Interaction Design.

Throughout all the designing and planning for this website, I have kept the idea of 'Interaction Design' in my mind as it is a vital element of new media design. If a website is to be successful and create a positive experience for any of its visitors then it needs to be simple, well structured and designed in such a way that allows people to interact with it fluently.

Navigation & Menu Bar.

One important element of this is navigation. Without clear and concise navigation then it is impossible for website visitors to find their way around. In order to make navigation clear, it is important to have simple menu's which do not contain too much information. I kept this in mind when designing my menu bar as it simply contains the page titles and nothing else.

Whilst this could be seen as too simplistic, I think it helps visitors to the site to find things they are looking for easily. It would also be possible to add drop-down menu's to this through HTML or JavaScript in order to add more detail to different sections of the site - if these were needed in the future for example.

The menu bar isn't the only element of site design though which is important. The main content of each page needs to be easily located and clear to the site's visitor. In allowing two thirds of the website width to be for the main content I have provided a large, clear space in which site visitors will be able to clearly read what is published.

Content Box & Sidebar

To the side of the content is the spare space which can be used for other navigational elements. Whilst in my original design I allowed for simply one or two boxes, I decided that the side of the page should be home to many different 'modules' that can contain links to specific features or areas of the site.

Here are examples of how this has been used to aid navigation through the site:

• Links to the Q&A page clearly marked
• Links to social networking media
• Links to google search
• Links to Safety accreditations like Gas Safe and CORGI.

Whilst this could be argued to detract from the menu bar's navigational purpose, these large blocks advertise areas of the site to the visitor and then direct them to places they may not have thought to visit before. As well as this, a Google Custom Search bar is included. Using a search bar that is provided by Google means that no difficult coding needs to be done - as it is a simple case of using the HTML that Google provide. Including a search tool on the site is invaluable as it allows visitors and potential customers of the business to find exactly what they are looking for without even having to scan through the menu's on the homepage.

Links


Every website contains endless amounts of links to other pages or to other websites and it is imperative for user interaction that these links all go to the places they are meant to. If a website contains a large amount of broken links then it's usability is crippled and people will use other websites instead.

Therefore it is crucial to make sure all links on the website's pages link back to the homepage, and provide links to all the other pages too - the reason why the Menu Bar is consistent on every page of the site. The reason why other pages need to be linked too is so that if a page links to another page, but the user does not want to view the page any more - they are then able to go back to their last visited page without using their browser's back button.