Technologically impaired, that’s
how I would describe myself in terms of computer literacy. I can’t really explain why I’m so turned off
by technology. It is all around us and
its becoming more and more essential to our everyday lives with each passing
day. I can’t really pinpoint why I
despise it so much. Perhaps, it’s
because you need to have constant training in order to stay up to date with all
the latest upgrades. Or maybe it’s the
fact that it can consume hours of your day; hours I do not have to spare. But, I think the real reason is that I just
don’t know what to do in the internet.
If I’m not on my Kean email, Facebook, paying bills or doing research
for a project, I really don’t have the need or desire to be in front of a
computer. These are some of the reason
why this project was excruciating painful to me.
Since
I knew I was at a disadvantage from the beginning, I decided to not work on
anything right away. Rather, I began
paying closer attention to the instructions in class. Things to look out for are, color schemes,
typography, graphics, images, navigation bars, etc. With each class I came away with one or two
things I would have liked to implement on my website. After I had decided on a topic for my essay, I
was shown a restaurant website in class. This particular website was very minimal. One of the things that stood out to me was
the simplicity of the background, which was white and how the large pictures on
the home screen were proportionately balance to the page, but they also rotated. I was completely taken back by the
straightforwardness and sophistication of this website. I was immediately inspired.
After
I saw that website, I began to toy with the idea of creating my website from scratch. I failed miserably at this task. I had no idea where to place text boxes and
pictures, how to arrange that information, what color scheme to use, what would
be the appropriate font and so on. I
quickly realized that if I was going to make this work I would have to use a
template. This idea wasn’t very pleasing
to me, because it wasn’t going to be my original work but I soon came to terms
with it.
As the days went on and I
explored Wix.com I realized that I had too many ideas floating in my head. I then decided to approach this assignment
the same I would approach writing a paper.
I began to construct my “Brazilian Food” website in my mind first. Then, just like I would write an outline
before I would write a paper, I decided to draw a rough sketch of how I wanted
my website to look before I began working on it. This decision was the pivotal point in my
project were everything fell into place, because I no longer struggled with the
guessing game of where things would go on a page.
After my rough sketch was
complete, the first thing I choose was the HTML5 template. Second, I chose a template. This was not a tedious process, because I
found a template that was very similar to the restaurant one shown in class
previously. Then, since this was going
to be a website about food, I decided to search for some images on the
internet.
After I had gathered some images
I had an idea of placing a recipe page on my website, even though it wasn’t included
in my hypertext essay. As I thought
about my audience, I felt that this would be something that they would be
looking for after reading the information and looking at the pictures on my
website. Audience awareness is extremely
important to me, because this is how I measure my success. In this case my audiences would be anyone searching
the internet for Brazilian food.
Questions I asked myself when thinking about my audience were: Does it
satisfy their needs? Is it up to their
standards? Is it meeting the
requirements for the class and for an interactive website? Would the color scheme give anyone a seizure?
Would I spend time looking at this website myself? (Answer is YES) Is it easy to navigate? By keeping these questions in mind, it allowed
me to remain focused.
Once I had all of these elements
in place, I felt that I was ready to begin working on my website. I soon found out that I needed more help than
I thought. I tried to work in class;
however, Kean University computers are inoperable. They would not allow the new HTML5 system to
run. I was unable to utilize many
workshop classes for that reason. I
needed someone else to provide me with some guidance outside of class. I decided to ask a friend of mine for
help. He is really good with computers
and if anything he would at least be able to help me with the computer
terminology.
The first day we met, he gave a
tutorial on how to change the format, add and delete pages, buttons, text
boxes, pictures and some other minor stuff.
After this I was ready to begin piecing my website together. This is a break down as to what I was
thinking when I decided on each page.
First, as I began to change
things around my home page, I immediately struggled with the idea of placing my
entire hypertext essay within my website.
That’s when I decided to only place some sentences from my conclusion
and introduction on my home page. The
home page in the template had a gallery of three pictures rotating. I decided to place one picture of feijoada in the center, because my
audience would be able to immediately identify that as a food website. The picture was also carefully selected,
because we all eat with our eyes first, before we eat with our mouth - meaning
that we only eat things that look appealing to our taste buds. I also wanted the main page to somehow relate
to all of the other pages in the toolbar.
By utilizing Brazil’s national dish (feijoada)
in the home page, I was linking the influence that the culture had on its
cuisine. In addition, I also decided to
add the name on the upper left corner of the website to Melting Pot. This title
embodied the thesis of my hypertext essay.
I also decided to have a clean and easy to navigate toolbar by only
having four links at the top. The titles
on these links are also a direct reflection of my hypertext essay information. Furthermore, at the bottom of the page one
can also find an interactive toolbar that will direct them to the Recipes, Regions and Works Cited
page.
The second page is called: Our Story. I didn’t change the original format on this
page. I basically copied and pasted most
of my introduction and resized the picture.
Next, the Regions page on the toolbar was by far the most time consuming and
elaborate. The idea of only having a map
of Brazil and interactive buttons identifying specific regions came to me when
I realized that I didn’t want to have five extra pages on my toolbar. This page confused me a couple of times and I
had to ask my friend for some assistance when deleting and adding subpages. When choosing the design of the subpages I
paid close attention to not make every page the same and to make the pictures
and the text balance the page out. For
all of the pages I copied and pasted the information from the hypertext
essay. I then choose a main dish from
that region to display, as oppose to bombarding my audience with 3-4 different
dishes. The dish given as an example in
the written text is the same dish represented on the picture.
Once I had mastered the Regions page the Recipes one was not so challenging. I choose to have the recipes
for every dish that was mentioned or that I had a picture of in the
website. I wanted my audience to be able
to click on the picture that looked appetizing to them and pull up that
recipe. In order to have that affect, I
once again created subpages with picture buttons. I found translated versions of the recipes
online and copied and pasted them into the subpages. All of the subpages have the same
design. It was a way that I thought made
that particular section look cohesive.
Even though I had someone that I
could ask questions and explain some foreign concepts to me, I still had some
difficulties with the HTML5 program. For
instance, there is no Undo
button. This made my job much harder
when I moved something by mistake and then had to realign it again. Another problem I had with HTML5 was that I
was unable to edit any of my work in class.
This made me fall behind in my schedule and did not allow me to make the
time for the workshops productive. There
was also no alignment feature. When
constructing my Recipes page I had to
get a horizontal line, place it on the page and align all of my text boxes
according to that line. When done I
delete the horizontal line. This method
might seem pre-historic, but it was the only way I found to make the page look
uniformed.
I also experienced some
limitations when working with a template.
I had already anticipated this; therefore I didn’t let some of the
issues bother me too much. However, one
of the things that did get to me was the fact that I only had a limited amount
of sizes and fonts to choose from. This
was a real damp in my creativity when it came to organizing my text within the
website. Last but not least, one thing
that didn’t interfere with my designing process, but it certainly annoyed me,
was the fact that no matter where you click on the page when editing, a
pop-up-box will always appear.
Overall, I can’t say that I loved
this assignment. What I can say is that
I learned a lot from it. Things like,
how long it takes for someone to put a website together, all of the factors
that goes into it, how you need to keep your targeted audience in mind at all
times and how text, visuals, colors and animations can either break or make a
website. It is definitely a lot of
things to keep in mind. This assignment
was a true reflection of my personality.
Even though I might hate or dislike something, I will search for a way
to get a done. I can honestly say that I’m
proud of the amount of growth I had in this class. I’m also pleased with my final product. My website is a
true reflection of my hard work and dedication.
I hope everyone enjoyed it.
