by Fabian Lua

 

After the Daily Life group presented their preliminary models on the class held on 10th November, I became interested in their work. Since I have working knowledge of Adobe Photoshop and Macromedia Dreamweaver, I felt that I could contribute my skills to assist the group. I worked closely with Di, who acted as a client telling me what the group desired from a website. After some discussion, and long hours experimenting while chatting to each other on AIM, we came up with a suitable website that acts both as the final product and as a replacement for a Powerpoint presentation. We also worked with other group mates to ensure the text and images arrive in a timely fashion.

Below is a quick summary of the aims, challenges faced and features of the website.

Aims

The website should evoke Tiwanaku daily life, especially in terms of design and visuals. I aspire to be as accurate to the Tiwanaku site and design where feasible.
The website should be a final product, in the format where the eventual audience will interact with it. This is important as the final presentation can then be used as a focus group and feedback session. The final product should have the feel of a storybook so that the audience feels like it is a virtual voyage through the day of a Tiwanaku resident.

Challenges

It was a challenge to capture shots of the model to fit nicely on the website. I found it difficult to ensure the details like the time of day and the context in terms of spatial location appear in each shot.
When Photoshop-ing the terrain onto the backgrounds, Di and I took special care to ensure that the mountain ranges appear only when facing the correct directions.

Features

The choice of fonts, colors and designs all echo the fact that our main character is a Tiwanaku potter. The overall brown background reminds the visitor of the main color of pots, while the detailing black and white are colors often seen on pots. Highlights of red and gold are also seen as these are also dominant colors on pottery. The font was selected because of the patterns of its serifs that appear somewhat like the designs on the Tiwanaku pots. Moreover, we wanted to fit comfortably within the final Class Project website, so we chose a black background to enclose our brown blackground.
I kept the navigation simple to have the ease and feel of flipping a storybook. A compound overview also helped to ensure the readers know where the are, and allow easy skipping forward and back.