Media Website Evaluation

In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

My Media product which for me would be my main website, which develops/challenge forms and conventions of other charity websites.

My website has similar conventions to the average charity website such as how they display there information.

The site that I chose to make with my partner was about helping young people who had been diagnosed with ADHD and after looking at other charity sites such as Scope I found that my website and scopes shared similar characteristics such as having the same layout of sorts with the typical masthead with the logo at on the left side, then having a bar of links below.

The website that I designed is aimed at the young people and that is why the design is very simple and spread out, the pictures emphasise this as all of them I think have teenagers in them whether it's about their dealings with ADHD or just a picture to tug at the heart strings of people for donations.

The pictures in my main website were all taken either by my partner or me and after we got all of them we edited them in iWeb/Photoshop, having these pictures made our site our own as we have designed it from scratch.

How does your media product represent particular social groups?

My charity website is on ADHD and this alone singles out some social groups as if you have ADHD you are most likely to be male although our website is aimed to both genders however it is more likely that a male will be visiting our site. ADHD is best treated when you’re young as it is harder to deal with when older in specific cases therefore our site is very child friendly and it is aimed at helping children/teenagers.

We’ve achieved this on our website is that all of the photos are of teenagers with short stories about them so fellow teenagers/children who visit the site can relate to them. The site contains some of the basic information you need to know about ADHD and this is for the youngsters who might of found out they have ADHD and they don’t know what to make of it.

Then there is more advanced info about ADHD and this is for a more mature audience maybe young adults or parents and that’s why our website is appealing to both Children and parents.

I also added some features that would specifically appeal to the teenage/child audience, these features are basically the most popular social networking sites such as twitter, facebook, youtube and myspace which if the teenager wanted to could spread this site about.

What kind of media institution might distribute my media product and why?

There would be many media institutions that could distribute my charity site from the smaller web servers which include SKY and AOL which could distribute my website easily or one of the powerhouses like Bauer media which is one of the largest media conglomerates however there strong points lie in magazines and radio and it is much easier to to promote my site on other websites such as the links I have put on the website such as youtube, twitter, myspace and facebook these sites are a great way to get your site out to the people as millions and millions of people use them and once something is supported by anyone well known or has many followers it can go viral and this can really help to the growth of our site.

Who would be the audience for your media product?

Firstly to find this out for my website I looked at the survey bit by bit and it showed me what general age would be visiting my site.

It showed that the majority of people would be visiting my site would be around the age of 17-20 then 40 plus

Although I think that there would be a younger audience as well but unfortunately we didn’t put a 12-16 option in the tick box,.

The general gender of our website visitors didn’t really need a survey to work out as I’ve said before ADHD is generally a male symptom and rarely occurs in women and the survey results back this up as it shows more than 20 of the visitors would be male and the rest would be females.

Even then I think that the females who would be visiting our site would be mothers that are looking up this info about their children if they have been just diagnosed with it.

 How did you attract/address your audience?

My Charity main website attracted the audience in by the video and the home page which showed a teenager getting talked too about ADHD and hopefully this would relate to the viewer.

I also think in my opinion that our website is very neat/simple and not cluttered which attracts the audience in as no one would want to go on a messy site.

There are also the pictures of teenagers living with ADHD and there are stories next to them so I think this attracts the younger audience in as hopefully they can relate to the stories (an example of is that instead of craving attention Connor put his energy and effort into playing a guitar)

Our sites colour scheme, I think is very simple and calming there are only 4 main colours and those were black blue white and grey. The blue and white being the main two colours, these two I think are calming as blue and white is basically the cloud and the sky.

Our site is also very consistent keeping the bar, logo and mast head on every page and there is usually a picture on every page to keep the readers attention if he has ADHD as one of the symptoms of this is that people with ADHD will loose attention quickly, having pictures and short paragraphs on each page will keep things fresh.

What have you learned about technologies from the process of constructing this product? & Looking back at your preliminary site what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to the full product?

