UNIT 02 - Designing a Web-Site

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The main aim of this unit is to get you to produce a web-site based on the subject of Recycling.

In this scenario you are the developer of small web-sites for businesses and you have been approached by an organisation who wants to have their own presence on the Internet. You have to provide them with several pieces of evidence throughout the development of their web-site in order to comply with their needs.

Specifically, the following items

      1.  A Web-site Plan (including a description of each page, how they are connected, colours, fonts etc)

      2.  A website with at least 5 pages (6 for merit and 7 for distinction) which contains

                a) Working Hyperlinks

                b) Roll-over/Interactive Elements

                c) A Feedback page

      3.  Testing Plan ( and Test Results)

      4.  Critical Evaluation of the web-site you created

In the real world this is pretty how development works, at the start you will be approached with a task and you will make a basic design.

It's not worth while or efficient to start developing something before you have an agreed concept. It would be a bit like building a house before you've had the architectural plans agreed. You wouldn't want to have to take it all down because it's not what the customer wants.

Once you have approval, you should in theory develop the test plan next and get that agreed by the customer. By doing this, you are setting the success criteria, i.e. the tests that must be passed before what you will develop is accepted by the customer.

Next is the development of the web-site itself. My recommendation here would be to create a template which will form the basis of all pages. This is a good idea, because you can get the basic layout set (colours, links positioning) in place and then copy this for every other page. It's also one of the success criteria for the unit, so it's doubly worth doing.

Finally, the Critical evaluation would be a document which would not be shared with your customer, but would help you to reflect on what you have done.  How it went well and also what didn't work as well as you thought it might. This is helpful because it makes you aware that while you were mostly happy with what you did, there are areas which you could improve upon. Secondly, it boosts your confidence in the things that went well and reminds you to re-use these things the next time.

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