Web Design Coursework: Tasks, Requirements and Reflections

Part-1: Tasks

This part accounts for 40% of the total module marks. This involves a written report and a simple prototype web site. This part consists of the following tasks.

1. Write a clear summary of your initial research. Say what you liked and disliked about the sites you visited. Include the URLs of the sites from which you have learned.

2. Write, in 25-50 words, a mission statement for your own web site. A mission statement will help you to visualise what you and your client want from the site, and ways to achieve this. (Mission statements are often the decision of higher management. However, if the client is not forthcoming, the web designer can make suggestions as a basis for negotiation). In this section you will be marked on clarity of vision and
whether you are able to keep to the word limits.

3. Eventually (but not in Part-1 of this coursework) you will need a way of comparing the quality of your prototype with that of its competitors. Compile a list of ten (10) criteria which could be used to measure the quality of a site such as yours. Try to select criteria on which independent assessors might agree. For example, “nice” is too open to individual interpretation; “generous use of white space” is better; “the page height lies within the average browser window so scrolling is not necessary” is very precise, (though not necessarily applicable, depending on the example). For each criterion, give a short description of why you decided that it was important in this context.

4. Suggest five (5) ways of measuring the success or otherwise of the web site itself when it is finally published and operational. These measurements will be important when measuring the success of changes. These measurements must be numerically measurable: “a professional appearance” is difficult to measure, whereas “a 10% increase in business” can be measured. This section is about the business effectiveness of an operational web site, whereas Section 3 is only about the appearance of the web pages.

5. Propose a visual style for the site, including fonts, colours, element positions etc. You will only get marks for definite decisions, so “a restful background colour” will not score any marks, whereas “a powder blue background” will. You may wish to make an illustrative mood board. (The client will almost certainly demand changes to this style proposal, but he would prefer to do that, rather than generating his own style from scratch. This is a common development scenario).

Part-2: Requirements

6. Provide a simple horizontal prototype for the site, containing three linked web pages. "Horizontal prototype" means that it looks real, but it doesn't actually work. The pages are to be of HTML, CSS and images only, i.e., no PHP or other server languages. Please write your own code and do not use the code of others (this rules out the use of frameworks). The pages are to be as follows:

• The application's landing page (home page)

• A page containing an HTML form.

• Another page for the web-site.

Marks will be given for appearance, uniformity, correct use of the technologies and an appropriate file structure. As with all coursework, higher marks will be awarded for work of a higher standard.

This part accounts for 60% of the total module marks. It involves the creation and deployment of a working interactive web site. During this work, if you want, you may use a publicly available framework, such as w3.css or Bootstrap. However, please do not use a content management system such as WordPress or Joomla, or website templates. In this part, the following tasks are required:

1. You are required to create a web site which runs on a server. Your web site should be interactive and contain the following features. The total marks for this question will be distributed against the follow features: (40 marks)

• At least three web pages

• Client-side form validation

 User account creation

• Login and password authentication

• PHP sessions and session storage

• CRUD (create, read, update, delete) database functionality.

• Your code is to validate against the W3C HTML5 document type definition and CSS definition.

• Your written report is to contain details of URLs, login names and passwords needed to access your site.

2. For this coursework you have produced an interactive prototype, designed to help show the client what the site could be like. Nevertheless, there will be more work to do before the site goes live and starts accepting real orders. Your written report must now outline that extra work needed to make your current interactive prototype into a working professional web site. You will be marked on the quantity, detail and clarity of your requirements.

3. Your written report must contain a reflection on your work for this module, outlining what you have learned about web design. Mark will be awarded for the number and quality of insights.

4. There will be no coursework demonstration. Instead, you are asked to self-report your achievements in code-writing. Please copy and paste this self-marking grid into your written report and fill it in to tell us what you have achieved