Coke Star Musical Group Website - Case Study Example

Coke Star Musical Group The site Mission ment The website is designed to introduce, present and promote the music conceptualized, created andperformed by the Coke Star Musical Group. It will facilitate the user to watch selected songs online and order CDs and DVDs of the group. Finally, the web site can be used for advance booking of concerts and musical shows. 2. Initial Data Collection User centred design is a core requirement in website development which ensures success through wider user acceptability. Stressing upon the importance of user specific design Lazar (2001) states “A website is a type of information system and as such needs to be designed to meet the needs of the user. It must offer contents that users want and be designed so that users can easily access it in order for the website to be a success.” Keeping in view this heavy reliance of success on web design and user acceptability three users from major users groups were selected for an interview. These include the online viewer, online customer and future concert or musical show booking. The online viewer wants to have an explicit and systematic listing of all the performances by the group along with thumbnails and details like date of performance, venue, and length etc. The website is required to offer plug-ins required to play the selected performance, all related audio video controls, the fastest streaming and switching between performances. Online customer would like to have preview of what they have ordered and multiple easy payment options. The online customer may be required to select a delivery method or service. The third user has emphasized the need of a calendar of Coke Star future engagements in order to plan and reserve a date with the group. The user would like to receive an email confirmation of the booking along with other details. The exact requirement for the booking should be collect in a carefully designed web form. 3. Wire Frames 4. Target Users The Coke Star Musical Group website will be used by a number of user groups, each of these groups have their specific requirements, interests and goals. Ensuring the fulfillment of users’ expectations is a key to the successful web design and to clearly outline the user requirements following three personas are developed based on direct interview with the users; a) Online Viewer i. May be in any age bracket but mostly between 12-32 ii. The goal of the user is to find and listen his favorite music online iii. The interest of the user in to listen pop music and hit songs iv. The user will visit the site just to listen online free music v. The user may also visit to review the upcoming music albums and to learn about Coke Star upcoming performances. b) Online Customer i. May be in any age bracket but mostly between 12-32 ii. The goal of the user is to purchase CDs and DVDs of his choice iii. The interest of the user in to listen pop music and hit songs iv. The user will visit the site to buy music albums online v. The user may also visit to review the upcoming music albums and to learn about Coke Star upcoming performances. c) Event Manager i. May be in any age bracket but mostly between 22-45 ii. The goal of the user is to contact and confirm availability of Coke Star for a concert or musical show. iii. The user has business motivations and the nature of interaction is serious and straight forward. iv. The user will visit the site to confirm the availability of Coke Star v. To show his interest in a performance and to make a business contract. 5. Evaluation of Wire Frames I have selected the walk through technique to conduct a user centred evaluation of the Coke Star Website. Walkthrough evaluation is a simple and effective technique which can be carried out with the help of a single user. The user is presented with an interface and is asked to perform a set of instructions on the interface. The same evaluation can be conducted on the wireframe sketches where user gives his feedback on what he can gather from the sketch. This user understanding can be collected and interpreted through comments or through a direct observation during user interaction with the interface or wireframes. Although there are other evaluation techniques like old fashioned dedicated lab testing, discount usability, Kit and Premises and web based usability testing but these techniques were not adopted because of higher expenses and complexity. The Coke Star wireframes evaluation is relatively a simpler task that a single user from one of the user groups identified for the website can perform. I have selected my class fellow for walkthrough evaluation of five wireframes designed in the previous section of this paper. The user has identified several usability issues in the wireframes. The video link at home page may cause delay in the page open event. It is suggested that the video link be moved to a separate new page dedicated only for videos of the group. Moreover, the alphabetical search is not considered to be the easiest searching methodology, because it does not offer a string search facility within website contents. The alphabetical search will result in a list of videos and audio which will require a further probe to find the favorite song, a dynamic string search can provide enhance usability and accessibility to the web contents. The web form for booking a concert requires a lot of typing and user has identified that a mix of combo boxes, radio buttons and list controls can make the data entry efficient. Moreover, it will enhance data integrity which will increase the search efficiency and effectiveness. Keeping view the user comments and developer observation of the user interaction with the wireframes following changes are suggested in the website development phase; a) The video link is to be added on a separate page b) The search methodology is to be changed to dynamic string search c) Reformatting of the booking web form. References Lazar Jonathan 2001, User-centered Web development, Jones & Bartlett Learning, UK. Read More