Think Straight – Website Evaluation
I believe the website that I have created with my colleague, Grace Williams, meets the conventions of real websites and also has some ways in which it challenges real websites too. For instance, we both feel the choice we made to keep all of our facts short and simple to understand will challenge other similar websites such as DrinkAware. We believe this because, as our site is aimed at teenagers, they do not like to read long passages, but if it is only short points across the pages there is a better chance of them taking it in and understanding it. We believe teenagers will prefer the directness and we think you can see that the target audience has been considered a lot when browsing the site. We feel our website is unique in that it is not all interactive and too much fun like some (e.g. Talk to Frank), but it is not all long passages of dangers which can be boring(e.g. NHS). We have tried to cut the information down a lot but still leaving all important details that make a difference. We also didn’t want lots of fun, interactive things to do on the site, because it is for teenagers, not children and it is a serious subject being discussed. Although, we think the pictures and layout is enough to keep the audience engaged. Furthermore, the pictures used on the site were self taken by an SLR camera, this provides high quality photographs which also challenge real websites. Other conventions of real media products that our site follow is the layout, as I have researched many websites before making my own, I soon learnt that the majority of sites contained logos in the top left hand corner, a menu bar along the top, a menu bar along the side and a consistent colour scheme with only two or three different fonts being used. Grace and I have tried the best we can to follow these conventions whilst still adding our own style. On our website, we have included an introduction page which then links to our home page, this is seen is various different websites and lets the audience know the campaign name before clicking through. Furthermore, on our home page, we have links along the top and the left and an introductory passage of text in the middle which gives the audience a quick brief to what our site is campaigning and raising awareness to. This is also seen in almost all sites unless the sites have a designated “about us” page. Also, we have tried to meet the regular conventions of a real website by following a consistent colour scheme and font style throughout, we have used only 4 colours and only 3 different font styles, this helps to make her site look as professional as it possibly can.
In the briefs for our website we explained that it was going to be aimed at teenagers. I felt this would be a worthwhile age group to focus on because it is teenagers who are most likely to be curious and experimental. This is also the age people seem most vulnerable to peer pressure and want to try new things i.e. drugs, alcohol and smoking so therefore by informing this age group of the dangers, it should have a beneficial effect. We thought it better to focus on trying to stop people starting because of the age group we chose, rather than quitting. However we do have the Help & Advice page to cover that area too. A way in which we represent the website being for teenagers is by the pictures used, the people in each of the pictures are teenagers and we have tried to represent them looking as if being addicted to drugs, smoking or alcohol is not fun and not a good place to be in. our pictures are of characters who are not showing their faces but instead have their heads down to connote negativity. Our picture are also all of young people on their own, we have the boy drinking by the side of the road, the boy smoking on his own next to a wall and a girl locked in her bathroom taking drugs. We purposely did this because we did not want to show groups of people together because that could give off the wrong idea that its the “cool” thing to do. Our images are familiar to those on other websites which also want to show the idea that if you get too heavily involved with drugs, smoking or alcohol that you will feel alone. Also, the font that is used has a paint like effect which some teenagers may look at as graffiti. Furthermore, our black and white pictures used represent grim times if you get involved in drugs, smoking or alcohol abuse and our more graphic pictures of how your body will be effected were used to get the audience thinking. After using such dark and negative representations, we decided we needed to add a colour to show there is a light at the end of the tunnel if you say no to smoking, drugs or alcohol, the colour we used was a bright green which Grace and myself both feel lightened up the pages on our site.
After our website has been successfully created we have to figure out how to distribute the site the best way possible to reach the widest way. Of course, this is through the internet, however it is more difficult than may be though as you need to find a domain name which relates to your site and have funds available in order for the website to reach the web. A good name which would suit our site would be something along the lines of, www.thinkstraight.org. This would be an ideal domain name as it is the title of our campaign and the “.org” means that our site is an organization which is profit free. Furthermore, we would have to get a team of professionals to get our site on search engines like “Google,” this is so our site would appear on the listings if somebody searched for information on alcohol, smoking or drugs.
