New Blog!

I recently bought myself a domain name, and so have a brand new blog at http://blog.jennoefur.co.uk

This blog will no longer be updated, so please go over there!

GOOD Driving School Websites

Courtesy of Dan Ryland, here are some GOOD driving school websites! Yes they do exist - what a shocker!

Revolution Driving Tuition - I really like the scrapbook style of this design, it manages to be quirky and fun while still remaining professional. While the theme isn't really related to driving lessons, rather than feeling disconnected it gives the site a personal feel. The design also shows awareness of current web design trends through the style and use of fonts, as well as the inclusion of a blog, something I haven't seen on any of the other driving websites.

Visibility Driving Tuition - Being effective in a different way, this website uses simplicity and elegance rather than the quirkiness demonstrated by the Revolution website. Effective use of gradients give the site a sleek feel, and it follows web design trends without looking boring.

Being creations from Chris Spooner of Line 25, it's no surprise these websites look lovely :)

Mock-Up 3

Here is mock up number 3! I'm having a meeting with my client tomorrow evening so am hoping to get another mock up done tomorrow so I'll have 4 to show her. Hopefully she'll have some opinions on the designs - who knows, I could be going in completely the wrong direction.

Mock-Up 2

Looking at my previous design, I don't think it's that bad any more. This is the second mock-up for the Petal website, which is pretty similar in simplicity. The photo is just for illustration purposes as I still need to take pictures of the clients car.

Hopefully I will be meeting up with my client this Tuesday, the 25th of January.

Mock-Up 1

I'm having a serious case of designer's block right now, and I think it's making me a bit mental. Everything I try and create ends up looking poo and it's making me want to throw my laptop on the floor and jump up and down on it...

This is the best I'm getting at the moment -

Maybe it's just because I've been staring at Photoshop for the past two days, but I don't like it. It's plain and boring and just looks like all the other plain, boring websites out there.

It hasn't been possible for my client to meet with me yet, which is probably a good thing. Maybe i can make something halfway decent by the time we meet next week.

Hmph.

The Petal School of Motoring car

Since the car used by my client is something that makes the business recognisable, it will feature within the design of the website. I'm been playing around with a photo I had of the car to make it fit into a website.

Client - Another Wireframe

Looking at the previous wireframes I feel that I am lacking something! They're not too bad, but just not that great either. I'm continuing to try and develop more with the hope that something good will happen...

SPP Assignment 1

Well I clearly didn't read the brief for this assignment very well! I reread it after our SPP lecture today and there's much more work involved than I thought! I need to -

Find four real-world multimedia jobs and create a mock application for one of them - Should be simple enough!

Find four postgraduate courses and create a mock application for one of them - I've been browsing thought postgraduate courses for a while now, and can't really find many focused specifically around web design. Maybe I'm just not looking hard enough.

Write a 1000 word rationale outlining why I chose the specific job and course - Can I really say 1000 words about this? Probably. Just doesn't seem like a fun thing to do right now...

Create a new web design orientated curriculum vitae - The only CV I have right now is my regular retail/admin based one, so I suppose this needs to be done sooner or later.

Create an electronic portfolio of my work to support my applications - Possibly matching my new CV

It's definitely good that we're doing this so we're prepared after graduation, just wishing I'd started it last term now! Silly me..

Logo Ideas

I'm not feeling to great at the moment so apologies if this isn't very coherent!

This is the current logo for The Petal School of Motoring website -

It's based around that fact that the owner is named Peta, and by adding the l-plate on the end it makes Petal, which is how the company got its name originally. It's a nice idea and the client wants the logo to remain this way, though I will be giving it a bit of a redesign.

Idea 1 - Pretty basic, just a change of font really. The l-plate is intentionally covering the text to give the impression it's just been slapped over the top.

Idea 2 - More decorative than the previous idea, though I'm not sure about the font. I've used floral brushes to give a feminine feel.

Idea 3 - As above only with a serif font used. Still not sure though!

Idea 4 - A layering effect is used here with a textured background. Might play around with this a bit more. Maybe giving it a sketchier feel?

More to follow...

Client - Wireframes

I've been working on some wireframes for the Petal School of Motoring website. Here are the first 2. Hopefully they should translate well into working designs.

