PRWR628: Website Progress Report 7/24/10

The end is in sight! Although I think my website is coming along nicely, the peer review examinations gave me a number of excellent things to consider as I put the finishing touches on the project. Things that I never would have thought of due to my deep relationship with the Patapsco organization. I also completed one usability test yesterday evening with a friend that has volunteered with the organization on multiple occasions and knows the organization well from a volunteer angle. Although I am pretty much finished with the website now, I will be conducting one more usability test tomorrow with one of the board members for last-minute ideas/notes.

Most of the changes I made to the website were cosmetic. I adjusted header colors to allow for increased scannability throughout the site. I also condensed/combined several of the longer lists as recommended by both of the peer reviews I received and simplified language in multiple locations. I was reminded by the usability test I performed that the EditMe "add a comment" button was still showing up on some of the newer pages I made which I removed. I also added several links throughout to help direct users within the website.

Both the usability test and peer reviews noticed a lack of easily obtainable contact information. It occurred to me that a contact page would make a good navbar/top-level link so I created one with some basic contact information. This lead to one too many links for my liking on the navbar though it was easily solved by moving the "accomplishments" link to a child link of the "about" section. It occurred to me that the accomplishments link felt too specialized to be a main link anyway, so I don't feel that any major problems are brought up by this. I also moved the "membership" link to the "about" section from the "volunteer" section as it felt like a better fit.

Second usability test aside, I only have two more things that I have planned for the website:

• Fixing the banner so that "Friends of" shows up in the title. Also moving/altering the awkward blue-colored tagline.
• Altering the language/simplifying the information in the newly renamed "Historical Restoration" (renamed based on comments from peer reviews) and "Management Plan" section. I'm waiting for my second usability test for that though, as I want to go over some of the specifics with a person that is more familiar with the information.