Wednesday, 24 November 2010

Sitemaps/flowcharts/storyboards for Journi

Now is time to create a site map for the Journi website. This will allow me to see all of the pages in advance and the layout plan of my site.


All of the pages are straight forward the only page with a difference is the county page as it will have links to the different counties in Ulster. Each county will then link to operators within that section and on their pages there services will be included.

The sitemap has shown the following pages:

  • Home
  • About
  • County(which will go to the various counties and then in turn will take the user to the operator' page)
  • News
  • Travel Updates
  • Contact Us
Currently I have twenty definite pages as I know of some operators already providing the services but now I am waiting for other operators to get back to me with their timetables and whether or not they wish to be included in the website.

Below is a flowchart that shows the process of my site from beginning to end. The flowchart begins with a meeting consultation that began back in week one when we were told to email a text document with the following details:
  1. Your Name
  2. A 50 Word Pen Portrait
  3. Three Prospective Projects (Title, Brief Description, Pros and Cons)
  4. Five Inspiring Websites

This image has been taken from My Major Project Proposal.


Below are the storyboards that I have created for my journi website. The storyboards are similar to the paper prototypes only they give a more accurate idea on how the website should appear.

These are the first three pages which are almost similar just with slight different layouts in the main content area. I have gone for a simple, easy approach just like I have researched National Express and Stagecoach create. On the Home page I will have the simple navigation along with some visually expressed content on the left main content area. I will have a Travel Update along the right which will be the Twitter Widget that I will create so that operators can #tag the journi twitter with relevant updates. On the About page I was going to place links along the bottom of the page for Facebook, Twitter and Latest News.

These two pages alike the county page will also be similar as they all have the same layout. The only difference between these pages will be the size of the content area and the different types of styles that I will be including in each of them.


 The selected county and operator pages will also have the same layout keeping a consistency throoughout the whole of my project. In all this will be the basis for my website as I will be using this as a support to the layout of the site. I will be including these storyboards in my Major Project Proposal as part of the appendices as they are a platform in which I will be structuring my project.

Thursday, 18 November 2010

Features I'm researching

Now that I have a name, a target audience and ideas I was going to firstly think of a slogan or strap line for my website making it standout a little more.

The name is journi. So I now need to create some sort of slogan that will make the nae journi be remembered. I came up with some slogans myself and there were a few that I liked others sounded fine at the start but were slightly "cheesy" to say the least.

Always trying to take travelling and transport into consideration I came up with:
Journi -
  • one route for all
  • a new way for all
  • the right way to travel
  • get there with a change
  • everything we do is "driven by Journi"
I then came across an advertising slogan generator which also came up with some good and bad slogans:
http://thesurrealist.co.uk/slogan.cgi?
Journi -
  • if only everything in life was as reliable
  • we bring travel to life
  • go to work on a journi
  • make the most of it
I felt that the slogans that I obtained from the advertising generator focused on general ideas but just incorporated the word into it. I also thought that these strap lines targeted more of a holiday audience as "we bring travel to life" reminds me of the title for a summer holiday brochure. 

I was tied between "one route for all" and "a new way for all". I believe that the first "one route for all" best describes everything. The slogan is describing the aim of the website rather than the travel. One route is referring to the website as it will be the one way in which all of the users will interact with to find out the information for all services. This will be my slogan for the website as I feel it incorporates all that I wish to involve into the website.

Sunday, 14 November 2010

What age group will I be targeting

I have been in touch with some Private Coach Operators with regards to the age groups that they would be transporting to and from Belfast. I was informed that within the last three to four years that there has been a lot more students using the facility. The services were initially put into effect for commuters who had long travelling from home to work and vice versa, but now they see a popular demand for their services from students who travel on a daily basis.

One Operator told me that he had a steady service for working commuters, but since the increase of prices in Belfast more studets are availing of the service and it has been a great success. In turn this too has given me an insight to what type of site I need to create. Another operator Norma, told me her Coach Company provides a daily service, with commuters being predominately workers than students. She explained that a lot of her commuters are in fact those using the Airport Service, as it is an easy and convenient way of getting to the Airport with the use of wifi.

When I asked the operators if there was a need for more information to be made easier to view, they both agreed that there is a great requirement for this as it would help with advertising their services and let others be aware of them.
I have taken both points of view under consideration and believe that the site will have to be modern for the younger generation and very user friendly for the older, navigation will have to be for the older age groups so that they can get to where they want within two or three clicks.

