ICWMAPS.COM Website Remodeling Project  

Website redesign is a work in progress and hence most of the links may not function or may still navigate to the old links. The inconvience is regretted.

International Computer works' website http://www.icwmaps.com is undergoing a major change in its design and structure.

 

The Focus is on improving the Web Site is in following areas:
• Improvement on the site’s ease of use to optimize effort and return on investment by establishing effective communication with our target audience.
• Improvement in the site organization, navigation and search capabilities so that users can more easily locate the current Web Site’s functionality.

 

 

Design and implementation

 

Previous site

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Detailed Site Recommendations

Design Strategy

Below is are some Design implementations and Detailed Site Recommendations for a website? based on research on various sites

 

Factor

Description

Content

Proposed Layout

Main Page

Minor Page

Headlines – News

Timeliness – Current

Consistency

Normalized, User Focused Vocabulary

The information presented should concentrate on the relevance to your audience, through concise information and format. Content that is time sensitive or becomes dated should be removed or refreshed for clarity, retaining the freshness of the site. Content should be written with your target audience in mind, matching their interests, style and use of language.

 

Simplicity

Simplicity is key to usability - the simpler something is, the easier we find it to use. Simplicity, as it applies to Internet usability, does not connote removing important information from your sites, but is does mean presenting your information in a concise, easy to access and digest manner, eliminating all unneeded clutter.

Navigation

The supporting navigation aspects of your sites ultimately enable your audience to traverse through vast amounts of information. Navigation should be intuitive, logical, clear, and consistent from area to area, continually strengthening the familiarization of your audience with your navigation convention. Once a user follows a link in several areas of your current sites, navigation elements are not presented on the linked page and thus, are stuck unless they use the “Back” button. Your navigation should closely support your audiences’ goals and objectives as they visit your sites.

Availability of information

Due to the Internet’s promotion of empowerment and absolute user control, the immediate availability of desired information is crucial. Thus, information must be readily and easily accessible with minimal effort. If important information is buried several levels deep without providing the user a continual reference of accomplishment, the user will grow weary and abandon their efforts. This has spurn the double-click concept, which states: on average, Internet sites loose nearly half of their users for each click toward information if the user perceives that they are not making significant progress towards attaining the information desired. For example, if 100 people visited your site to find current campus events and subsequently had to navigate through five levels of information that did not flow efficiently, the resulting users that would actual make it to the information would be:

Initial users      100

1st click            50

2nd click           25

3rd click            12.5

4th click            6.25

5th click            3.125

… roughly 3 users.

Speed

Not only should your audience find the information they desire quickly, it must also be presented quickly once located. We are all aware of the human tendency towards impatience. Impatience within Internet users, coupled with the user’s ability to absolutely control their actions and ensuing destiny, is severely heightened – abruptly abandoning their search for information, or quickly leaving to find another source.

 

 

 

 

Considering the above facts and that we want ours users to have a ease of operation and information retrieval with minimal effort, the following design strategy has been proposed. The number of clicks any user has to click for any information according to this design would be an average of 2 clicks with the maximum not exceeding 4.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Aesthetics

 

Factor

Description

Style Guide

A style guide is necessary to recreate the aesthetics and consistency of your content. It represents a set of guidelines that act as a standard as to how information will be formatted and presented on your Web Sites. The style guide will cover items such as font and color consistencies per type of content and placement, graphic layout standards, and common appearance factors. Once established and followed, the style guide promotes consistency in look and feel, and further fortifies your identity, exposure, usability, and structure.

Use of Brand

Establishing a consistent use of your ICW brand is not only a key to the aesthetics of your site, but will also further reinforce your identity and exposure by presenting the ICW brand in a pre-determined way.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

GLOBAL NAVIGATION CONCEPT:

 

 

Navigation and content areas. Many web design resources suggest that a web site's navigation scheme should include global elements and, on a complex site, these navigation elements are located consistently and typically at the top of the page.

By global elements, we mean links that are useful to site visitors no matter where they are within the ICW web site.

In this diagram, we break up a home page into two distinct areas, Navigation and Content. The navigation area (indicated by the red highlighted area) is where global navigation links are established on the home page and these are to remain constant throughout the institution's web site(s).

The navigation should be located at the top of the page for several reasons:

1. Screen size - Individual user screen resolutions (sometimes referred to as "screen size" ) vary based upon personal settings, hardware capabilities, platform, and browser type and versions. They can be anywhere from 602 x 313 pixels (little space) to 1263 x 854 pixels (large space). Since a browser eliminates space on the right and bottom of web pages as the screen size gets smaller, AND since there is no way to force resolution settings, important elements on any web page must be located as close to the top and as close to the left side of a web page as possible.

2. Convention - Most, if not all, software titles have menus on the top portion of the application window, as well as buttons on the left side. This is a very typical user interface, and one which in ingrained into computer users from the very first time they open a computer application.

3. Integration - By putting the global navigation (and ICW branding elements) on the top of the web page, this leaves the entire content area free for sub navigation as well as actual content. See the illustration below.

Further dividing the content area. By establishing and then confining the global navigation and branding elements to the top portion of the web page, the content area can easily be further subdivided. Main navigation for any site under the main ICW site can still be included in the second "conventional" location, the left side of the page. This allows for flexibility and easy sub-branding.

 

 

The New Site

The following 2 proposals has been made for the main page and the template for most of the other pages considering the aesthetics for the website

 

Model 1

 

 

Model 2.

 

 

 

 

The model that has been accepted