The target audience for the website is boys and girls who are at the stage in their lives where they do not know much about drugs, smoking or alcohol and may be considering experimenting with either of the three. Therefore the age range I am targeting is teenagers and more specifically 16/17 years old. This is an important age as I can remember going through these ages myself and can remember peers around me constantly getting involved with the 3 topics (drugs, smoking, alcohol) without knowing how their body was being affected. I have not created my website to target specific educational backgrounds or social class backgrounds because everybody needs to know the effects of drinking, smoking and taking drugs and anybody could get into the three. For example, a boy who goes to a private school whose parents are considered in the ‘A’ category within the social status class has the exact same chance of knowing nothing and getting involved with drugs as does a boy who goes to a comprehensive school whose parents are in the ‘E’ category within the social status class. Because I am targeting my website at a younger audience, younger people are put into psychographic categories. These categories consist of Trendies, Egoists, Puritans, Innovators, Rebels, Groupies, Drifters, Drop Outs, Traditionalists, Utopians, Cynics and Cowboys. I am going to target my website at Trendies, Rebels, Groupies and Drifters. I am setting my target audience to Trendies because these are the youths who crave the admiration of their peers, this means that they may smoke, get drunk, or take drugs because they believe they will look cool in front of their friends. I am aiming my website at Rebels because they may get into drugs or smoking to cause a stir in society and am aiming my website at Groupies because these are the young people who just want acceptance and taking drugs may get them accepted into a peer group. Finally, I am aiming my website at Drifters because these are the youths who are confused about what they want who are likely to experiment. This is my target audience as these groups of people described are the most likely people who may get into abusing alcohol, smoking or drugs and so will need to know the information.
The way in which we designed the site was not to have too much information on one page with long scroll down bars, but instead less information on each pages but with more links. Before our home page, we have an introduction page. All that features on this page is a brick wall in black and white and the title/link “Think Straight.” We decided on doing this as it immediately tells the audience that the site is straight forward and simple and not boring. This proved to be a good choice as we shown it to teenagers who told us that they would be intrigued to find out more and so click the link to the home page. This enables us to attract our target audience of teenagers to look at the site without their attention drifting.
Also, the way we used simple background designs and minimal colours was to make sure it didn’t glorify the use of drugs, alcohol and smoking at all but we feel all the pictures still keep it interesting and are very effective. Furthermore, we made a video of various teenagers talking about smoking, all of them give honest and negative views on smoking and how it can change your life. We believe the video works well especially for the target audience because they can relate with the speakers as he or she is of their age group, so it should therefore be more effective.
At the beginning of this course, neither Grace nor myself had ever used iWeb before so in the process we found out how to use the programme as we went along. We found it was quite simple to use and was able to work most things out ourselves just by experimenting. We also developed our skills on Photoshop further through trying to edit pictures to look effective on the site, this could sometimes be quite difficult. This came with the skills of actually taking pictures in focus on a professional SLR camera. Other programmes which we used were LiveType, FinalCut and Illustrator. Livetype was used in making a title for our video using a special effect, FinalCut was used when editing our self-made video and Illustrator was used to design and create our sites name/logo- Think Straight.
Since my preliminary website, I feel that I have learnt a lot, when I started the preliminary site, I knew very little about iWeb or Photoshop or even how to use a professional SLR camera. However, now I can confidently use these things as well as other interesting programmes such as FinalCut and Livetype.
My designs have progressed so that in my final site, it looks very professional with a consistent layout with the same back grounds, colours, fonts, and positions of links and titles. Whilst doing the two tasks, I have learnt a great deal more about how websites are made and also, through my research, how all websites are different and unique in their own way while following a set of conventions that make navigation straight forward for the end user.
