1. Alignment
2. Contrast
3. Repetition
4. Proximity

For the purpose of this blog I will  discuss Cork City Foras Co-op’s page.

Alignment


The orange squares highlight the alignment of the sites home page. We can see here some of the alignment is slightly off. However the main body of the page follows a uniform rectangle alignment.

Contrast

Large font and green and red colours draw to the “Race night” area. Again a font change to the right distinguishes the “latest news” and “Next match” sections. The use of differnt colours and fonts here is good.

Proximity

The proximity displayed on the homepage is good. Even and consistent spacing allows for an easy on the eye view. Notice how the “race night” is spaced away from “featured news” as these are not related topics. While “latest news” and “next match” have a shorter distance between them.

Repetition

The repetition on the site is also good. If we look ath the clubs colours on the crest we see these again incorporated into the text in various areas of the home page. Text is repeatadly displayed in green black and red in various areas.

In recent times researchers recommended the use of spoken rather than printed words in multimedia messages containing graphics with related descriptive words, they call this the The Modality effect. This encourages the use of a number of sources of media while trying to educate through e-learning.

A number of companies such as In Languages provide e-learning sessions for learning a new language. Along with live lectures users will also be a mailed a flash video allowing them to learn directly from their pc without loggin into In Language.

There is much debate about the future of e-learning and it’s link to multimedia but one thing is certain, the debate will continue for a long time to come.

One tool used by all agencies which is linked heavily with multimedia is the airbrush too in Photoshop. Below are a couple of cases in point!

Since glamour magazines such as OK! have an average weekly circulation of 508,504 in the UK alone, we can see that these magazines are monsterous marketing/advertising machines. Which is why agencies airbrush all their photos in order to entice readers to purchase their goods.

This is an area that all artists are overly concerned about now as most music is not only seen but watched through tv stations such as VH1 ,MTV, THE Box and mainly on YouTube!

Here we see the first video ever broadcast on MTV. It’s pretty basic with just video and sound combined.

If we fast forward a number of years we see the incorporation of  computerised visuals in Michael and Janet Jackson’s Video Scream. Still the most expensive video of all time! Heres the list.

Although shot in black and white we see signs of real characters, animation, text and 3D objects among others.

Even Rock legends Red Hot Chilli Peppers had a go at pushing the bar in their 3D animated music video Californication. Many likened it to the effects seen on the PS2 at the time.

So since this is potentially such important market for artists to maintain and attract new fans we see why upwards of $1,000,000,000 can quite regularly be spent on these videos.

We then had to compare the teo sites based on any 3 of Jakob Nielsens Usability Heuristics. For the purpose of this exercise I chose:

• Aesthetic and minimalist design
• Help and documentation
• Consistency and standards

Aesthetic and minimalist design – Ryan Air.

immediately noticeable is the page is very cluttered and full of non-pertinant information such as links to “Get €100 free” and even news updates relating to the dáil. Below

alternatively if we look at the Aer Lingus home page we see complementary colours and simplistic flying-relevant information but we also see non-pertinant information too regarding flying all be it a lot less than that of the Ryan Air site.

As we proceed through the booking we can see in both instances that the irrelevant information is cut and only flight information is displayed although ryan air remains cluttered with information when compared to aer lingus. (Use of thumbnail as not to bombard the page with large images)

The cluttered view is a continuous them with ryan air while aer lingus remains neat and to the point right up to information input. (Use of thumbnail as not to bombard the page with large images)

Moving on to – Help and documentation.

While Ryan air is full of cluttered information, all the information when read is informative and very helpful. Aer lingus does offer assistance throughout the booking but not to the degree of Ryan Air. Many people would prefer the simplistic approach.
On both homepages for Ryan Air and Aer Lingus we see help pages.

Aer Lingus simply says “Need Help” and this page offers a number of FAQ’s to browse through.

 Ryan air on the other hand has small print named “customer services”. This mearly brings you to a page offering a very annoying answer to your query in the form of a hyperlink to 
yet another “Customer services” page.

Lets take a look now at the final heuristic – Error prevention.

In this are I can not fault either site as all relevant information is required in order to book flights.
Here we see an informative error box from Ryan Air:

Alternatively here we see two different error messages from Aer Lingus.

Conclusion:
All in all I would have to say that apart from the Error Prevention evaluation, of which both air lines do provide adequate service, I would have to side with Aer Lingus.
Aer Lingus provided a much more aesthetically pleasing website free of clutter.
No surprises on this one too as Aer Lingus also made they “Help Section” much clearer and accessable.

I guess thats why Ryan Air are “The no thrills airline”.

Web sites are predominantly made up of both text and images. However these must be aesthetically pleasing on the eye in order not to deter potential customers. According to this Stanford University Report, the design of a website - the look, feel, presence, and professionalism – is the most important determining factor for buyers.

Here are is and example of a very poorly designed website which has actually won a spoof award for worst website 2009.

On the flip side at Dell who have provided users with a simplistic, uncluttered and informative. This had led to world renowned success for Dell in selling goods online.

Through the use of new multimedia related software Avatar has become the highest grossing movie of all time grossing and also became the first film to gross more than $2 billion.

Heres a clip showing the 3d animation combined with real life actors, sounds and visuals offering a very pleasing multimedia experience.

Though prodominantly used for personal use through Skype and MSN by many around the world it has also made life in the business sector much easier. Multinationals for instance can now initiate video conferencing reducgin travel costs across the company. These real time sessions also aid companies by allowing onversations to take place which may result in the need of “snap decisions”. There have been vast improvements to webcams over the last number of years with improved pixelation reulsting in clearer picture.

Over the last decade or so there hast been vast advancements in online capabilities and speed. Customers have gone from dial up connection speeds to speeds in excess of 30mb which is now provided by UPC right here in our very own Cork City. Users have seen advancements in communications from IMing to Video Chat using using MSN and skype!!

As for the future? Well thats a bit of a tough one….. Speeds and bandith will no doubt increase over time. We have also been told of a “more interactive and intellegent” system. Many people fear this due to movies such as terminator believe machines will become too intellegent

Although many many years down the pipeline i do hope and believe a a surfing experience combined with virtual reality! Lets hope it doesnt turn out like this tho !

He is a highly educated individual having attained qualifications from the following institutes.

Ivan is famous for being a pioneer in computer science dating back to the late 1950′s in his time has registered over 60 patents. More astonishingly Ivan is still registering patents having registered one as recently as 2009. Such patents include The Sketchpad which at the time was a revolutionary invention and which had been influenced by the conceptual Memex as envisioned by Vannevar Bush. The Sketchpad had been an influence on the development of Douglas Engelbart’s oN-Line System.

In an interview a reporter asked, “How could you possibly have done the first interactive graphics program, the first non-procedural programming language, the first object-oriented software system, all in one year?” Ivan replied: “Well, I didn’t know it was hard.” This was typical of Ivan’s attitude towards technology. Basically he believed that “It’s very satisfying to take a problem we thought difficult and find a simple solution. The best solutions are always simple”.