How users and recruiting editors approach your web site

How we approach and seek to understand websites has much in common with deciphering many artifacts or art forms. We approach with a level of expectation, and thus we have readily preconceived ideas.

theimpressionist.co.uk

For instance, if you expect to see a website, such as these student websites from our Masters program and you see an advertisement, you immediately switch off and leave the page. Your expectations have not been fulfilled.

So for most users it's the form and what scholars like David Bordwell refer to as "style" - an intrinsic quality - which interchanges with form that attracts you.

Form is dependent on style as much a style defines form. Nike's tick is its form, and also its acquired style. The iPad is a great example of form and style merging.

A Western film's style defines its form; it's genre. The BBC's relatively new website is a new style that defines the form of websites cohering to the iPad screen.

And style can also be shaped by the content. Take a fashion website, it's defined by its photos; the photos (the content) make up the style.

Similarly, with reference to form, if your website doesn't cover the whole screen then invariably people make a judgement.

In the 1990s, websites were 800 pixels wide, because 15-inch screens were the norm, so small design websites are often associated with the 1990s, unless an inherent design concept is provided. Here style is defining the form.

This is all fine, but what does it mean?

Why Form Matters

Offbeatlondon.co.uk and WhereisLondon.co.uk - which do you prefer and why?

It means when the user comes to your website, in the short amount of time, they've made up their mind. Our user was an editor, someone you could send your link to open your site and conclude on the strength of what they see how competent, brilliant or mediocre you are. 


The form matters deeply; the shape, the size, the way you have arranged the elements, your content and how it's styled. The more harmonious the site, the more aesthetic an impact is has on the user. The form should also exude functionality. 


Good design is about solutions to a problem, such as how do I sell myself. Harmony also comes from your colour scheme, your use of negative or white space, how uncluttered the site is. 


The colour "white" is often associated with minimalism, elegance, and informational sites. The colour "black" is a reference to chic, boldness, and focusing the viewer's attention, which is why fashion magazines often used black backgrounds.


So in that first impression, that important behaviour for the next step is being considered – albeit subconsciously – that is whether the user will engage by clicking further on the site. 


They have NO notion who you are, your strengths, and in spite of your e-mail to them, or the "Hey, check out my website" at a party (a phrase to be avoided at all costs, unless you're applying to work for the Disney Chanel), they approach your website cold. 


Your site must inform the user who you are, what they see, its relevance perhaps, the experience they are likely to get on the site. Remember you're not quite the brand yet! 


To that end, if you haven't stated on your front page who you are or what your website is about, then you are denying the editor crucial information. 


So far I have talked about cognitive behaviour; any user does not need to be skilled in semiotics to read your site, but we can evoke semiotics to ascertain some of the thoughts the user is entertaining. 


What is apparent is one thing, what isn't is that a user constructs, which on occasion I have referred to in lectures as "connotation", using your data to build up secondary and tertiary meanings. 


They do this where you are ambiguous and from the manner in which you have used elements. That's why it's important, as we have discussed in lectures to search out exemplars, how gifted individuals have designed. 

Why Annotation Matters 

theskintflint.co.uk

Everything, all assets, need annotation. If you have pictures on your site and there is no indication what the picture is, what its context is, what it means, then you might as well be showing the editor your family album. 


In fact, I know many senior editors who will reject the picture or video if there is no information attached. Firstly, it's not journalism, which is about information; secondly the presumption is someone else could have taken this. 


And the minute they are met with these inadequacies, their expectations dip. Mostly anyone today can take a picture, but not many people know how to annotate and edit, which you should as a journalist, and we've mentioned this. 


If they have clicked a link, and it is text-based, then all our research tells us people engage more with the site when it's made out according to the rules of Jacob Nielsen. 


Aesthetically, the text easier to read, easy to digestive, and is the contents is strong will make that impression. 


You cannot afford to follow Jacob Nielsen. rules, in articles, and ditch them elsewhere. If the user gets through the experience of your first link, and that first link is often the link on your navigation bar, then they may click elsewhere. 


