Assignment 4: Persuasive web site

For our final assignment, we'll be working in groups to create a persuasive website.  Your group will need to have a front or index page, one page of content for each member of the group (the text of which will be composed individually), and a number of web-specific content types.  Those web-specific content types include a template with some sort of navigational scheme, that will allow users to navigate fairly quickly to any other page and some sort of multimedia content, like an embedded YouTube video (that your group created) or a podcast.
The intended goals of this assignment are as follows.
  1. Your ability to identify a significant and persuadable audience.
  2. An ability to argue efficiently, and to know what portions of your argument to expand in separate pages.
  3. A familiarity with creating human-legibile HTML code, which can be read directly.
Along with the website, your group will also need to provide a justification document detailing your website's design.  This justification should be of at least 1400 words.  This justification should be broken into the following sections, at a minimum, with a good two or three paragraphs in each.
  1. Visual site design.
    • Does your site have an overall, unifying "look and feel" (includes colors, bars)?
    • How do visual decisions help convince your audience? 
    • Is the text easily read? 
    • How are multimedia effects used? 
    • How would you use a web designer if you had access to one?
    • NOTE:  We are not all graphic designers or webmasters.  I do not expect you to create a professional looking site, but will be happy if you do!  Instead, simply answer the preceeding question (how would you use a designer if you had one) in some detail.
  2. Navigational structure.  You should consider navigation on two fronts.
    • Intrapage navigation:You intended directions for surfer consumption
      • What should they see first? 
      • How should their eyes move across your page? 
      • How are your pages scannable?
      • How are you encouraging them to read as you intend?
    • Interpage navigation:  Each page should provide one or more links to each of your other pages, and may also include links to other sites. 
      • As you're unable to force surfers to read your pages in a certain order, or even read them at all, how do you encourage them to "consume" your site in a certain way?
      • How do you use other sites usefully?
      • Is there a unity of purpose in your site's design?
    • In your defense, you must include a picture of your site's navigation similar to what is in our textbook (pg 550).
  3. HTML Code: Include a explanation of the usefulness and readability of your pages' code.
    • Human readability
    • Remember whitespace -- how do you use whitespace to the advantage of people reading your code?
    • Minimized "style" elements -- recall the extra text that Microsoft Word wrote into your pages.