Page Mockups Introduction The following document will serve as an information
architecture design layout for the RIT club “The Coffee
Club”. Intended users and groups that will visit this
website are defined and their characteristics or potential
problems that they bring will shape the function of this
website. In addition to our audience classifications this
document will analyze competing websites and RIT clubs
emphasis being placed on their design layout and structure.
Ultimately these two elements will shape our decision for
key design elements and site content which accounts for the
final sections of this document.
The Club The Coffee Club was founded on the interest of a coffee loving community wishing to join together in their zeal
for everything coffee. The club discusses everything from
brewed coffee to exotic cappuccinos and meets once a week
at the local RIT coffee stop Java Wally’s. Meetings are
always open to non members who wish to sit in and observe
better what the club is all about. Typically new recipes or
blends are brought in during meetings for everyone to taste
test and if members like it then these get posted to the club’s
website later. The club is active at RIT events to help further
the spread and appreciation for quality coffee products.
Club members are often seen running a booth or two at the
RIT hockey games selling coffee to warm up the fans. They
also are sponsor to another fellow RIT club, the RIT mini
baja team, in sponsoring their annual spring race called the
Coffee Cup.
Members Ryan Heilmann
Richard Perez
Karyn Lewis Greg Mitchell
Yun Kwak Goals The goals of our site are to create and further develop a
coffee appreciation community on RIT by pooling already
existing interest in current students and appealing to
others outside of RIT. The primary function of the website
will serve our exiting club members in that the site will
act as a general hub of information where the members
can centrally communicate to one another. We want our
members to be able to carry on discussion to members
as well as non members without a complicated login
process. There will be a section listing the club events and
news. Should a member miss a meeting or simply forget
the details of one these events, they could quickly get
informed.
The goals of our site are to create and further develop a
coffee appreciation community on RIT by pooling already
existing interest in current students and appealing to
others outside of RIT. The primary function of the website
will serve our exiting club members in that the site will
act as a general hub of information where the members
can centrally communicate to one another. We want our
members to be able to carry on discussion to members as
well as non members without a complicated login process.
Their will be a section listing the club events and news.
Should a member miss a meeting or simply forget the
details of one these events they could quickly get informed
via browsing this section of the website.
As with any college club we wish to appeal to RIT students
who are not yet members in hopes that one day they will be. Having a website for The Coffee Club gets our name out
there to people who do not yet know we exists or maybe do
but wish to learn a little more. The website will have a page
catering to these users by giving them a greeting and a brief
synopsis of our club, easing them into the site. Hopefully
we would like these students to like what they see and wish
to become a member themselves. There will be a page
detailing to them our membership process and what they
need to accomplish to become one.
In general The Coffee Club’s goal is further enhance
people’s knowledge and appreciation for coffee. Thus there
is to be content that appeals to the coffee community as a
whole, not just those who are at RIT. This will be
In general The Coffee Club’s goal is further enhance
people’s knowledge and appreciation for coffee. Thus
there is to be content that appeals to the coffee community
as a whole, not just those who are at RIT. This will be
accomplished by including a page where people can view
and submit coffee related recipes of any variety without
having to be a club member to do so. An online forum
where people can register for an account for free then
post in a variety of different topics will be open to these
people as the forum will be open to everyone. This last
element adds the collaborative aspect between members,
non members, and the public that The Coffee Club is really excited about. User Experience Audience The intended audience for this website can be broken
down into four general categories. First and foremost our
audience will be for already existing members of our club.
These are the people who will be using the website for
administrative and organization needs that ordinary visitors
won’t. The second audience is for current RIT students
who are not yet members of The Coffee Club. These
students will visit the site to get basic information such as
club membership opportunities and club event dates. Third
is the small audience of prospective RIT students. These
are people who may be taking a look at RIT websites to
get a feel for the community and culture on our campus
before making the decision to apply to RIT. They will most
likely be looking at our site to gauge the quality of RIT’s
community or a club that they may wish to join if they were
to attend RIT. The fourth audience is that of the general
public. The Coffee Club is not exclusive to RIT students
and faculty only but wishes to server the coffee community
as a whole and the people of the general public are more
than welcome at the clubs website. Due to their possible
distance away from RIT these people generally won’t be
interested in our club events or membership opportunities.
The online coffee forum and recipe sections would likely
be places on our website these visitors would frequent.
User Scenarios
#1 Name: Amy Ellison
Age: 19
Occupation: RIT Student
Residence: 153 Sol Heuman
Education: Photo major
Tech Skill: Advanced
Reason for Visiting: Current member trying to get
feedback on the flyer she just made for an upcoming group
event at RIT.