It's important then that you have a consistent navigation bar and that you're aware of your information architecture hierarchy. 


It's the link next to "Home" that may often get the first click, unless you've designed the site otherwise. After one or two clicks of your content, the editor may well then navigate to your "about me". 


Your "about me", is a professional bio, which can show some personality, but must be restrained from being flippant. The "about me" is the clincher if they like what they see. 


An action picture, or profile picture showing detail of you work in all its reflective mode has a far greater impact than the one of you at that party. 


Again, here style, form, content work in the same way as first impressions. Have you made it obvious how to contact you? Is it a link, or a complex e-mail they need to copy and paste? 


The easier it is, the more likely someone will follow through. 


Two additional pieces of info here from two incredible experts. Brian Storm of Mediastorm says the "About me" is the place he goes very quickly on his click through journey of  website, while Ilicco Elias says the most important link is your journalism piece that's been google and indexed.


To that I add, either route, context matters. If you're linking from a report, the piece as much as what it represents and how you went about it provides much needed information. Your piece may never be read, but if you can tell the editor how long it took you, why it matters, the style you conceived - as added info, you'll win brownie points.


Show off your skills 

LondonDiversity.co.uk

Editors today may see many websites. On average building a complex personal site may not take you more than a week, also it's common knowledge that many website owners choose a template. 


So, is there any indication that you created and built this site, or what your competency skills are in CSS/HTML, design or that you designed the site and others following industry-standard. If your work doesn't say these things, an editor won't assume that you undertook all this work. 


Design is about cognitive functionality. Your website must refrain from any assumption that you will have, and which assumes others looking at your content will necessarily understand. 


Non-online journalists can afford to think this way because they're not burgeoning designers. Online journalists can't. Information architecture is about leading people on an experience, sure that you'll get your message across as unequivocally as possible. 


What you don't say will often not be understood. If you manage to send off your user to your blog, note that if the last time you updated your blog was a month ago and then it doesn't bode well for you. 


Also, if they're going to read one post from you, would you not prefer it was one of your strongest pieces. Therefore, provide this as the link from your website and not the generic link to your blog. 


Now, back to style again. Style works on a number of levels, and one of those is about how contemporary your site is. 


No website can afford not to engage in a social network proscenium giving the user the ability to add content via comments, or played with the site. 


This can be done in a number of ways, what it refers to do something called the wow factor. It's that sensibility when you see something you simply say "wow". 


It's what all creatives/scientists aspire to. If you can give the user a bit more, they'll remember you.

These are some of the behavioural patterns that users/editors use to navigate and make meaning out of your website and consequently you. And, that's the approach we adopted to deconstructing your site.


David Dunkley Gyimah is a Senior Lecturer in online and film, videojournalism, and a PhD Researcher using cognitive and literary critique, semiotics, Heidegger's phenomenology and Mass Communication to explicate meaning within websites and film. You can see his work here or contact him here on viewmagazine.tv/training/index.html

Sell the story not the website

Andrew (Masters Students) works through the user-flow of his site with Tanja, a visiting lecturer at the University of Westminster's Final Online Project

It's about the story stoopid - to paraphrase Bill.

So even at the best of creative times when creating that 'thing', it's the story that goes with it that counts.

The Ferrari is the dream and the conjured stories of who might see you; the house is all the good memories you want to share living inside; and the website, it's the chance to buy that cheap ticket to a holiday destination - and the indelible stories that may follow.

I still remember Falaraki 1994 like it was yesterday.

When it comes to websites, notwithstanding the technical, creative and strategic thinking that holds it together, for journalists the overriding theme is to create and know how to 'sell' stories.

The electronic 'double glaze sales person', selling a product most people could do without, but can't resist once you hit that psyche nerve.

Why else is Britney Spears' life combed over by scribes and photojos. Hers is not an essential commodity, but one that when spun creates a 'glance-want-need' relationship.

So this year's final project with our International Masters students, the emphasis changed to how to create stories online rather than the notion of building a website.

And er no Ms Spears does not feature.