Before I take a survey, I believe the age group that my site will be targeting will be between 18 - 65. When the survey is completed it will give me a better insight to what who the survey will be targeting as I believe it will be a lot narrower than 18-65.

Wednesday, 3 November 2010

Colour Schemes and Typefaces

Starting to look at the layout of my site and what I am going to put in it. I have done some more paper prototyping of the various layouts that I have in mind.

I have also been on Adobe Kuler and been looking at various colour schemes that I could use in my website. I have been looking this first scheme which is full of neutral colours of blue and green. I personally like the colours green and blue in websites as it looks warmer than just a plain site but also looks professional as it doesn't go too extravagant with vibrancy.


I then looked at colour scheme designer, and it let me select a colour and it would pick out another colour that would compliment it. I like the colour blue and think it is a nice, clean, positive colour and looked at it to see what other colours would compliment it.





I too have looked at colorcombos.com to see if they could give me any ideas on colour schemes that I could use. After looking how Translink and Traveline have achieved neutral schemes they both have used turquoise and white with a black colour on typeface for the text areas. Below is an image of the colorcombos.com website and the way in which they implement colours.



I would like to incorporate the colour blue into a site, as I believe it is a tranquil, peaceful colour which is easy to implement into any website. Here are some colour combinations that I will be looking at in further detail as I believe that they do compliment each other very well:

Here are ome other colour schemes I have looked at which take into consideration the turquoise colour that Translink have used. I just tried them out to see if there would be any other colours that would go well with it:



I still prefer the blue colour schemes further up the page although the first turquoise scheme is quite nice and tranquil, it would give the site a sort of a peaceful and calmness about it. I then typed in purple to see what colour schemes would be brought forward to me. I personally feel that purple always compliments gold as the colours are often used together. It is a nice dark, rich colour whereas gold is bright and the contrast is just right.

You can see even in the football jersey above how well both colours go together and how one compliments the other. Below are some colour schemes for purple that I have researched in Adobe Kuler.



I will still go back to my original colour schemes as I feel that they are best to test for my website they are the following two colours below but I am not yet sure which one I will pick yet.

 I might not use all four colours in the palette but may sample one or two depending on how far I wnt to take them. I still feel that the yellow and blue look the best together and will stick by that, so I could see myself using both of those colours more than the rest.


The next thing that I have to look at is the font title. I was thinking of using a font that symbolised transport and found a transport font which is used on road signs by the Department of Transport. The font looks something like the one below. It is a clear sans-serif typeface designed for road signs in the UK.

"It was created between 1957 and 1963 by Jock Kinneir and Margaret Calvert as part of their work as designers for the Department of Transport's Anderson and Worboys committees. All aspects of signing were investigated and tested, initially on the Preston bypass before their introduction on the M1 motorway a year later. The committee looked at examples from other European states as well as the USA but Kinneir and Calvert found them somewhat harsh and unsatisfactory. Instead, they developed a more rounded typeface with distinctive tails to 'a', 't', and 'l', and bar-less fractions, all of which helped legibility."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transport_(typeface)

Image courtesy of http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Road.sign.arp.750pix.jpg
Image and Typeface info courtesy of http://www.tfl.gov.uk/tfl/corporate/media/fonts/

The Johnston typeface has undergone many changes since it was developed for London Underground by Edward Johnston in 1916. It is said to be a humanist sans-serif typeface. As the font associated with London’s transport network for nearly a century, TfL is keen to ensure the Johnston family of fonts is used in a consistent and controlled way.

"Features of the font are the perfect circle of the letter O and the use of a diagonal square dot above minuscule letters i and j and for the full stop. Commas, apostrophes and other punctuation marks are also based on the diagonal square dot." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johnston_(typeface)

Typeface Choices
"Any typeface can be specified for a website. Whether or not that face is displayed depends on whether or not it’s installed on the user’s system. The list of dependable typefaces has grown a bit though. It used to be limited to Times, Helvetica, Arial, Verdana, and Courier. But these days you can safely add George, Impact, Trebuchet and Comic Sans (though you wouldn't choose Comic Sans now would you?). I would personally add Tahoma and Lucida into that list as well. Clearly this is still a very short list compared to all the typefaces available in print. However, there's nothing stopping you from spec'ing Truesdell, Centaur, or any other typeface of superlative beauty and simply allowing the browser to substitute one of the more certain faces if the perfect typeface is not installed."
http://www.newfangled.com/website_typeface_choices

The above statement really speaks the opinion of many. Helvetica in my own opinion is probably the best typeface to use for the content of the website but for the banner/logo I still haven't found the correct typeface but it is a work in progress.