paper prototyping

"Paper prototyping is a variation of usability testing where representative users perform realistic tasks by interacting with a paper version of the interface that is manipulated by a person ‘playing computer,’ who doesn’t explain how the interface is intended to work." – Paper Prototyping

Above is an image of a persons drawing that they have done. Basically it shows the layout of the website they are looking to create an also what information there should be in it.

But before i could start sorting out the layout for my website i firstly had to sort out what i was going to call this website of mine and also if the domain name was free for me to use. 

I start of by doing a bit of brainstorming.

I tried to think of things that had to do with irish culture. So the ideas i had were;

• Food
• sport
• fairs
• language
• jobs
• skills
• people
• places
• dancing

these are what i perceived to have any connection with Irish culture from this was the next thing to expand on these to try and create a name. I expanded on the points that i created but trying to think of a name was a bit harder than i first thought. my names all entailed using the word irish for example;

• Irishfairs
• irishevents
• irish culture
• irelands events

but then when i looked back at my sheet i noticed that i had the word language wrote down which then lead me to think about using our own native irish in the name of the site. So from this i started to generate names using the irish language. The one that stood out out to me the most was irish culture.

I then decided to see what i could do with this, i tried doing the whole lot in irish "cultur na hEireann" which means irish culture but the main problem i got with this was when people were trying to remember the websites name and trying to spell it so that knocked that one right out of the park. I then sat down and kept thinking to myself what way can i adjust this so that people who dont speak or write read the native language could remember how to spell the name and then it hit me. Cultur Ireland. This i thought was the perfect name to use for my site as it had a bit of irish in it and also a bit of english so if anybody was trying to remember the name and spell it, it would be quite easy for them to do so. Cultur is the irish word for culture but in the irish lanuage the way the word the sentencing is quite strange as its back to front if you understand me so by putting cultur first made it seem as if i was using the irish language for all of it but then by putting Ireland in english at the end makes it easier for people to rememeber and not seem as if its in irish if you understand me. The only thing i could see was for when im creating the logo there is a fada across the top of the second u in the word cultur and in a domain name u cant have that. besides that i would still like to include it in the logo as i feel it gives the logo a touch of Irish to it. Now that i got the name sorted i decided to check to see if the domain name was free for it and luckily enough it was so i have the choice of;

• www.culturireland.com
• www.culturireland.co.uk
• www.culturireland.org
• www.culturireland.ie
• www.culturireland.info

which one to chose i dont know. I was leaning towards the .ie one more than any as its stating that it is irish but by consulting with a class mate they also pointed out that the website that i was creating was also an information site which then got me to think more along the lines of .info as this would state to people that it was an information site so they know what they are getting from it. I will leave this to sort out closer to the time of my MMP (major project Proposal).

Logo design I will leave for a while yet till i get the design of the page decided upon. I remember from class that they were talking about the 12 column rule that new york times use or something so i went and googled it and found this website...

This website allowed you to generator the 12 columns across a website to see if it had it or not here are a few example below.

As you can see from above that there is 12 columns and each column is 60 pixels wide, each colunm has a gap of 10 pixels either side of it which create 20 pixel wide gutters. This layout is very good for getting the exact layout for your site.

after researching this i decided to crack away at my own website. this was still being done using pen and paper.

Event page- your probably wondering what the wee drawing is in the middle but what i hopefully plan to do is have a map of Ireland, created using flash, were the four provinces are hotspots and you click on one to find out the events in that province. At the top I have the navigation as i said earlier that i prefered this compared to it down the side. I have the logo at the top right corner and a news feed and contact box on the right of the map. Reason form this was when i saw the mayo website that i liked the idea of news feed constantly going at the side of the page. finally there is a simple footer at the bottom of the page.

Gallery- this page is the exact same concept as from the one above only instead of inforation about the evnts this will show images and videos from them.

contact- this page has the same layout as the rest but in the main div it has a contact form at the end of all the relative contact information is given. reason for the the form at the end of this is for anybody who wants to contact me quickly and personally can do so with ease.

This is the ulster page that will appear when u click on it in either the gallery or events page, again it is spilt into separate hotpsots for each county but the twist to this page is once the county has been clicked you have all the events links below in a separte div. this will allow you to still be able to see the map and also be able to see the events to see if any of them catch your eye and you would like to explore them more.

same concept as ulster

same concept as ulster

same concept as ulster

these are just temporary storyboards there not the finished article yet.

On each of the event pages i would like to have a google api that showed were they were at. This is a new technique for me so i will have to research it first to see how you would go about doing such a thing.