Dangerous use of colour

Far be it from me to suggest that websites should not be colourful or indeed aesthetically pleasing (or "pretty" if you prefer), but I cannot help but notice the dangers of ignoring colour blindness. Without any wish to continually fault My.WBS, it does bring many design questions to my attention. See the example below:

1. Red on blue is used to show a new message, but to my understanding with such low contrast between the two colours, surely that text may appear near invisible to some users who suffer from colour-blindness?

2. More applicable to users generally, we have brown on brown for previously visited resources. Contrast is low to everyone, making it extremely difficult to read at a distance.

Agreed, colour can be used to help highlight the different types of posting, but it does not need to be the background colour. Options available could simply be a coloured box, or the block to the left (e.g. "13.35 Resources") in the colour.

Again, more things to be wary of in my new portal design!

: 24 Nov 2005 12:37 |  Comments (3) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Invitations to Focus Group Emailed

Further to yesterday's arrangement of a room, invitations have been emailed out to all those who showed interest in being part of a focus group on My.WBS in the feedback survey.

The focus group is due to take place Tuesday at 5pm week 10, in E0.23.

: 22 Nov 2005 20:34 |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Winner drawn and plans drawn for focus group

Ok, so I'm blogging this a day late… though it is a diary after all!

Met Andrew Martin to discuss the progress with the survey, and also the progress report for next week. Also a day and room have been arranged for the follow up focus group.

Winners of Amazon.co.uk gift vouchers were also drawn by Andrew… now I just need to go and buy them!

: 22 Nov 2005 20:32 |  Comments (1) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Questionnaire closed!

As of yesterday evening, the questionnaire is now closed with a fantastic 112 responses! All being well I should be able to perform some initial analyses during this coming week (Week 8), with a view to conducting a focus group before the end of term, despite being later than originally planned.

: 13 Nov 2005 14:06 |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

And it just goes to show that if you remind people…

Follow-up to And in just one day… from Designing a Student Portal

Thanks to a reminder that was posted on My.WBS yesterday, another 30ish people have completed the survey – bringing me to a total of 92 responses.

Quick breakdown by course:
———————————————————-
Management – 27
Accounting and Finance – 27
International Business – 8
Computer and Business – 9
Other – 21

I'm impressed with the response.

: 10 Nov 2005 11:30 |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Apache now all systems go!

Follow-up to Confirmation of Web Space in DCS from Designing a Student Portal

Though I have not looked at the system myself, David successfully set up the Apache server in DCS for the Penguin project in the past couple of days. Well done David… we're now ready to roll!

: 09 Nov 2005 20:08 |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Observations of My.WBS

As a user of My.WBS, an extreme example of something which occurs quite often caught my attention – one topic, and six or seven different resources available to download for it…

1. Why couldn't all of those resources have been attached to a single message?
2. Why do you lose sight of the other relevant resources once you have selected one of them? Compare this to say Microsoft Outlook – you can read a message and still see your Inbox.
3. Why do I have to download a Word/Excel document just to find out what group I'm in or the exact wording of an assignment?

These are definite design issues I need to look at – I should be interested to see if there any similar comments made in my survey results.

: 09 Nov 2005 20:04 |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

And in just one day…

Follow-up to Questionnaire Advertised on My.WBS from Designing a Student Portal

Not bad for just one day… very impressed at 44 responses! Temptation of freebies for Students is obviously too much :o)

: 01 Nov 2005 19:41 |  Comments (1) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Questionnaire Advertised on My.WBS

With thanks to help from Andrew Martin and Trixie Gadd of Warwick Business School, my research questionnaire has been advertised for participants on My.WBS this morning. It has been agreed that my findings will be shared with the My.WBS development team due to a revision of their system planned for early 2006.

Response dependent, the questionnaire will be live for one-week only.

: 01 Nov 2005 11:11 |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Confirmed identity for the Penguin project account

The final stages for setting up the Penguin project account on the DCS servers was completed today – Paul Williamson confirmed the identities of David and myself, and passwords/access details were issued.

: 27 Oct 2005 21:37 |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem