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Homepage for Introduction to Information Design (INFD 151)

Spring, 2008

[Schedule] [Teachers] [Announcements] [Assignments] [Notes]

Syllabus

Schedule:

      January 16: Course intro. Brief intro to each specialty in Information Design

      January 30: Web Application Design

      February 13: Interactive Media

      February 27: Digital Mass Media

      March 5: Digital Commerce

      March 26: Integration, How the specialties work together, Long term schedules

      April 9: Final experience. TBD as to whether this is a test, project presentation, other…

Teachers:

Professor Gerry Derksen, Interactive Media, derkseng@winthrop.edu.

Professor Hemant Patwardhan, Digital Commerce, patwardhanh@winthrop.edu.

Professors Guy Reel and Marilyn Sarow, Digital Mass Media, reelg@winthrop.edu and sarowm@winthrop.edu

Professor James McKim, Web Application Design and teacher of record for this course, mckimj@winthrop.edu.

Announcements:

Assignments:

Final Project Assignment and Rubric. The assignment is to select a web site (by 4/2) that exemplifies at least 3 of the 4 Information Design disciplines and then to present that site to the class. You'll have 7 minutes for the presentation with a couple of additional minutes for questions. The intro and conclusion should take about a minute total and that will leave you about 2 minutes for each discipline. One person should present two of the disciplines, the other should present the intro, conclusion and the third discipline. The intro should include a clear statement of which disciplines you're going to discuss. You will also have to write a 2-3 sentence critique of each presentation you hear. Rubric follows:

Here's the Digital Commerce Assignment. Read the attachment and answer the 5 questions at the end. Should total about 3 pages. It's due in hardcopy by 5:00 on Wednesday March 12. Deliver to Dr. Patwardhan's office in Thurmond 127. If he's not there, slide it under his door.

Preliminary Final Project Assignment. More details will follow, but here's a preliminary look at your Final Project/presentation on April 9. With your partner, select a web page that exemplifies 3 out of the 4 disciplines of Information Design. It's important that you find a good one, and it's important that you do it fairly quickly, as there may be contention for the more popular sites. You'll have 7 minutes for the actual presentation with 3 additional minutes for questions. A reasonable organization would be 30 seconds for intro, 2 minutes on each discipline, 30 seconds for conclusion. Rubric and more details to follow, but start looking for a good site now, and maybe do a little planning as soon as you know who your partner is.

Here's the Digital Mass Media assignment. This is due by midnight on 3/5. E-mail your papers to Professor Reel. (posted 2/28)

 Here's the Interactive Media Assignment for the 27th.

Here's the prework for class on the 27th.

The technology assignment is to visit three of the web sites listed below and summarize the technology that each one utilizes.

  1. Nun's Hangman site.

  2. www.myspace.com

  3. www.amazon.com

  4. www.cnn.com

  5. www.csszengarden.com

Provide an introductory paragraph or two for each site, discussing what the site is for, who the target audience for the site is, and a typical interaction that a regular visitor might have with the site.

Then provide a few paragraphs on the technology of the site. Some of this could be in tabular form, but if you do use a table, make sure there's some good explanatory text around that table. Questions to consider include: How much of your interaction is executed on the server and how much on the client? Give an example of when the interaction moves to the server. How much does this site use content from other sites (e.g. google, youtube). What kind of programming had to be done before this site would work? For example, is there a form to be filled out, checked and processed? Is there a way to search the site? What about style? Do all the pages use the same style? Does it look like there's an external style sheet involved? What kind of information do you think the site kept on you as a casual visitor? If the site allows people to register as members, what kind of information do you think the site keeps on its members?

Finally, include a brief concluding paragraph for each site.

 Altogether, each site report should be 1 to 1.5 pp. long, so the entire assignment should come to 4-5 pages. Microsoft word is preferred. Talk to me if you wish to submit using some other format.

Submit via e-mail to me by midnight February 6.

   Reading Assignment to be done before class on 1/30. I may well quiz you on the reading so failing to do it may cause some embarrassment as well as grade damage. Go to the extropia tutorials page. On the left you'll see a bunch of tutorials and on the right you'll see the table of contents for one of those tutorials. Read the first four documents on the right: The History of the Web; The Nuts and Bolts of the Web; The Basics of HTTP; and HTML The Language of the Web. These are all short and should be easy to read for most of you. Back at the extropia page look down the tutorials on the left and find Web Programming 101. This is a somewhat more challenging article, but with a couple of readings you should have a good handle on the early part and understand the gist of the latter part. Unfortunately many of the links in this tutorial are broken (more likely they're only available to people who pay for the courses), but the explanations that are here are very good. Also, be aware that the author lets his opinions show. Don't take those too seriously. You'll get to try out some of these technologies and can form your own biases later.

Notes:

Notes from 1/16

Notes from 1/30