Copy the bullets below and paste them into a Word doc. Fill in responses for each bullet and send them to me over email: bhawk@gmu.edu

1. Focus/Goals

• Look at the initial web portfolio assignment and identify your focus: personal, academic, or professional.
• State why you chose this focus: how could it achieve a particular need for you outside of this class/assignment?
• List some basic characteristics of the identity or persona appropriate to this particular focus.
• Thinking in terms of this focus and identity, what are your two or three most important goals for the site? (What do you want the site to do?)
• Specifically, how will your web portfolio support the construction of this identity and the goals you set out? (Will you want to set up a blog in addition to the static site?)

2. Audience

• Identify potential readers of your portfolio based on the focus you chose above.
• What level of knowledge, background, interests, and needs will these users have?
• What will your site do to build on this background?
• What will your site do to fulfill these needs?
• What level of technical expertise might this audience have?
• Will your site match the expert or novice audience? How?
• What do you want the audience to think or do after having visited your site?

3. Design Critiques

• Go take a look at the homepages, portfolios, and blogs linked from the course web site.
• Do Google searches for homepages realted to your interests, field, or profession.
• Identify and list at least three sites as design and content models to follow.
• Surf the sites and identify design elements that seem to work well for you as a user.
• Also identify design flaws that you want to avoid in your site.

4. Content

• List the types of content you noticed while surfing your model sites.
• Thinking about goals, audience and possible designs, list all the possible content you could include in your site.
• How much of this content do you already have?
• What content will you need to generate?
• Categorize your content needs into specfic areas, list them.

5. Technology Needs

• After looking as some basic designs, what technologies do you think you will need to acheive those designs?
• Will basic html get you there?
• Will you need to upgrade to Dreamweaver to get some design features (roll overs or drop down menus for example)?
• How much image or photo work will you need?
• Will you want to use a blog service or download blog software?
• Will you eventually need multimedia work?
• Could this multimedia work be a basis for Project 2?

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