It makes common sense to say as a journalist focus on the story, but the online component of journalism can often be weighted down with the technical.

Fortunately, the Masters students get a good sense of that building websites such as these between January and April - combining CSS, Net architecture and visual thinking, some flash and above all how to write as journos and SEO spiders.


The Impressionist.co.uk

The Skinflint.co.uk
mindzgap.co.uk


Multimedia??
The word "multimedia" doesn't do the students' justice, because their present task was about understanding the workflow, user behaviour and principally how to sell a story online as the sole producer.

It's in part understanding the story dynamic; when users are likely to leave and how you might make them stay.

It's about getting to grips with the visual intelligence of online journalism, which increasingly will be driven by the aesthetics and impact of the visual push to the story.

It's about leading the site with a story strong enough to draw the user to follow breadcrumbs and access the site and then other stories.

I know I have said this before but this is something the Hollywood film studio sites do very well.

In lay terms a splash video followed by a link deeper into the story then perhaps the team behind it and I often use The Kingdom's ( Jamie Foxx) construct elements a a good example.

But it's a little more complex than just shoving video or some multimedia product at the top.

The proof will be when they submit their sites next week for assessment and post them online, where I'll give the links and you can have a look to see whether the students (graduating v. soon) pull it off.

Personally I think they've done a good job getting under the skin of creating and selling stories.

Art videojournalism -Why the Arts and websites should embrace art-videojournalism

24 hour news at an end says former Sky News boss Nick Pollard from david dunkley gyimah on Vimeo.

You have to give credit to the suits, for the primacy of video programme making as a commodity to sell invariably boils down to news.

Trouble is it's transient, often too transient. When was the last time you kept a newspaper. No wait! If you're like me, almost everyday.

Today I threw away video and design magazines and a small mountain of newspapers dating back to 1999.

But I digress, my point is the journalism in video, as in videojournalism can be a swift transaction that takes a lot of effort to sate the appetite, with not the best of returns, literally.

Fifteen years ago, we came by the same answer, so the videojournalism station I worked for diversified and some of its popular and non-transient programmes involved arts and culture (A&C).

For the Vjs we could be more creative with the form. For the listeners a chance to have us respond to ideas featured in their local newspapers or quite often sent in. Yep social programming circa 1990s

I never quite understood how important A&C was in the early phase of my broadcast career, but over the years have looked to consume much I can get my hands on, because as you likely know more than I do, everything we do is seeped in A&C.

It's an unbroken timeline, unless you count dark ages.

From the Internet, a revised version of the Victorian telegraph; to news of import captured in their own way by the artists of their time e.g. Caravaggio and Velasquez, A&C is our DNA.

Today, the Guardian newspaper featured: Culture on Television: a lost art? The article illustrates how the disappearance of a major Arts TV programme, The South Bank, is bad news, and asks whether digital channels could provide an alternative.

Arts - Videojournalism's Ratings Winner
Should media execs and newspaper proprietors be concerned? Why yes! For one thing, done right it's a ratings winner.

"When you read the annual report it's the arts programmes that create value, our content is at the heart of what we do", says Channel 4's arts commissioner Jan Younghusband.

Another quote in the article that caught my attention was how "Arts organisations are becoming producers". This indeed is nothing new. But the use of video reportage is relatively a newcomer.

Reporting the arts as a videojournlist is less about the revolution about doing all by oneself, but about relating context and providing a hmmmm insight for others. It's not news, yet can be, so calls on creative video productions and a clarity in reportage.

Somehow the more knowledgeable and worldly you sound the more we're inclined to embrace you, which is why Sister Wendy Becket could become a hit almost overnight. Er, no she's not a videojournalist.

During the summer, I have a number of ideas for the South Bank centre, our own august arts body. Out of the blue last year I produced a report about the Arts and TV and that was well received, but I also intend to illustrate how the brand of videojournalism I have been honing over the years attempts to in some way treat some news events artistically e.g interviews etc.

Why?

Because it goes back to the matter of primacy of video making as a commodity, that hopefully the it's something you're likely to come back to watch again and adds value to the quality of news.