During this course I’ve learnt a lot, at the start for my school website I didn’t even know how to put a box around text or to colour in boxes or to shade in colours etc.

Now I know how to use various websites that help design my overall website such as Photoshop which I used to make my logo and Final Cut Express to edit the video for my main website.

By the end of making my preliminary site I was able to make a genuine charity site with all the conventional features a charity site would have and looking back all the programs that I used for the first website helped me achieve this as I was working out how to put HTML snippets in for goggle search bars and boxes which you could type in to sign in.

As well as making images and words links to other pages of my website.

By the end of the preliminary site I had a better understanding of Photoshop and this allowed me to make a logo completely from scratch.

The layout of my main website compared to the first one site I designed has many differences and you can see how much I improved as in the first website I had few working links and the colour scheme and layout wasn’t really up to scratch especially comparing it to my main website which got the colour scheme perfect in my opinion and the layout was spread out but it worked well as the colours made it  look just very mellow and calm.

Main Website Sketches

These are the sketches that me and george created.
as you can see below it's very conventional of a normal
charity site with a masthead, logo on the left and a bar of links
which makes it look very modern.
there would also be a video on the main page to catch a visitors
eye and a list of social networking sites below to share our
website with other people around the world.

Layout & iWeb (Preliminary site)

The layout of my preliminary website will be very conventional website with a masthead and logo
on the left side as well as having a bar of links below the masthead then a newsfeed on the left or right side and it will also have a html snippet of google maps to show where the schoool is located at.

Working in iWeb  to make my first website (a school) i learnt how to make links and how to

make a bar full of links as well as to shade the bar so it would look professional, also i learnt how to make

certain things such as photo's and words into active links so that it could direct the user to another page.

Here is a picture of my preliminary site

Main Website Logo

This was the logo i have made in photoshop
however the grey strikethrough was applied in iWeb

Main Website

I will be showing you all of my pages for my main website and be telling you
what i've done on some pages and why i did it.

This is the homepage and it has the news in brief along with a video
telling you what ADHD is and how it could affect you.
The logo, Masthead, log in/register, and bar will be in every page of
our website.
we did this because then whenever the visitor of our site wants to go to
a different page they wouldn't have to back track all the way to this site
to click on what they wanted.

The second page explains what our site is totally about and how it helps people
the picture of brad was taken by my partner george at a real football match.
we put the picture on the middle of the page to catch the eye of the visitor and then
on the right we put a short story about brad then more information.

This is our campaigns site and for this we put a large lump of information to the left
explaining everything our charity did and then to the right as a recurring box you will
realise later is the news feed, we thought that this would make our site interesting as it
would have all the current news about ADHD or controversial matters that revolve
around it.

The support us page rightfully has a picture of a teenager receiving help from another
person then above it tells you all the information you need to know in 3 small paragraphs.
once again you can see the news feed on the right.

This is the join us site and you can see that all our bold words we had to categorize the
information are in blue and it is the exact same blue that is used in the logo i made, this is because
we wanted our site to attract everyone and so not being one sided we used very simple primary colors
such as blue, white, grey and black so it can appeal to everyone and our site looks very neat without
any clusters.

Re-Posting

Reposting the older work i did that was deleted

Using a camera


My group today went out and took various photo's of people around the school
we learnt these three important rules when using it.
1. Use the rule of thirds
2. Position it somewhere still as this is important
3. Take pictures at the right distance

We then selected a photo that we would photoshop to our liking so by
making it brighter more colorful or just making it abstract.




Photoshopping Pictures:

Before

After

As you can see i have photoshopped the picture by making it seem more bright and lively when
actually the picture was taken on a cloudy day.
i also cropped the picture a little so the water mark wouldn't show and i also made the actual picture wider so it would look cinematic, unfortunately it doesn't show on the actual picture upload.

4 Other School websites:

This is Ravenswood’s website and you can see the school logo on the left side, and the masthead showing us the schools name and there motto. 

