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This is what I like to call, life lessons with Kirk. Don't try to be all things to all people. Find what you do well and build on those strengths. This is true for you personally and to your site. Also look for the quick wins, also known as the low hanging fruit. If you can quickly and easily make a change to your website that makes a big difference, go for it. If it's something that's highly involved, put it on the back burner. This is a good lesson for this class, your future jobs, and your future, period. Time management is something we all practice and hopefully improve on. Just remember, every time you say yes to something, that means you're saying no to everything else.
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A persona is basically a made up person that represents the problem that you're trying to solve. Sometimes they're called user stories. I usually just put myself in the shoes of my users and use the product like they would, and think about how I would like it to work. Some places like to do benchmarking (against competitors) but I'm not really a fan of that. Aren't you trying to make something better? Then why would you copy them?
If you're called to do a persona, you'll usually want to come up with a person (name and short background), their problem (as it relates to what you're trying to solve) and their goals (i.e. a solution that you can provide). If you're doing it for a company in the future, you may also include a photo of the person that you're trying to create a persona for.
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3 popular concepts in design are Wireframes, Mockups, and Prototypes. Wireframes can be pencil drawings or line art for how you want your design to look. Mockups are images that move beyond wireframes that give you a better sense of the final design. Prototypes are almost functioning solutions. You may have a database that will be built later; the prototype would be functioning code without the database. Personally I like to dive right in on the code but if you're having trouble seeing the final product, I encourage you to try any or all of these concepts.
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On a Mac, to take a screen shot, use Applications...Utilities...Grab...Capture...Selection. I also use a tool called Skitch which allows for annotations as well. You may use screenshots for a wide variety of reasons. Anytime you use a photo, I recommend keeping it small. 1024 pixels wide is generally acceptable. A jpg is also generally the preferred format. Try to keep photos under ½ MB. There can be reasons to go bigger than that like a photo sharing website, but even then I wouldn't force someone to have to download large photos while just perusing the site.
Name images without spaces. Spaces and the web are not good friends.
All images need to have alt text that describe the image too. Make the photo the size that you want it to be, let the user shrink it down but forcing them to zoom in on a picture will make the picture pixelated. Finally, putting "width='100%'" will keep your photo looking great at all sizes.
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When you evaluate sites you can use the information you've already acquired from this course. Bruce Tognazzini also came up with what he calls the 'First Principles'. You can check it out at http://asktog.com/atc/principles-of-interaction-design/. Bruce has some great ideas. One thing I would like to add is, be nice, especially when you're evaluating your peer's website. People put a lot of time and effort into their work, give them constructive criticism on things that they can do to improve their site.
We've already covered some of my top pet peeve's (spelling, grammar, consistency, file size). I'd like to address content now. If you're site is about art, it should have a lot of art on it. If it's about being an editor for a newspaper, it should have a lot of writing on it. Having the appropriate amount of quantity on a site is just as important as the quality of the content. There's no specific formula for how much you should have. That's where you need to do what makes sense and that's why it's always good to have another pair of eyes look at your work. For all future projects in this class, you should have someone evaluate your work. It can only help you get better.