The creative media project is your opportunity to experiment with the wider expressive range made available through hypertext and multimedia. You can do a hypertext poem, a hypertext short story, a series of montage photos, a photographic essay, a video piece or digital film, or a Macromedia Flash piece. Even PowerPoint can be used creatively to produce a multimedia project, and blogs can be used as a medium to develop fictional characters and track their experiences. (Take a look at these examples). I assume creative writing or literature students will be more interested in this option, especially if it can support the academic, personal, or even professional interests established in the web portfolio—you will want to develop a creative project that can be showcased in your web portfolio. What you decide to do for this project will depend on your personal or professional interests and either your previous technical experience or desire to learn a particular new technology. Here the emphasis will be on creating a work around a coherent theme and your effort to work with a specific technology. However, user experience is still a major concern. A creative project's main purpose is to create a particular mood around an idea for the user to inhabit or interact with. While usability testing for the informational sites will focus on ease a information retrieval, the usability study for creative projects will focus on the ability of the piece to engage the user. The project should be interesting enough to hold the user's attention and generate interaction with or response to the text. With a fair amount of tweaking to produce the right kinds of questions, user testing can help determine a successful creative project. Instead of reading a poem in front of a crowd to gauge its effectiveness, you put the audience in front of the computer and monitor their experience.

The informational web site is your opportunity to develop a web site for a small business, an organization, a friend, or yourself. The web site can be a personal site such as a fan site (based on a particular band, TV show, cultural practice, etc.) or a family genealogy site, an academic site (based on a particular topic, author, issue, or class), a non-profit site (for an organization or focused on an issue), or a business site (focused on a real or fictitious company). For example, you may have a friend with a small business or even a rock band that needs a web site, or you may have a project that needs to be done at your job and they may be willing to let you produce that site as part of the class, or you may work on campus for an organization that needs a web site or needs to revise an old site. If you are a teacher, you may want to build a site around one of your classes or that develops a topic related to your teaching. The possibilities are pretty endless. Whatever you decide to do, you should choose something that can be applicable to your life if possible—a site that you (or others) will continue to use after the course is over or that will enhance your professional work. If you choose to do a site for a client, you should work with them to develop documents for web-based, CD-Rom, or PowerPoint delivery. You will need to arrange an initial meeting, analyze their existing documents and needs, propose a plan for web or media delivery, and formally present the project to the client for approval. With the limited time frame for this project, a client-based approach will probably be practical only if you a) work for a company already that needs some web work done or b) you have a friend with a small business, band, or organization that needs a web site. If you can fulfill either of these requirements, I highly recommend this option. The client will be giving you much of the content so you won't be creating it yourself, which makes up for the time you will spend working with the client to plan the site. Here the emphasis will be on usability and information retrieval. For this project you should draw on the design principles from WSG and provide solid branding for the organization and ease of use for the user. For these types of projects, usability testing is a must. Any professional setting will benefit from your experience with user tests in this class.

If you choose to do a creative project, you will also need to write an artist statement and turn it in with the final draft. An artist statement explains the background rhetorical situation to the piece, the rhetorical or artistic goals of the piece, and the techniques used to carry out those aims. (Take a look at this example.) If you choose to do an informational project, you will need to revise your original proposal and turn it in with the final draft. If you arrange a project with a client, you will need to revise the initial proposal as a real document that you will give to the client for his/her approval. Either revision should significantly improve upon the articulation of the project and the arguments put forward in your initial proposal (i.e., it will need more detail and more rhetorical clarity).

Write a proposal for project 2 in order to think through your idea. Follow the project 1 proposal assignment (write a business letter and follow those categories) but write it as if you are writing to a third party client (not me).

• The proposal will be a formal grade.

Step 2 (week 9) - Attend a Workshop:

Do necessary tutorials or attend necessary workshops relevant to the creation of your project. If there are no tutorials or workshops scheduled for this week, at least get signed up for one.

• The workshop will count toward your participation grade.

Step 3 (week 10) - Begin Drafting:

Get something concrete started. Sketch out an initial page layout and start thinking about, finding, or creating the images, banner, or logo you will use for the site. A big part of the design is planning a visual identity for the site. Also, begin to make contact if you are working with an outside client.

• Get an initial page design a strong central image for the site for a participation grade.
• If you are doing a client site, set a meeting with the client if you haven't already.

Step 4 (Week 11) - Develop Branding Strategies:

You will need to start thinking about your site's "display space." In a print design class, you would think about the display space as the table a flyer sits on, a bulletin board a flyer is placed on, or a rack with a series of pamphlets. In each case, your design will be competing for attention in that space. Dull designs will be lost; innovative designs will stand out. The same principle applies to web sites, even though the display space is dispersed on the WWW. When your page comes up on a Google list with nine other similar sites, that results-page is your table and you need to create a design that will stand out.

• For a participation grade, find 5 related sites and check out what you need to do to stand out in that space.
• If you are doing a client site, meet with the client if you haven't already.

Step 5 (Week 12) - Analyze Users and Contexts:

This week you will need to do some audience analyses and revise your proposals. In addition to analyzing your audience's virtual and physical context through the activity heuristic, you will also need to revise/refine your proposals to reflect your progress: focus specifically on developing a more detailed sense of specific users from the perspectives of information ecology and activity theory. If you have a client, produce a more formal proposal addressed to the client that includes your overview of the project and a calendar. In order to revise the proposal you will need to have interviewed the clients to determine their needs and researched the clients' on the web as much as possible to generate background material.

• Do the activity heuritic for a participation grade.
• Get a solid draft of the site going.
• Start thinking about what you will do for a second tutorial.

Step 6 (Week 13) - Design Usability Tests:

Each person or group will need to set up a usability test for his/her/their project. I will provide a sample questionnaire that you should revise to fit your needs (i.e., your specific types of users and the specific searches they may need to carry out). You will also be responsible for acquiring test subjects both in and out of class. For the in-class test get two or three students to review your site (in other words, help each other out). Outside of class find two or three friends who are willing to work through the test and who closely match your user types. If you work with a client, determine the audience the client is after and find three people who fit the profile to do the test. This can be done on your own or through collaboration with the client. In some cases you will be able to find actual users, from a specific workplace for example. Find these people if at all possible.

• Setting up moderator's guide counts toward participation.
• Identify and contact outside users to take usability test.

Step 7 (Week 14) - Do Usability Tests:

A prototype of your project should be ready so we will conduct usability tests in class.

• Get a solid version of the site up.
• Carry out usability studies in class for participation.
• Work on final tutorial.

Step 8 (Week 15) - Produce Final Revisions:

Revise projects based on feedback from tests – Project 2 due Friday during Finals week (see syllabus for specific date).

• Finish outside usability tests.
• Finish second tutorial if you haven't already.
• Finish final proposal revision or artist statement.
• Finish final version of your site.

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