Manifesto:
To describe a system is to describe the relationship between the
various nodes involved. Much like the web itself, a design department
can be described by showing the relationships between the important nouns. For the internet, these nodes are computers that share
information; in a design department, these nodes are the people,
places and things that share their work and ideas with one another.
By breaking apart the design department into specific categories of
nouns I hope to redesign the current D|MA site as an intertwined
network of people, places, work, and occurrences. Since I am aiming
to simplify the overall look and feel of the site, I hope by packaging
all of the main concepts within D|MA as categorical pages of individual content, I can greatly reduce clutter and redundant information. After looking over much of the current site's content, I think
that the following relationship between each of these categories
should work well at defining the important relationships that describe our department.
Places
People
Occurrences
Work
Dawson Dill
Desma Site Redo:
“Noun Network”
I must acknowledge, however, that though I think the entire summation of our department could, perhaps, be defined thusly; it seems
that it would be prudent to allow for initial affordances into the site.
Therefore I would still want to supply a much more standard initial
welcome page that could act as a doorway to new or prospective
students into the network of names and places.
“Noun Network”
Audience
Definition:
This site would be mostly directed at current students, because the site would work as sort of a minisocial network for everyone currently involved in the
D|MA. I do not want the site to erupt into Facebook,
however, so I think that by implementing very strict
rules on how much a student could customize their
own page would need to be enforced. This would
mean that the site could still be used as a tool for
educating prospective students or their parents. This
site would not only give the textual overviews or
structural descriptions that most pages give, but
would allow outsiders to really get a view of how everything works, and is connected at UCLA. Since
most of the initial pages a new user comes across
would probably be for a place or an occurrence (a
class, exhibition or event), they would still be getting
lots of cool information about the goings ons at the
D|MA, even though they may have to click through
many more actual "pages" of web then before.
User Stories:
"My name is Dude Robertson, and I a Junior in DESMA at UCLA. I
really like the new site because it not only lets me make sure that I can
post all my work that I have exhibited on each of the exhibitions pages,
but it also let's me see really easily all the work my peers have done in
their classes because all of the work and students are connected
through the class pages themselves. Like, for instance, this one time I was
at the UG Show when I saw this piece that I really liked. Instead of having
to ask around a lot, I was able to go on the site, check the UG Show's
page, find the work, and then find the class that the person took to make
that work, along with other work made in the class and by the student.
Now I am taking that class and having a blast. Thanks, website."
"Hello, my name is Gloria Euphoria, and I am a young, aspiring designer from Texastown, Texas. My whole life I have been really involved
with sites like the Facebook and MySpace and when I get older, I want to
make web-pages, just like the real ones. Maybe someday David Fincher
will want to make a movie about me. Anyhoo, I was tootling around the
internets, looking for schools to go to after I graduate in June, when I
came across the website for UCLA Design School. I couldn't believe it.
The whole site was just like one of those Facebooks with everything connected to each other. I could see which Professors were teaching which
class in the just the same way I like to see which of my teachers is engaged to which of my classmates. It's like a college I can relate
to……..finally!!!1! LOL :)"
“Noun Network”
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