effort diagram below shows the typical volume of work for both the engineers and the designers. The centre line depicts people from both teams working together. �
Diagram 1: Time / Effort diagram ["Secrets of Successful Web Sites", David Siegel, 1997, Hayden Books]
During this phase, we see how the overall web strategy fits in with the marketing and business strategy, and then we refine the web strategy to include the overall site goals, designs goals, branding, user interface, and technical goals. We have defined our audience as being the 25-55 age groups, who surf the �net purely to seek out information, not as a hobby, so we do not have to launch a massive site, one such as c|net, just the opposite. Our site would be deemed quite modest compared to large sites. Our target audience would most likely come to our site from the popular search engine, rather than from any other access point (such as theatre fan-club pages, etc). Therefore it would be necessary to create a vivid presence on these search engines. This could be in the form of ad-banners, various high profile reviews scattered throughout the most popular sites (e.g. Yahoo!, Excite, Time Out, MSN Home, AOL Home, etc.) The Design Phase is the precursor that sets everything up so that the web designers can apply their maximum of potential to the finish product. Various inputs are fed into the production phase so that the designers can get a feel of how the site should be. The initial starting point would be the brainstorming session within the group. During this brainstorming session we would immerse ourselves in the culture of the customer: who is the customer, what image do they posses, and asking the questions "If I were a Theatreland web site, what would I look like? What would I say?" During this phase we create plenty of sketches, thumbnails of images, and any designs which would seem appropriate. As soon as the first set of designs has been agreed upon by the team and been approved by the client, we would put forward a list of content for the client to start working on. This site would be pumping out a lot of information, and this information would not be static, it would always be changing, although not rapidly. Many site designers do get carried away with creating cute icons used for navigation, and do end up spending a lot of time creating and coding them. However, in our site, we will try to keep the navigation simple for the user to flow around the site. During the alpha stage the designer would create the entire site in a text-based format, and then from there decide the necessary structure to be used for the navigational scheme.
During this phase, the team stops being "the-team-building-the-site" and transforms themselves into the "customer": the team play devil�s advocate. The ideas and designs formed in the Design phase are divided into three categories: Idiotic ideas, Favourites, and Alternatives. The Idiotic ideas are trashed, and the other two are whittled down to 10-15 design choices. These choices are then evaluated to a set of predetermined criteria (e.g. Fast download, works on low-end systems, etc.) The whittling down process should result in 3 designs: the team�s favourite, the wildest design and the most conservative design. These designs are then presented back to the client and it is up to them to make the informed choice on which design to go ahead with.
The Alpha version of the site will be made from hand-coded pages, rather than being served from a database. As the site develops and we begin to incorporate more services in our site and more information, we will move towards a database-driven site. As we will accepting booking�s and offering seats to customers, we will be using secure transmission protocols to ensure that the customer has every confidence in parting with his / her credit card details knowing that the information will not be misused. Initially, the site will not be browser specific, as the current popular browser�s on the market are very evenly matched � Netscape Navigator is currently on version 4.5, and Microsoft�s Internet Explorer is currently on version 4.01. However, as both of these companies are going to premier their new version browser very soon, we will see which one is being used the most by �net users, and see if it is in our advantage to make our site browser specific. Our site will not make use of Cascading Style Sheets and will not require a plug-in or special control � we want to keep our site as simple as possible, and make it quick for the user to access the information they are looking for. However, the site will look at its best when viewed in thousands of colours. We have made this choice on the knowledge that over three-quarters of web-users do have a PC or MAC which is considered average with regards to their graphics capabilities. The site will not use layers, push-technology or channels. Research has shown that push-technology and channels has not taken off as much as the developers had expected � Microsoft will not be championing the channel function of their next version of Internet Explorer as much as they did when they debuted Internet Explorer 4. We feel that it would be a waste of time and resources to create such functions on our site. The designers will create a detailed storyboard using Adobe PageMaker 6.5 after the initial storyboard has been created, and from there the site will be marked-up by hand.
This is the final stage before the site goes live. This phase only happens if the Beta test goes well, and is all about putting the finishing touches on the site. The details that will need attention are:
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