Desk Crits: Given

Home Link Alarm System Training: Yue Li, 5/3/05

Well done, Yue! You've done an excellent job presenting this material. Your interface looks great, the content flows well from section to section, and I know you've put a lot of work into your interactions!

Here are a few suggestions for making your project stronger. I realize it may be too late to make changes, but maybe you can think about it for your future projects.

Interface (throughout):
Excellent colors! The purple and yellow really go well together. I like how you include the other sections on all the screens -- this makes it easy to skip around.

The directions seem to overwhelm the content. If the type size (of the directions at left) were smaller it would better allow the user to focus on the content.

Section 1: Alarm System Overview
This is a really long overview! I'd recommend breaking it up into the following sections:
- What Causes an Alarm?
- Components of the Alarm System (list all components, THEN give details of each)
- Alarm System and the Alarm Process
- Reducing False Alarms
- Your Alarm Company

The user could skip from section to section. Right now, it can be overwhelming to try to find a certain section in the overview content.

Alarm System Disarmed, Armed and Process Diagrams:
These diagrams could be stronger if you introduced the items one by one, as the voice-over explains them. I think the diagram is too much initially. Also, is there a visual way to explain this? Think about supporting text or arrows that move from item to item. May fit better with later content to make the keypad match the one in the practice section.

Section 2: Demo & Practice
Great job incorporating movies into flash! When you close the movie, could you make it stop playing? Also, after doing the practice, it may be better to make an animation for the demo (instead of the movie) -- this way you could produce something that would be legible to the users and relate directly to the practice.

Practice -- this practice is really hard! I'm not really sure if I'm understanding what I'm supposed to do or if I've gotten the correct answer. "Try Again" at the bottom makes me think that I've gotten it wrong. Also, this looks a lot different than the other sections, I think it could strengthen your project if you put this practice section inside your purple interface. The interface looks like the practice will slide out (like the demo). This is a pretty cool flash technique, you should definitely use it!

Also, the exit button on the practice is unclear -- I'm not sure if I'm exiting the practice or the CD. Double-check your code, it doesn't look like these screens actually unload when you click the exit button (they are still there later, when I exit the CD!).

Section 3: Review Alarm System
Excellent Questions! You may want to tighten up the layout a little bit. It seems awkward to read the feedback to the left of the question.

Do you have a conclusion?

I like how the credits appear when I press "Exit" from the main interface. Clever! Is there any way to re-enter the CD from this point?

Chestnut Grove Church: Julius Gantt, 4/28/05

I'm going through your site -- you've done a really awesome job with this! The .php application is an excellent way for people to contribute prayer requests and guestbook entries. Do I see your wife and one of your children one of the pictures?

I have a few comments for you:

The "Why am I here" link to "Four Spiritual Laws" is a wonderful interaction. I wasn't sure where this would go before. Did you make this too? Oh, and how can I get back to the main page once I enter the site?

I see of your 7 main navigation sections, when you click on sections that have more options the submenu loads (this is good, showing choices up front). It may be good to go ahead an jump to the first option when you click on the section (i.e. "About Our Church" would immediately load "From the Pastor"). I think a content shift when you press any of these section headings would make this stronger. I guess when I press on a button, I'm always ready to see a new page.

I really like the scripture match activities. You could bring more value to this with a little more instruction. Maybe something about using your bible to look up the scriptures or how parents can use this activity with their children. These instructions could go on the intro "learning and fun" page. Also, add "Scripture Match 1", "Scripture Match 2", etc. to the submenu for "Learning and Fun". You could always change it up later if you add different kinds of activities.

Content-wise, the only thing that looks like you could add is some sort of mechanism for people to request more info about your church, how to join, or an obvious invitation to attend any services (okay, well, that may be understood!).

I like this site, all the photos of people having a good time and details about what y'all do give a feeling of a fun church community. I enjoyed reading the leaders section and seeing all the different kinds of coordinators you have (dance! drama! angel food!)

Spirals: Robin Fay, 4/27/05

Cool stuff, I'm impressed! This is an excellent example of how to make a table-free website. (Thinking about peeking behind the scenes to learn more about that!) I like your colors, photo series, and layout. You've also included wonderful project and spiral resources.

Here are some quick comments for you:
Opening page flash: When the spiral swirls down and the title appears, could you let the title stay there for a bit longer? Maybe a few more beats, so there's enough time to read it.

The navigation looks very professional. Again, wonderful use of color! It would read better if you could separate the spiral project work from the support stuff. The "*links behind" bit was lost on me, I tried to click it for more links. Maybe move project resources and the * items to the very bottom, separate them from the rest with a larger break, and take out the * explanation. The other part of this is the a:hover view, this would be better if the treatment were consistent (swapping the background color, underlining, whatever you go with). I'm partial to the blue navigation, it seems much more put together than the other (although, I like having the options between styles).

The mini photo gallery jumps from the other layout, (with the red borders and spiral bkgd) and does not accept the green style. It would be good if this matched the other project pages.

Now that you've learned about CSS -- have you played around with making your own templates for Blogger? A challenge: make your blogger pages match the look-and-feel of your project pages.

Oh, I just looked at your code -- I'm so excited to see the unordered list driving your navigation! I saw A List Apart in your resources, have you looked at Listamatic? http://css.maxdesign.com.au/index.htm

Mechanics of Written English: Yi-chun Hong, 4/18/05

needs preloader - indicates program loading, not error on part of user or computers

step 1: what are "objects" and "rules"? is this how many there are or the number in a set?

better to include all packet items here: i don't see apostrophe or hyphen, almost as if it's not as important as the others?

when introducing steps -- remove arrows from choices, this will force the user to go through the steps and learn about the interface. include the "next arrow" at step 4

capital letters;
i like how the heading appears above the numbers -- nice touch!

I would like to go to the next question with the submit button -- may be personal or may be conventional . . .

Capital letters needs some indication to go to exercises at end of rules -- i completely missed this and went on to italics

From Packet to Packet, could you use the "next" arrow to move from the end of one to the beginning of the next? You have a menu to skip around, but this would allow someone to go through the lessons uninterrupted.

"?" button doesn't work. (capital letters: rules)

From "my problem" to "rules & ex." to "exercises" could you use arrow buttons to flow from one to the next? still have the option to skip if you want. . .

italics rule 2: the numbers don't look italicized
rule 3: capitalize "cities" in example

Apostrophe: Rule 4 -- no mention of monetary units in the rule, can be confusing
Apostrophe: Exercise: Question 2: "five-hours' drive" is correct in the exercise

I like the "go to" graphics -- use these in all transitional places!

Hyphen: Rule 6: fix "stick-in-the-mud"

Hyphen rules immediately leads to exercises -- good!

Excellent modification for the overall test. You may strengthen the choices by making the "A", "B", and "C"s bold.

Overall Test 1: Passage 4: The blanks are not indicated.