Medicine in the Jungle

So, it's been a while since I've posted on here! This was originally used for my digital communications class, but now that I've passed (whooo!), I think that I might use this blog to post my projects. The most recent of which is a video project from my spring break trip to Costa Rica!

Then I heard the voice of the Lord saying, "Whom shall I send? And who will go for us?" And I said, "Here am I. Send me!" - Isaiah 6:8

I have been more than blessed to be able to go to Costa Rica over my spring break this year. This was a medical missions trip through Furman University Medical Missions Organization and International Service Learning. The idea is to go into an impoverished country and provide medical care by setting up a free clinic for the community. I learned so much from this trip. I got to shadow doctors, learn how to give injections and do sututres, practice my Spanish, diagnosis patients, and run the pharmacy. I went with an incredible group of college students that truly have a heart to serve and a passion for medicine. This is an experience that I wouldn't trade for anything else and is so much for that just a spring break to the beach. I always want to be intentional with my time, and I can thing of no better way to do that than to love of the people of Costa Rica and be blessed abundantly more in return. It reaffirmed my pursuit of medicine and a life of missions.

Enjoy this brief glimpse into some the highlights of our trip, and maybe you can grasp a little bit of how important this place and these people are to me!

Digital Portfolio

Here it is at last! My personal website :) Please explore it and have fun getting to know a little bit more about me.

http://jennalmeredith.wix.com/digitalportfolio

Resume Brainstorming

So I'm getting really excited about making this website! It seems be coming along quite nicely so far. One of the main portions will be my resume, and I've been thinking about how to present that creatively. So I've drawn up a rough draft (sorry for the poor picture quality!). 

My idea is that to present education and experience, I will put those on a timeline that will create visual interest for the reader. Then for the skills section I will list what I have in a  graphic representation to show whether I'm basic, intermediate, or advanced in that area. Then finally, I will present my extra curriculars by topic, such as music or leadership. These will be enhanced by icons and will be a column layout for more visual interest. Of course my fonts will be catchy and the pictures colorful. I think it should come together nicely :) 

I'm not a visual person at all so this is definitely significant progress! Yay for creativity! 

Leaving a Digital Footprint

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Choosing an Online Platform

So our assignment for the final in Digital Communications is to create a personal website where I can display my resume, my digital portfolio, and any other pertinent information. There are many websites where these can be created such as Wix or Weebly. Those were the two that I chose to explore when beginning my site, and both have advantages and disdavantages. Both had a video that popped up and explained the basics on how to utilize their sites, a brief tutorial.

Wix: 

• More of a foundation/layout set-up prior to building your site; there's more go off of
• More difficulty editing the text
• Harder to see the connections between pages

Weebly:

• Less structure to the initial site; requires more vision but allows for more freedom
• Easier to edit specific functions
• Easier to visual the pathway that pages are connected with
• Advertise that search engines find your site easily

I ended up choosing Wix to begin with simply because I felt like I needed more structure as I create my first website, but having search engines easily find my site made Weebly very appealing as well. However, this may change as I play around with both sites. I showed the list of possible websites to my biology Research and Analysis teacher, and when he read the website title, Moon Fruit, he laughed and said he'd stay from that one because it didn't sound professional. This is one reason why I chose not to explore this platform in depth.

Strategy

My strategy when creating this website is to help leave a digital footprint for myself so that I begin to brand myself online. In a Wall Street Journal article written last year, branding yourself was listed as the second most important skill needed when getting a job. Beyond this, I would be interested in using this to boost my applications to medical school and showing them that I have a wide-range of skills and am a well-rounded student. I would also be interested in an internship in either the sciences or communications studies departments. Research is always a job that I would be interested in. Ultimately, a long way down the road, I would love if future employers were able to find me on the Internet and see who I am and what I can offer. 

My audience is any future employers or medical school admissions administrators. I imagine that when they get to my site, the most important need would be to have easy access to my contact information. Behind that, they would need an introduction to who I am, what my goals are, and the purpose of my site. So I want to make sure that all of that is accessible on my homepage of the site. It would be important to include that I am a student and where I go to school as well. 

Scope

On this website, I would like to include a digital portfolio of everything I've created in Digital Communications as well as my resume. Other potential additions I can make would be photos from my trip to Nicaragua over last spring break because it was a medical mission trip. I think these photos would show my love for medicine, service, and travel. Another option would be to show photos from my study abroad trip to Belize. I'm not sure if that plays to my audience as well as I would like, but it could show that I'm well-rounded and love to learn about anything. There a special focus on learning about the people and the culture so that might help! Finally, when my project/paper is complete, I may put up my senior research paper and conference poster to show the work that I've done. My professor will be writing a paper as well with my name on it, so that will also be an option to show my work in the scientific field. But those won't be ready until at least next semester.

I definitely want to maximize the way that people can get in touch with me so I will have a contact form as well as social media widgets. My email address and phone number will be available as well. 

Design Inspiration
From online, there are lots of places to find inspiration! Here's a few of mine based on screenshots from these websites.

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Okay, so this inspired me because on the homepage of this website, the message for the purpose of the sight is clear, concise, and simple. I want my purpose and intent to be clear to user when they visit my site.

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The style of this site inspired me because it looks professional but at the same time is all rigid lines like a lot of corporate websites are. I think that this is tough to do because there must be a balance so that the site doesn't look to childish.

