Website Design A Case Study

Question: Task for this assignment is to carry out a user-centred design project and to write a report describing, explaining, and justifying your work and the results. The design brief is as follows: Employing a user-centred design methodology, and paying attention to existing research on human cognition, affect, and sociality, design a website to support the activities of a shared interest club with which you are familiar. This could be any sort of club focused on any sort of interest at all think of things like a book club, a golf or other sport society, a cinemagoers club, or a meditation and yoga practice. - An Introduction that defines the design problem, context, and scope. It should include a description of the club and their activities, and a clear focused description of the activities or problems that you want to address in your website design. - A brief literature review that (a) contextualises your design decision making in terms of existing research that may have a bearing on it and (b) introduces the literature on the user-centred design approach. - A Method section that describes and justifies the user-centred design methodology that you have used - An Analysis section in which you show how you used the user-centred design methodology to make design decision and come up with design ideas that would support the groups activities. Use diagrams, sketches, and textual description as relevant. - A Discussion or Conclusions section that pulls together some of the most salient issues that arose in the analysis and that reflect on the use and usefulness of the methodology. Answer: Introduction to Svaroopavidya Fig1 : Design of Website Calmness,peace,serenity,ease is what Yoga gets a person. But Svaroopa claims to do it differently with some extra physical efforts you need to put for the yoga poses your mind is totally quiet and you find the inner peace you have always been looking for. Or should I say your mind would be too tired to think about anything other than your body. Svaroopa Trainers say Yoga is an art full of grace which when combined with a little bit of compassion lets you find your inner self in a way so as to never loose ones senses to the situations. Trainers even claim after attending svaroopa you will certainly be able to differentiate between other yoga classes and ours so much as to never lose the calmness. Google says nowadays Yoga is a sport, with people competing in yoga championships for gold medals in the west. Its not much as the sages of our country meant it to be, but theres no harm in it. Moreover these championships contribute to the increasing popularity of the sport throughout the world. Svaroopa has a wide network of training centres with professional trainers and Swami Nirmalananda teaches and preaches her teachings here as well. Helping you to see your soul and the divinity that lies inside. They also provide scholarship, membership and training on their website. Dates for workshops being as and when are also mentioned on the calendar present on this site. Design Issues of the Site: First things first when we click on the first About Us tab there are no dates mentioned. Not a single one, being a yoga centre they must be having a foundation date at least. No history is mentioned about the site creation, starting of the centre etc. When we click on the Login tab on the right top panel we get a page like below Fig 2: Issue in design In the above image we can see a large section of the page or should I say div allocated to the Training Plan, Event Schedule. And we click on Sign up again what we get is a page with a LogIn with Facebook and inside the login box we have been here, new to this site? Descriptions for already existing users and new users respectively. From the above page its very confusing for a user on how to get back to the Login Page. In the Course Calendar dropdown we have number of options. When we click on Course Confirmation Dates of the dropdown we can see all the options from the same dropdown are visible on the right side of the main page itself. No navigation bar is present on the top to go back to a certain page. When we click on Freebie tab on the right side top of the main page we can find Quick Links which has nowhere else been mentioned at all. When we click on Teachers Directory we get a message our new directory will come up soon, and links for existing Teachers directory. When we click on Existing Teachers directory we are redirected to a totally new page with no navigation tab to get back and on the right top panel all the links like Contact us, About Us dont have any separation characters between them appears like all belong to a single word. In the Right Top Panel Shop Tab in the Home Page when you click on any item to shop it directly gets added to cart, the product or its price nothing is displayed. On the Home Page the Upcoming Events Calendar is stagnant. To see the upcoming events you need to click on the calendar itself. EZine being an online magazine deserves a better place and space then the Right Top Bar. Under Membership tab there is no explanation of the Ashramite membership. And under Membership Drop Down there are no options all of those are placed under the same page of membership itself. These are displayed as links instead. The Search field is working fine though but should have a Search written on it to grab attention. Design Resolutions: As per the above discussed issues of the Website, I suppose the site needs to be more user oriented. From a users perspective I would say when it comes user friendliness the site does not make a stand among the Top sites. It still needs a whole lot of work. Apart from being user friendly the site seems lot more static then others in the same domain with every link opening a new page, the design I suppose is not up to the mark. Spelling mistakes ex: Ouick for Quick on such a site followed by people worldwide is not acceptable. No navigation menu is also a drawback for the site, a navigation be provided. For some tabs instead of having options in dropdown everything has been mentioned on the main page itself with different links. The opening of a new page on the clicking of a link should be avoided to make it precise and specific. The website should be more organised. Even the Logo of the Site should be given some more place for display. The menus being displayed in the right side of every page should not be displayed there, Instead they should be displayed on the left side of the page to make it more readable and user friendly. The Sign-Up Page needs to be designed to be a bit more simple.And there should be an option to Log In with your Google Account as well. The New User Box should contain just a New User, Click Here Button instead of First name, Last Name fields and so on. The design should follow a basic paradigm, instead of all the mix and match done. Suggested Designs: Fig3: Suggestion for design I strongly recommend the above design for the current website. Whenever it comes to Worldwide Accessed Sites the design if not anything else needs to be user friendly and totally organised. The links in every page that open a new page every time on click should be removed instead it should be displayed on the same page itself. The shopping Site needs Improvisation with images of items along with their price being included on the page. The EZINE online magazine deserves a lot more space. The Membership tab needs to get organised with the types of Membership being shown as options on the Dropdown, and on click it should first give a brief description about the membership what it includes and then the price for getting it should be mentioned. There needs to be a navigation tab so that user at any moment of time can return to a previously visited page. The Event calendar should be more dynamic then now. It should keep displaying the updated one after another same as the Events being displayed on the right or with a simple moving-upward motion. Instead of Contact, It should be Contact Us in the Top right panel of the website. In the About Us there should be foundation date for the site and organisation. There should be a tab to tell a new user about the places where the workshops are held and the cities where the ashrams are located. Images of the Yoga Poses should be used on the site to increase a users interest in joining the site. Based on the study of various online sites the above mentioned points should suffice to make the site better look and feel wise as well as user friendliness wise. Conclusions: Going online is what the funda and fact of life is nowadays. For any organization it is important to design their websites in such a way so as to gross public attention more and more. Website is what makes an image before any layman about an organisation. So its an important asset for any and every company. Its up to an organisation on how to highlight their individual aspects. From the above case study on svaroopavidya we can say that sometimes organisations neglect the basic designing policy which leads to a bad experience for every user who visits that page. A good web experience for any user just comprises of simplicity in designing policy of a website. And an organised website is simpler to surf. Websites are an important part of marketing strategy as well. If you want your organisation o be good in sales, people should be impressed with the look and feel of your site as well, only then a customer is ought to buy products/register on your site. This should be kept in mind by every organisation.