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Making a wire frame or paper prototype as a plan of your site is
essential and is a cost-effective method of developing the organisation
of the content of your site. Jacob
Nielsen (the widely acknowledged Guru of Web Usability) considers
it to be the
most effective method to plan a site.
Tests appropriate for a story board are:
When redeveloping the University web site in 2001, the Flexible
Education Unit (FEU, in its earlier incarnation as the Web Development
Office, now CALT) produced paper 'story-boards' of each section or client
area proposed for the new home page. The paper prototypes were primarily
used to establish a place for existing content and to identify new
content. For new content, an appropriate Organisational Unit of
the University was assigned to create it and take responsibility
for its upkeep. These paper prototypes were then presented to
focus groups consisting of:
- Heads of Administrative Sections
- Web Redevelopment Reference Group
- Student and Staff groups
The paper prototypes prepared by the then Web Development Office can be found in the Web
Development site (Site
Architecture, WORD format, 19 pages, 431KB and Site
Architecture, PDF format, 19 pages, 345KB). These prototypes
are now out of date with respect to the structure of the University
web site, since they were superceded by a site
'mockup' or protosite, and many changes were made as the newly
redeveloped site was published, but they illustrate the principles
of this method of prototyping.
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