Hello all,

For the work in Unit One, I began by reading through all of the Unit 1 topics on the course Moodle page. This gave me a great starting point when researching the fundamentals of website layout. Throughout this unit, I was able to focus on the core themes and purposes of my website, as well as the type of content that will appear in my pages. Further, the units content encouraged me to identify the potential audience that will use my site. Throught the following description, I plan to walk through the processes used to ensure that my website will one day satisfy the needs of my desired users. 

As a brief overview of the process, I created personas to act as examples of individuals who may want to use my website. I then created detailed scenarios for my potential users in order to understand why they would want to visit my site. The step above helped me think about how my website is going to be used once it is made availible. After I began to catch my bearings with regards to my website plan, I created a 'working' map design of my website, as well as a website mockup. These mockup pages included a rough draft of the home page and also the general page layout for information. The site map allowed me to organize my thoughts regarding which topics I wanted to cover, including how I wanted to organize it. Lastly, I completed the Unit 1 Self-Test after several attempts and began writing the Unit 1 Learning Diary. 

 When beginning this chapter, I felt slightly overwhelmed at the amount of work which was required right off the bat. There were many new concepts that were foreign to me. For instance, I had never heard of the use of personas and scenario creation as a serious method of identifying the potential audience. I was slightly sceptical of this procedure when beginning the unit. However, taking the time to consider how the website may be used once in the users hands helped me think of certain functionalities that I would like to include as well as how it should be layed out. At the start, I was considerably nervous regarding the amount of information that I would be able to include in my pages without providing too much detail. After consideing the different users and scenarios that my website will come across, I felt as though I knew exactly how much information to include and what topics to touch on (at least for the users I have in mind). Through this unit, I learned that I am not trying to attract all potential users, thus this mentality stands true. 

Over the past decade, I have been extremely involved with the outdoor community within Ontario. I have been consistently producing video and written content regarding anything nature that I find interesting. This greatly helped me discover the main purpose and themes carried throughout my website. These are discussed in greater detail in the attached document. 

Creating the site map was absolutely crucial for me, for it was the very first time that I began to put my thoughts on paper. After the scenarios & personas had helped me determine the focus of my website, the map helped me lay out how I wanted to organizemy information. Using a site map helped me choose a structure that would feel most organic to my desired users. I really wanted the various website topics to be as easily accessible as possible and this is why I spent such a significant amount of time on this section. 

As far as the site mockup went, I already had a rough idea of what I wanted my website home page to resemble, thus, I did not necessarily find it as helpful as it was intended to be. For this excercise, I created a rough template for my home page, as well as the layout of the topic introduction pages. Here I mainly highlighted that I prioritized the sites navigation via the tabs on the side of each page. I also displayed in this stage that I want my website to be considerably graphical, with many photos and video imbedded within the pages. 

In hindsight, what I may have done differently was not spend so much time on the particular topics that I wanted to cover in my webpage. Although this was helpful when it came to organizing my website, the enegy could have been used more wisely in trying to find better, more effective layouts for individual pages. 

I have thus completed a rough design of my future website, I now look forward to learning the many technical skills required to build my website. 

Thanks a lot.

John Borg