I've decided to make the logo and header area quite prominent, as it will be the first way for the user to make the connection between the website and the Petal car they've seen driving around. Large headers are also on trend with web design at the moment, as are horizontal navigations, which I personally prefer anyway.

I did play around with the idea of a vertical navigation but found the results were not quite what I wanted. Vertical navigation is actually being considered an out of date method nowadays, as explained over at Smashing Magazine in this interesting article. This was written around a year ago, and looking at popular websites at the moment, you can see that vertical navigation is not a very common feature.

Argh

I've seen so many bad driving school websites now I feel as if I should make it my personal mission to rid the world of them. I think the problem lies with the many companies that are offering to make websites for driving schools, when they clearly lack the skills to do so... I mean, come on -

PRP - Survey

If anyone is looking at this please go and fill out this survey to help with my PRP research!

Located here: http://www.kwiksurveys.com/online-survey.php?surveyID=HBIILF_2ade67df

It's very short and won't take long, but your opinions are invaluable!

More Driving Schools...

Still scouting out the current environment of driving school websites...

Ignition Driver Training - This website isn't incredibly bad, but it has the feel of a template that someone has just slapped all their own information on. The cheesy stock images only add to this, as well as the 'sidebar' containing only one link that directs to an empty page. You can clearly tell the website has not been specifically designed for this company, and so it feels kind of disconnected. I want the website for my client to feel as if it's part of a brand, so people will see the site and immediately know it's connected to that car they see driving around.

Brakethru School of Motoring - As soon as this website loads up an annoying woman pops up in the corner congratulating you on finding them. Most people find websites that play sound at them automatically rather annoying, and this is no exception! Generally it's not a bad website, but the way they're displaying content is letting them down. The varied fonts and text colours look confusing and amateur, like someone designing a poster for a church fayre in Microsoft word. There's also a couple of flashing images, which is kind of unnecessary.

Dr L Test School of Motoring - This is another website with an annoying person popping up to talk to you! This time it's a little man, and you get the option to play the video rather than it just starting up by itself. However, what he says is in to way specific to the company. He doesn't mention the company name, or anything about driving lessons, but tells the user to give them a call or email, without telling the number or address. It's clearly just a generic message you can buy from a company and stick on your website. I don't feel as if it adds anything to the site, and imagine that the 'play video' button doesn't even get pressed very often. The design of the website is not very attractive, and has an impersonal feel gained through the use of generic stock images and buttons.

Your Old Crap Website

http://youroldcrapwebsite.wordpress.com/

I love this blog! The author finds old website designs in the internet archives and compares them to the current design. Some are shockingly bad, some surprisingly before their time and others just plain funny. Also, the satirical way the author writes about the designs is entertainment enough!

Driving School Websites

While researching the current environment of driving school websites I have made a discovery - most of them aren't that great. The good designs are all for big companies like BSM or RED Driving School, whereas independent companies like the one I'm designing for are being left with designs that look ugly and dated. Here are just a few I've found. More will probably follow.

Gold Seal Driving School - This website looks like it was designed in the 90s, though it's not quite as bad as the site of the actual designer. In fact,the website for 'Website Dynamix' is pretty much the same, only with extra annoying adverts. Gold Seal Driving School severely need to update their site, as it is boring and dated and so is not doing much to advertise their services.

Apple Driving School - This website is much better compared to the last one, using simplistic design with effective use of images. The information is clearly displayed on each page, and there doesn't seem to be any unnecessary elements. It could do with a bit of a revamp to meet current web trends, but overall it's clean, simple and effective, much better than most of the other sites I've looked at.

Safedrive Driving School - This website is quite awful in many ways. The design is cluttered, bombarding the user with information and images, including annoying animated gifs. The school seems to offer services to a large part of the country, but if you want to actually find out where you have to scroll down a long list contained in a small box, not the greatest example of user experience. The homepage is loaded with information, making it very long with more scrolling needed than on the average website.

Mob (a near-future science fiction story) by Tom Scott

This presentation, given by Tom Scott at Ignite London 2, tells the fictional story of a flash mob gone wrong. Watch it!

Simulated Client Project

Just realised that the previous link I gave for my piracy project is no longer working. Crappy free webhosts randomly deleting content...

It can be accessed here http://maeda.ads.ntu.ac.uk/~n0237873/piracy/ but only from within the university network.