By Product of a web site

David presenting at Apple talk - the event went well but afterwards was soured by a friend's plight


" Bloody hell, someone's nicked my bike".

We rounded off my talk to Apple - I was first there 2 years ago (link here) - on a bit of a downer ( bad news).

Duncan, whom this post is about really, emerged from Apple' s store, walked a couple of paces down the road to find his $1400 bike, which he'd attached to railings, had disappeared.

I felt so sorry for Duncan. If it's happened to you it's a bummer anyway. To have it happen to a nice bloke like Duncan who's the sort of person who'd give his last bit of change to someone in need is crushing.

Always happens to the good people eh?

Duncan, I have in a short period met two both extraordinary, is the someone you'd like to see down with a guiness.

He's a photojournalist and an extraordinary one at that.

He made his name - this is only half the story - getting pictures of Prince, Madonna, Elton John....

You name it he had the pics, but he acquired his lot in the most extraordinary of circumstances: he never went to a gig as a press photographer, always sneaking in with fans and finding a good spot to get his exclusives.

He tell's an incredible story capturing Prince at a gig, which I'll let him tell in a video spot pretty soon.

Then there's the Roling Stones in the early days of their career.

And then his knack for making the stars do things, they wouldn't ordinarily do: Elton John and Madonna together baring their chests.


The Anti-Snapper
Duncan would later sell his photo agency to the Press Association where he is today.

And the project he is knee deep in is what I can only call the celebrities celebrity- YOU.

Duncan is photographing and telling stories in his own way by capturing people.. Thata's it .. people. He approaches his subjects cold and intrduces himself, the rest is the art of human interaction and what any TV producer would kill for, opening up people enough for them to be so relaxed they tell you and do things they would normally only do with family.

And the stories he has to tell could fill a whole schedule.

Here are a couple he's kindly given me permission to show... NJOI NJOI NJOI as much as I am






Postscript -
In the post below this, I talk about the plusses of having a web site. Viewmagazine.tv has been extraordinary in that. And I continue to be grateful as well as inspired by the people I come across who have their own stories and centre of gravity.

What's the point of websites

David's website in 2001

We've been here before.

For me in 1997 having produced a site showing my work I wrestled with the notion of what looked like self aggrandisement.

Unsure I emailed a friend: " Is a personable site nothing more that the vanity of placing a mirror in one's back pocket?"

The web was corporate; a window to a business' world but personal sites?

There were noticeable exceptions e.g. Auriea Harvey - that brilliant NY digital artist

But for franchisees like me, what was the point?

But we, me, published into a black hole nonetheless.

Today, any such luck or determination to build your own site should be met with squeals of derision.

Why bother when there are enough off-the-shelf solutions at no cost to get you a web presence.

Any number of blog sites will do, but of course the daddy of playing the web field is Facebook.

Jeff Jarvis captures the zeitgeist of Facebook brilliant in his Guardian article today

Too late

So why would you want a website, when everything's there on plate - at which point I half expect a chorus of deshevilled chilrden to break into song with this doctored verse?

"Ere now, Oliver, you just copy Dodger
and I'll help you out with the words, alright? So it's
"I'll have anything"

Why would you not want a prefab portcabin house with its plethora facilities, available on demand?

Why would we want to produce something like this when we might seek an off-the-shelf solution

It answers itself, but not quite enough.

I look at viewmagazine.tv and my ask why bother?

Though when I peruse theronin, or HillmanCurtis I'm certain in my assessment.

Branding and characterstics; that certain je ne sais quoi which provides you with that distinctiveness and aura of being.

Facebook may be the best site going, but you'll not see the BBC, or Guardian jettison their brand to go all out Facebook native.

But that's it then.

It's not an exclusive deal either or but and "and".

But where then do we see the distinctions in form and function between our Face and our own sites?

It won't be lost on any of us why we have Facebook; it's not so much a platform, as a Killer medium funneling considerable day time, and night energies.

In part it's the low hanging coconut; drink and you'll feel good, avoid and your daily fix of hugs and pinches will leave you looking cold turkey.

