Evaluations

The best way to go about doing an evaluation is to look at:

Justification of Content:

Once a pre-production document has been produced, the content needs to be analysed and checked to ensure that it is adequate for the purpose it was designed for. Does the content meet the needs of the client? If it doesn't, then the production phase cannot start. The content can be reviewed in discussion with the client and target audience focus groups.

Evaluation Suitability for Purpose:

The pre-production documents are used to provide the various personnel involved in the project with the information that they will require to produce the project. It is with this purpose in mind that these documents need to be evaluated. Do they provide enough information for the members of the production team to produce the product in line with the proposal? The documents can be shown to the lead members of each team to check that they are clear about what is required during their phase of the production.

Evaluation of Suitability for Audience:

The effectiveness of the pre-production documents is dependent on who they are being targeted at and the details they contain.  When evaluating the documents it is important to ask these questions:

For a TV advert: Will the storyboard contain enough information that a film crew will be

able to position their cameras easily and know how to move them as the filming

progresses?

During the production of a graphic novel: will it be clear to the graphic artist when they

see the concept art how the character are meant to look and be stylised?

For any media product: does the proposal contain enough information presented in

a  simple enough manner that the client will agree with it?

Remember, these documents are not designed to be read by the final target audience of the digital media product -  they are aimed at the various groups of people involved in the production, who need to understand them.

Amazing.

Evaluating Sitemaps as a Planning Tool for a Website:

Advantages:

They allow the creators to see a visual representation of what it is they are working on and what pages they need to link to what other pages.

They are simple (like Travis) and clear visualisations of how the pages work together.

They also help the web designers - who likely don't really know much about the topic of the website - to get a quick view of the outline of the site without having to deal with all the copy.

They provide basic information regarding the contents of the pages, allowing the designer(s) to start gathering assets for the site, be it from the company itself or other stock photos even if just as placeholders.

Disadvantages:

If this is the only pre-production document a team is given, it provides no information about what the client wants the site to actually look like, because it doesn't have any visual information at all.

They lack the actual content itself - if the aforementioned copy is already written by someone else - so the designers don't really know where it's going to go and how much of it there is and such.

Evaluate the advantages and disadvantages of a sitemap as a planning tool for a website.

[16 marks]

(As written by Mr. D Knight Esq. on my laptop, 'not jeremy', thanks to it having a VGA port.)

When creating a website, a sitemap is one of several useful tools in the planning and pre-production stages. For the Knight-Higgs Shoes website, a sitemap will help the team create the desired final product.

A sitemap allows the creator to show how the different pages within a website are accessible. It shows how one page can be navigated to another. This is advantageous because it means that everyone involved in the creation of the website is able to see how the pages are linked together. This is vital for the functionality of the website, as a website like that for Knight-Higgs Shoes, that needs to sell a product, also needs to allow customers to navigate to the desired products in order to make purchases. Another advantage is that it gives the team an idea of what will appear on each page. This means that the team can begin to organise the already existing assets for the site. In the case of Knight-Higgs Shoes, this would mean sourcing, storing and organising images of the shoes so that they are easily assembled when the pages of the site are being built. The same goes for any text that Knight-Higgs Shoes would want about the shoes on each page.

However, a sitemap cannot be the only pre-production document used by the web development team. A sitemap fails to include a lot of information that is required for a successful website. Using a sitemap in conjunction with other documents, like a page mock-up, allows the team to build the best possible website. This is because a sitemap fails to show any of the visual components to the final website.

Then you'd finish this and do a conclusion something along the lines of:

In order to create a successful website, a sitemap is just one of the documents needed to create the site in the most efficient manner. It is a useful resource for showing the functionality of the website and how the pages link together, but other documents are required for visual aspects and content of the site.

Other vital notes from throughout the lesson:

Mr Sir is wrestling with the projector which I accidentally killed using Chad Kroeger. Even poor Mr Ian is having a hard time. He was struggling to deal with the projector in the hall on STOP morning too, he doesn't have much luck when it comes to projectors evidently. He was under the table the poor man. The thing really gave up on life. New intel allows us to confirm that it's the computer's problem.

Mr Sir: Who would I give this sitemap to?

Someone: Your boss.

Mr Sir: Not my boss, I am the boss.

He's doing power moves again.

I think they might both be having a small crisis. Or just be incredibly fed up. I don't blame them really.

Mr Sir is using my computer. This is something. I bet the transition from 16:9 to 4:3 has crippled my meticulously organised desktop icons though. Mr Sir will pay for that. I should've set my background to Rick Astley or something. I have it back now and thankfully they survived.