Client Project - Design and Conceptual Ideas

In this project the main concern for the client is the content of the website, rather than the way it looks. Therefore the design has to be fairly simple so that it does not distract away from the information. It will also have a modern clean feel to it, conforming to current design trends. One thing the client has specified is the colour scheme, which is to be red and white. This will match the current branding of the business, as these are the colours of the logo and also the actual car used for driving lessons. A conceptual idea of the client’s is to have the whole website contained within a picture of a car, with the content being in the windscreen area. From a designer’s point of view, I think this could be a bit tacky if not executed correctly. The image of the car would have to be very slick, perhaps using vector graphics, in order to conform to modern web design trends. This is an idea that will have to be experimented with to see if it is viable.

A set of four Flash banners will also be created, to be used for advertising seasonal offers. At the moment the idea is to have one for each for spring, summer, autumn and winter with animations playing that match each season. The possibility of making these banners interactive is also being considered.

Design Inspiration -

Frog CMS website – Simple, clean design that doesn’t take away from the information the website is providing. Important points of focus are emphasised.

Infinitum website – This site uses minimalist design with a big emphasis on images. Using the bare minimum amount of text, just the important information is given.

SurfHer Party website – This design shows something a bit more quirky executed very professionally. The site is designed to look like a surf shack, to match the subject of the website. This could be inspiration for my client’s idea of making her website into a car layout.

The Many Faces of… - I really like the large image based header used in this design. This kind of header could be used for the Petal website to feature a large illustration of the business’s car, rather than making the whole layout into the car.

Client Project - Rationale

The client is looking to have her current website (above) redesigned to better suit her needs. It is felt that the existing design is too obtrusive and so it will be condensed to a reasonable size, allowing it to appear on common screen resolutions with no negative effects. The number of pages of the website will also be reconsidered, as some of the current content is unnecessary.

The main priority of the business is to advertise the services being sold, and so this will take precedence before any other content on the website. However, the client does not want just a source of plain information and so the possibility of adding some interactivity is being considered.

An important requirement for the website is to allow the client to make simple updates herself. This is especially important when considering things like price changes. Her current website does not allow her to do this and she has to contact her administrator every time a change is needed. I will incorporate a simple ready-made Content Management System (CMS) to allow the client to do this herself.

Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) is a big priority, and at the moment my client feels her website is not being found easily enough. I will utilise SEO techniques to allow users to find the site easily. Alongside this I will employ analytics software to allow the client to see how the website is being found.

Client Project Progress

After submitting my proposal before Christmas, I have now realised I never actually made any updates on here about it (probably due to PRP-induced panic). So in the next few posts is an overview of what I'm going to be doing in this project.

My Client

The client for this project is Peta Aston at the Petal School of Motoring, a driving school based in Nottinghamshire. Peta has owned her business since 2003 and it has a good reputation, with a very high pass rate.

Peta makes use of two selling points when advertising her business; her car and the fact that she is a female instructor. A lot of people feel more comfortable with a female instructor and so she takes advantage of this selling point. The car used for her lessons is a Fiat Panda, which is not used by any other driving schools in the area. Being unique, it is a big selling point for the business. This car with its colour and decoration has also allowed the business to establish a recognisable brand within the area.

PRP Progress

I'm very happy to have my PRP written document submitted and out of the way. I was fairly pleased with how it turned out in the end, though now it's done I keep thinking of other things I could have added to it. Never mind. On to the artefacts now...

I am currently finishing up a survey designed to answer the following questions -

• How do people use mobile Internet?
• Do people like using mobile Internet?
• How often do people use mobile Internet?
• Mobile or desktop Internet - which is preferred?
• Using mobile optimized websites or full size websites - which is preferred?
• What is the general user opinion of mobile internet? Good or bad?

I am also going to look at how people percieve mobile internet, and see if this affects the way they use it. For example if someone is expecting the experience of using mobile web to be difficult, they may be unprepared to try it or give up easily. The focus group held for my next artefact will be more useful for getting results in this area, as I will be able to see directly how people are using mobile internet.

However, something I am wondering about at the moment is the kind of audience that will be participating in my survey. The amount of experience they have with using mobile web could affect their oinions drastically. If someone has had no experience of it whatsoever then the results gained from them may not be very useful to me.

Happy New Year

Sorry its a bit late.