PAE - Planning, Accessibility, and Ethics [OVERVIEW]

Planning, Accessibility, and Ethics

Introduction

Image showing the difference between usability and user experience.

Have you ever been to a website that you just really enjoyed?  Do you have favorite sites? On the other hand, have you ever been to a website that you really disliked? One that you didn’t enjoy and wanted to leave as soon as possible? Do you know why you like some sites so much more than others? It has a lot to do with the planning that went into the site. The designers most likely put a lot of time and effort into designing a site that will appeal to their users.  They planned a great user experience for the user so that the user would enjoy the site and want to stay on the site for a long time and would also want to revisit the site in the future.  This is done by understanding what makes the site usable and knowing what the user wants.  In this module, you will learn how sites are planned for the best user experience.

List of Lessons

  • Overview
  • Cloud Computing and Web Hosting Platforms
  • Web Development Life Cycle
  • Planning Your Site: Wireframes and Storyboards
  • Navigation for Usability
  • Ethical Issues in Web Design and Web Standards
  • Technologies for Enhancing the User Experience

Essential Questions

  1. What is cloud computing? 
  2. Why do websites need a web host?
  3. What is the web development life cycle?
  4. What is the difference between front-end and back-end development?
  5. What does it mean for your site to be accessible?
  6. What is usability in web design?
  7. Why are most websites dynamic rather than static?

Key Terms

Accessibility | Making sure your site is accessible to people with disabilities.

API | Application Programming Interface – programming features that allow the user to manipulate aspects of the browser and operating system the site is running on or manipulate data from other websites or services.

Back-end Development | Back-end development is the coding done to build the website on the server to make it function.

Breadcrumbs | The path the user follows to get to a location in the site.

Client-side web development | The front-end of the site, it is mostly written in HTML, CSS, and JS. 

Cloud Web Hosting | The site is hosted on a set of cloud servers.

Cloud Computing | Applications that are available through the Internet.

CSS | Cascading Style Sheets – the design code for the web.

Dedicated Hosting | The site is on a server by itself.

Domain Name | The registered name of your site that maps back to a numeric IP address of where the site is physically located.

Dynamic Website | Sites that use databases to create a different appearance depending on the visitor. 

Front-end Development | The coding done to build the visual part of the website, it is what users see and interact with.

HTML | Hypertext Markup Language – the code for the web.

HTTP | Hypertext Transfer Protocol – the method web browsers use to communicate with web servers.

IaaS | Infrastructure as a Service

JS | JavaScript – the programming language to create dynamic content for websites.

PaaS | Platforms as a Service

SaaS | Software as a Service

Server-side Web Development | Code that is written in several programming languages to allow the server to personalize the website to the user.

Shared Hosting | Sharing one server with other websites.

Storyboard | A detailed sketch (textual or visual) of what the website will look like.

Usability | How easy it is for the user to experience the site.

UX | User experience

VPS | Virtual Private Server – one server that hosts several sites, but there is a partition between sites, so each site has a specific part of the server that belongs to them.

W3C | World Wide Web Consortium – the main international standards organization for the World Wide Web. 

WCAG | Web Content Accessibility Guidelines – a set of documents that explain how to make web content accessible to people with disabilities.

Web Development Life Cycle | The stages of developing a website.

Web Hosting | A service offered to host or house websites.

Web Standards | Technologies used to build websites.

Wireframe | An outline or sketch of what your site will look like.

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