As facebook encroaches on the apps ground of web site building, it'll be up to those that want to be different to up their game.

By that, content that's so compelling, outlays that ooze immersion, playability that would have WII addicts wanting to stop by.

Truth, we're not there yet.

How can we be ?

These intermittent web growth spurts indicate with some trend extrapolating there's more juice ahead in what we're trying to do.

The most absurb twinning of courses: computer science and journalism, may have had you doubled over laughing a year ago, however today, you're fearing the worse.

CSS go.. CSS go.. We're a limited time away when journalists will have to know CSS, action scripting and XML as a matter of course.

Why?

Because what they are likely to encounter in this new rift we're opening will be unimaginable compared to now.

WSWYG may render a lot of code knowledge redundant, but perversely understanding what it means will make you better lay person underneath the bonnet.

If you've ever tried to check whether the oil in your car needs changing when your partner has no clue, you'll understand what I mean.

Even more intriguing we have absolutely no idea what algortithms will emerge from the bowels on google to rank that precious piece of copy.

Writing brilliant article may soon just not be enough to get the bots to show the humans it's definately worth the read

Key words
Don't sneer or feel despondent if the following fail to set you on fire; there's time yet.

keyword proximity

how often google crawls through your content

noindex or nofollow attribute.


But for the videomakers amongst us what could the future hold.

This year was the year of Brightcove, soon not to shine so bright when it switches off its free-to-submit without ads on the 18th of December.

In fact this year was video distribution galore year.

There's still acres of innovation and when video hyperlinking hits you might as well pack up if your videos aren't scoring.

But more relevant to the method and quality of video, (news video) will be the aesthetic and the advanced visual language skills to make video leap from the screen.

There's an incredible scene in 300 where a gladiator vanquishes opponents in swift ballet movements in a stacato-sped up- stacato style.

It's rich and tantalising to watch.

The technique for such a dramatic shot involved three cameras filming on the same plane; three independent cameras which could manipulate their own data: slow, normal, sped up.

That's just one technique, but texture, composition, function will all heighten to ensure we spend 20 minutes on average on a site rather than 5.

So what are sites for?

My bet is still to this end game of web video presentation, again not at the expense of text, but the point where the screen supports HD and dimensions that will have your niece laughing at you when you show here Youtube's 425X400 screen.

What are sites for?

With what we've been thorugh this year, we're about to find out in another frenetic year ahead.


David has just gone back to browse though his CSS cookbook

TDB Till Day Break

4.26 a.m.
We used to mock fellow collegues doing this at boarding school: TDB - till day break. And woe betide you got lugged with an edit or had the ignomy of a new site to lauch in what we called the death march.

But the cause of my enforced insomina, a hapless inexperienced so so and so at my host site, whose poor and inconsiderate instructions led to viewmagazine.tv - my site being deleted from the server.

Pain... you don't know the half of it. But there was a job to be done. Get the Masters journalism online, who this year will clearly win something, see my dean, have another meeting around 10' 0clock and then get home and look for one of six back up files to load.

I'm on a 1mb pipe which is excrutiatingly slow compared to the 100mbit janet network at uni. And as I sit here uploading the files on one mac, i watch the slow progress of the load bar move knowing that if I don't get all my podcast assets up, when Itune refreshes in the morning around 8 0clock, I'll be kicked off.

So a word of warning in dealing with your Host etc. Double question everything they ask you to do. Don't worry about sounding like an echo chamber: " So you want me to delete this. Are you abs sure, cuz that means I lose this".

Ultimately the trouble is a young buck who would have answered his 100th call with me, was on auto response. Not really caring that I had a specific issue that initially needed fixing. Graeme, his name, customer service at Fasthost didn't seem to understand that his attitude was costly and that ultimately more of those and it's the good reputation of what's claimed to be the best host in the UK, Fasthost, that gets sullied. They've been extremely helpful in the past, but this memory won't go away any time soon.

It's 4.38 now and a 50mb file has uploaded 30mb - at the rate of 1mb per minute.