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For my final project, I was thinking about doing something along the lines of our athletic teams or program in general. I would maybe do a page per sport, and briefly explain each team and the successes of each, as well as some improvements that could be made. I would interview faculty, students, or maybe even someone of the athletic department. I am still very unsure if this is what I want to do for certain, but this is what I have for now.
For this next project I want to make a website about fitness. Now I am no expert by any means, but I do enjoy working out and doing all sorts of physical activity. So for this website I will have 5 pages all related to working out in one way or another.
Page 1: Intro and home page that briefly describes each page.
Page 2: About page where I talk about how I started working out and just my fitness story.
Page 3: My lifting page where I will post many of the workouts that I use myself.
Page 4: My cardio page where I will post some cardio exercises that I like.
Page 5: Supplements and diet page where I discuss how diet is a huge component to getting bigger/smaller.
Although I really don’t know of any site that is similar to this, darebee seems to be the closest. I have not personally used the site before but it seems very user friendly along with quality content. I think this project will come together nicely!
My favorite website would have to be ESPN.com. I have been using ESPN for a very long time now, and I have watched the progression of their website over the last several years. There are some things that some internet users might have issues with, but for the most part ESPN’s website should pass the test for the average sports fan.
The first thing that ESPN does well is that they manage to focus users’ attention. They do a good job of personalizing the pages and focusing on what the user should pay attention to. They often times will place you’re favorite teams on the front pages so that you can access that information more easily.
Next, ESPN makes use of effective writing. Instead of posting a lot of articles on the front page, they instead separate them into different sized headlines, so the reader can pick and choose what they want to read. Additionally, ESPN usually always provide images with their content, which makes the user more likely to read a given article.
ESPN also does an excellent job of communicating effectively with “visual language.” ESPN does a good job of organizing its content into different sections and categories so that viewers can navigate to what they want. They also communicate using visual language and various images and effects.
However, some users might find ESPN a little bit too overwhelming. One thing that ESPN doesn’t do well is striving for simplicity. Although I do think simplicity is very hard to do when it comes to sports websites, ESPN could try to simplify things so the average user could navigate with ease.
The last thing ESPN could work on would be leaving some white space. White space is actually not a bad thing when it comes to websites, as it makes things much easier for the user. Too often ESPN will fill up their website with as much information as possible, when maybe that might not be the best thing for them to do.
All in all, I think ESPN is a really cool sight. It is definitely geared for the sports fan, so an average user might feel a bit overwhelmed. I think they could use some minor improvements that I mentioned above, but I will still be visiting the sight as my number one sports website.