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This site inspired me because it's homepage was different. You can't tell from the screenshot, but the photographs change. This is a photographer's site so from the start I get to see his work and what he does. I might try to mirror this if I can.

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I was inspired by the colors of the buttons because it makes them obvious and stand out. I also liked the shape of the buttons because they actually look like buttons. I'm all about keeping it simple and intuitive.

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Finally, this website provided creative ways to present your information that wasn't necessarily a rectangular style. I think this makes the websites stand out if done correctly. However, I want to be careful with this because it can also make the website not as intuitive and throw users off simply because the information is structured differently.

Aiming for the Audience

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While I've always kind of dreamed of performing for a crowd like this, I have to be honest with myself- I'm no rockstar. But there are a few things I've learned from rockstars and from Janice Redish's Letting Go of the Words. It's that you have you have to aim your performance for your audience- whether that be at a rock concert or with a company website. At a concert, if the audience is expecting upbeat, rock music and they get twangy, bluegrass, then I'd like to bet that they aren't going to be pleased. Also, if your website doesn't offer easy access to the information that the web users are looking for, then they likely won't be pleased either. So that leads me to my first point:

1. Focus on the audience

In order to do this, the audience must be understood and profiled. This seemed like an excellent approach to me. Redish suggested that personas and scenarios are created in order to keep the human aspect in the creation of the website. It can easily be lost when trying to focus on the product and the information. Instead, if desires or problems can be anticipated, then they met or solved, respectively, before the users even have access to the website. By creating scenarios, the focus is always on audience needs.

My second point is this:
   2.  Keep It Simple, Stupid
Meaning the home page, of course. The home page is usually the first impression that a user gets of your website. Personally, I don't like going to lots of newspaper websites simply because they are so cluttered that I can't sort through everything. I do like when the logo is at the top because then I clearly know what site I am on and how to easily link back to the main page. The next thing I like is when icons are links- maybe that's because I'm visual learner, but I also think that these are easier to scan than written words. If a homepage is kept simple, users are more likely to be able to find the information that they came to the site for.

Finally,
    3.   Put the search box in a logical place
This may seem like a no brainer, but I have encountered many sites where I simply didn't know how to even start on their site because I couldn't find what I was looking for and then couldn't find a search box. So, therefore, I felt that this warranted its own point even though for Redish it didn't seem like a main focus.

Discussion Questions:
What websites do you use that have simple, dummy-proof home pages, and what characteristics make them like that?
How can companies do a better job of meeting user's needs before they even ask for something or encounter a problem?

If the User Ain't happy, Ain't Nobody Happy!

Well folks, I think that the title of this post just about sums it up. User experience is everything- to the user and to the company. 

In the book, The Elements of User Experience, User-Centered Design for the Web and Beyond, Jesse James Garrett discusses the idea behind user experience- the experience that user gets from utilizing a certain product. 

Design
There are three types of approaches to design:

• Aesthetic design
• Functional design
• User Experience design

Most companies definitely focus on the first two types of design. Hey, if it's pretty- people will buy it. Hey,- if it works- people will buy it. However, often user experience design gets forgotten, and this is the most important consideration. If the user has a good experience with a product, they will keep coming back. If a product is pretty but doesn't meet a users needs, then they probably will not come back. Also, if a product doesn't work correctly, then they also probably won't come back again. However, if a product meets these needs, but also does so in the most efficient way possible, then the company has gained a customer. So in this way, user experience builds customer loyalty, which every company wants. Seems simple right? User experience is so much more though. Consider the following pictures. Which would you be most likely to use? And why?

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I would personally use the bottom one. I mean- it's got words and step-by-step pictures. The top one? I have no idea what is going on.

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So, once again, I think that when choosing between products most people would buy the Keurig. Who doesn't need coffee? If anyone figures out what that watermelon stroller actually does- please let me know. 

User Experience

So what makes up the user experience on the Web? 

• Functionality
• Aesthetic appeal
• Usability in context
• Efficiency 
• Navigability
• Intuitive design
• Working links
• Ability to accomplish a task

Those were just a few things that popped into my mind. 

Planes

When designers think about these things they must consider different usability planes. I've laid them out with a brief description below.

• Surface plane- simply the things you see such as illustrations and linked images
• Skeleton plane- design of the site such as where buttons are placed, logos are positioned; the most efficient and effective organizational layout
• Structure plane- more abstract idea of the skeleton plane; what is available, how users got to the site, how users leave the site, options that the user has
• Scope plane- the availability of certain features on a site such as saving previous shipping information, storing items in a shopping cart, etc
• Strategy Plane- Encompasses the site's sponsor's goals along with the goals of those that visit the website

All in all, a lot goes into designing a website. One of the interesting things Garrett said was that when a user can't a site correctly- they feel stupid. Not that they blame the site, but they blame themselves. And, as he points out, this is very effective at keeping users from coming back. So question: Does anyone else's grandparents have difficulty using the Internet? If so, why do you think this is true? I'm going somewhere with this. My thought is, in order to most effectively test the usability of a site- why not use the elderly crowd? If it's intuitive enough for them to navigate successfully, then I'd say you've got a pretty good setup.

How Does Your Car Tell A Story?

The long awaited follow-up to the car slideshow has arrived!! I hope you enjoy this video which uses fellow Furman University students to explore how their cars tell a story.