Designing for the User

The Brief

You are required to design and build a website in flash for National park tours service for Seniors. To read the full brief please click here.

Proposal

For this brief I had to design a website in flash for National park tours service for Seniors. I chose to look at one park in particular for this brief and that was the Yorkshire Dales National Park.

Planning

The first thing I did when I got this cateogory was to look at the needs of the client in this case the target audience would be people aged 60+. So I had to think what would people of that age want on a site so I looked at the seniors network site to see how older people use the internet. I found out that older people aged 65 and above use the internet relatively little in comparison to other age groups (14% of people aged over 65 compared to 57% of people aged 16 to 34). Although a personal choice for some, there are many who are restricted because of issues related to cost, complexity of technology and lack of relevance to individual lifestyles. So after looking at these findings it was clear to me if older people are going to use the internet their needs have to be recognised. I discovered older people can be put off using the internet by poorly designed websites, and the use of inappropriate technical language. Older people need a navigation that is easy to use and understand. To read the rest of my planning for this brief visit my blog by clicking here.

Research

For my research as mentioned above I looked at the seniors network site along with sites already available for the Yorkshire Dales National Park. I noticed that most of the sites used natural colours like greens, browns, blues and various shades of green.

National Park Sites

Below are National Parksites I looked at before starting work on my site. I looked at the Yorkshire Dales and iknow- yorkshire websites as well as the National Parks and The Yorkshire Dales and Harrogate sites.

Finished Website

View my finished Grandays Out Website and blog below:

Usability Test

I did a usability test to get people's opinions on the site. View them here

My Evaluation

Reflecting back on this assignment I am pleased with the look of the site and the feedback from my user testing. However I would have added a video if I was more confident in using flash. However I have added two screenshots that are linked to videos on You Tube which are about the Dales. So this shows what I would have done if I was more confident in using flash. Overall my site works and does the job it is intended for which is to promote guided walks in the Yorkshire Dales for people aged 60+.