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No.13 Entertainment (Part 2) (February 4, 2002)

In the last column, we said that a real entertainment site incorporates highly artistic design and the latest technology, and that it must also achieve a high degree of usability.

In this column, we will discuss how to go about developing a high quality entertainment site.

Difficult development work

Let's take the design of your top page as an example. Is it possible to achieve both innovative highly artistic design and simple easy-to-use design within the same page?

It is nearly impossible to incorporate both of the elements listed above at the same time. However, depending on how you do it, it is possible to make a highly usable entertainment site.

Site concept clarification

As with any difficult task, when creating an entertainment site you must first clearly define the purpose of the task.

The purpose of this task is to determine what kind of a site you want to create and why. The work involved in answering those questions is what I call the clarification of the site concept."

Clearly defining the concept of a site involves the following six points:

Site purpose and objective
Clarification of the intended purpose of the site and how to determine whether it achieves that goal
Target users
Clarification of the target users
User needs and incentive
Clarification of users' goals and objectives and why they would use the Internet to achieve them
User's Internet access
Clarification of the Internet access from which the user will access the site
Understanding the competition
Clarification of points that should be learned from competitors- sites and how to distinguish your site from theirs
Scenario
Creation of a scenario on how users will actually use the site

By clearly specifying the above-mentioned six points, you will clarify the purpose of your site and what kind of site to create, and arrive at a plan for how to proceed with the work.

Decisions based on site concept

When you aren't sure how to make decisions about such issues as whether to give priority to ease-of-use, a highly artistic design, or latest technology, using the site concept as a guideline enable you to make good decisions.

Let's take a look at some of the points that can be determined based on the site concept, again using the top page design as an example.

<Examples of decisions>

What types of images should be used?
Up to what size of data should be allowed?
Should Flash and other technologies be used?
How much text should there be?
What color should link text be?
Should link text be underlined?

Based on the site concept, which serves as a guideline for your work, you can make detailed decisions about which elements of top page design, such as the ones listed above, should be given priority.

Using this method will help you clarify how to achieve a top page design that at first glance may have seemed impossible.

Creating a real entertainment site

Creating a real entertainment site means carrying out these tasks throughout your entire site. Completing this process for every page is extremely difficult, but if you can do the work of site development in this manner, you will be able to create a site that truly entertains your users.

Finally, site concept clarification and the use of that concept as a work guideline, as we have discussed in this column, is an extremely effective tool in general and is not limited to use with entertainment sites.

For our readers who design websites, we hope you will consider using the tips provided in this column when creating your own site.

Related Links

Entertainment (Part 1)

Artistic Design - 2Advanced Studios

Easy-to-understand example - Amazon.com

No.12

No.14

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