Below this is a slide of pictures showing us the students/teachers of the school. 

There is then a bar filled with links as well as on the left there is a student area where students can log in and see their set work and feedback. 

Below this is a introduction to Ravenswood school and to the right of this is a bar with all of the latest news and on the left is also a bar filled with PDF and word documents which are downloadable.

This is Bishop Justus schools website it has a very simple colour scheme purple/blue, white and green.

At the top conventionally you have the masthead with logo on the left side then on the right side you have Rsfeeds and pictures of things which mean in order of left to right RsFeeds, Contact us, Favourite and a dead link.

Also it has a site search link, which helps the viewer to find what they want on this school site quickly.

It also has the same bar with a list of links and then below it has slideshow of pictures showing off the school and it’s facilities, then on right side you have a picture of the head teacher with a introduction of the school.

This is Hayes school and you can see that there the banner at the top, on the left side of this banner is the logo of Hayes school and below this shows all the information you would need to contact the school.

Unlike the rest of the sites there is no bar of links going horizontally across the site but the links are all on the left side in a box. 

There is also a head teachers welcome on the right side and then on the centre of the site there is a slideshow of information for students and parents alike.

Saint Olave’s website has a large slideshow in the centre of the website filled with quotes and achievements and facts. 

On the top of the website there are some icons which stand for their achievements so for example the logo of the atom revolving stands for there ‘science speciality status’

To the right of this are two links one is contact us and the other is login for the students or teachers.

Below the slideshow is four more links which offer information about the school, admissions, programmes, dates that would be important to parents and also recent events.

School Website:

The school that i have made is called downham secondary school and have designed it with
the help from the studying i have done on other schools.
it will have the logo at the top of the website along with a bar with links on them and a search
button which will be located on the far right corner with seems conventional as all of the other
school sites.
it will also have a links that will directly show on the website such as the weather forcast and
Google Maps which will show exactly where the school is located.
There will also be a student log in area which will provide links for all the subjects that might do.

Main Website Brief:

The website that me and george will be making will be based around ADHD which stands for
attention defecit hyperactivity disorder and the site will be a charity that will help children and parents
to deal with this.
The website will have 8 pages with a similar layout to a school website as it will have a mast then a logo and a bar full of links which will stand out.
and from the charity sites that i have looked at i have decided that the site should have links to other help-lines such as child-line, nspcc and numbers to phone.
it will also have link to the most popular social networking sites which can help share our site to wider audiences.

Survey Analysis:

The main survey that me and george conducted can be used to contribute to our overall website and our understanding of ADHD (attention deficit hyperactivity disorder)

The first question of our survey was 'what gender are you' and the majority of people who volunteered to do the survey were male (23) and (7) female, this is relevant as the majority of people who have ADHD are boys. 

we also surveyed a wide range of ages from 17-20 to 60+ and this matters as ADHD is something that you have to live with and you may deal with it but you will always have it.

We also asked the the 17 year olds as by then if not dealt with, it can be very easily recognized when at a older age rather when you are young.

We also asked the older participants if they had any children and if they had we asked the ages of them and if they ever considered that instead of their child or children wasn't just naughty and had been afflicted with ADHD, if so it would back up the suggested percentages saying ADHD effects 2 to 5% children globally.

The next question in the survey that we made was 'what activities do you think are most important to you' and the activities were socializing, cooking, drinking, reading and sport.

this is not a random question as it is scientifically proven that asides from taking medication a change of lifestyle and either help or hinder ADHD.

The rest of the survey follows the actual website and what our participants think is needed in it and what they think is least important. 

George and me learnt that the majority of people thought that having regular updates on the site was important then after that they wanted photo's, videos and a nice colour scheme.

the people who filled in the survey also thought that any organization needed a website and that finally having help-line numbers and email addresses on our website wouldn't be obstructive and actually would be helpful.

Survey & Results

Recently me and george made a survey and we asked 30 people to fill it in
these are the results for it.