Task Scenario: Amy just spent all day making a flyer
to be printed out for distribution. The flyer is for an
upcoming “Taste of Rochester” event where the club will
be showcasing coffee from local RIT coffee houses. She
believes his design is good but wants to get the final OK
from the club president and maybe some other members.
So Amy opens up her browser and using her bookmark
loads up the club’s website. She’s forgotten the email
address of the president so she clicks on the “members”
section and finds a link to the president of the club. Amy
sends out a quick email to the president asking for feedback
and attaches a jpg of her flyer design. Amy then goes back
to the website and clicks on the “forum” section, logs in
with her user name, and starts a new discussion thread titled
“Taste of Rochester flyer design! Any good?!?!” and post
inside a picture of her flyer. Later she checks back to his
thread to see that several members and the president have
posted responses to the thread and offer her their approval
of her design.
#2 Name: John Floyd
Age: 18
Occupation: RIT Freshman
Residence: NRH Education: New Media Design & Imaging
Tech Skill: Advanced
Reason for Visiting: John is a student who loves coffee.
He enjoys a variety of flavors and trying different blends of
coffee. His roommate mentioned something to him about
the Coffee Club on campus; John was interested in finding
out more about the club.
Task Scenario: John is finding his new life at RIT to be
very exciting yet overwhelming at times. Balancing a part-
time job with a full schedule at school means he needs
to constantly be on the go. John has always had a love
for a good cup of coffee; it’s what keeps him going. John realizes that the Coffee Club at RIT might be the niche he
was looking for. A place where he can find new recipes on
exciting coffees or enjoy a cup with other club member
and learn about upcoming events at RIT. John is interested
in hanging out at the club and making some new friends
that share his passion for coffee. He does a search on the
RIT homepage for the coffee club he heard about and the
search yields a link to The Coffee Club’s website. Upon
first viewing the site John reads the welcome message and
believes this is the club for him. Intuitively he clicks on the
members section and finds a page detailing how to become
a member. Excited to join he learns that he must attend a
meeting in order to pay a member due and be added to the
club. Click on the calendar of events he finds out that their
next meeting is Monday at 8pm. He marks it down on a
post it note and leaves his dorm for a class.
#3 Name: Stacy Becker
Age: 17
Occupation: High school Student
Residence: Norfolk Virginia
Education: High School
Tech Skill: Some Computer Knowledge
Reason for Visiting: Was interested in applying to RIT
and is clicking around their website for info when she stumbled upon links to all the RIT clubs. She clicks one
that sparks her interest that being the link for The Coffee
Club.
Task Scenario: She just clicked on a link for the club’s
website and is taking a look around to see what’s there.
She’s being doing this for an hour now on many other RIT
websites just trying to get a feel for RIT because she’s
interested in the school but never visited. Navigating
around the page she finds the section where it lists the
clubs upcoming events. Surprised to see so many for a
coffee club she gets the impression that RIT must be a
really active community of people. A coffee drinker herself
she finds the recipe section and briefly views some of the
recipes. Later she clicks on the members section and is
surprised to see so many female members and thinks if
she were to attend RIT it would be a good place to meet
friends. Stacy finds the forum section but it seems to busy
at first glance and decides she doesn’t want to engage in
that part of the page. Having a better sense of what the club
is about and getting a peek into life at RIT she returns back
to browsing the web.
#4 Name: Josh Katcher
Age: 35
Occupation: Lawyer
Residence: Omaha Nebraska
Education: College
Tech Skill: Lacking
Reason for Visiting: Often stays up long ours for his job and since has grown to love coffee. He drinks basic Folgers
and being a 6 cup a day drinker is looking for something
more tasteful yet with all the coffee buzz he needs.
Task Scenario: Josh does a basic web search for “coffee
recipes” and gets a list of results. He sifts through the first
4 or so, checking them out for a few minutes and to see
what the sites have to offer. A lot of the websites he goes
to are too complicated “all I want is a recipe darn it! Why is
that so hard?”. About to give up he visits one last website
which happens to be for The Coffee Club. The simple
design and minimalist presentation put Josh at ease. The
clearly visible “recipes” link on the page makes sense to
him and he clicks on the link. What he finds next is a basic
page listing a good amount of recipes and all of them are
easily viewable without too much clicking. He finds this a
welcome relief from other websites where he was inundated
with pop-ups and advertisements. Josh finds a recipe that
suits his fancy and writes it down.
Competitive Analysis To get a gauge of the competition already on the web today
a sampling of 5 websites that are similar in intent to The
Coffee Club’s website have been selected for review. Their
content, look, architecture, functionality, and usefulness
will be critiqued and their benefits or downfalls discussed.
From this review we hope to get a sense of what design
elements either worked or didn’t work for these websites
and take these in consideration for the design of our own website.
#1 URL: http://www.coffee.co.uk/
This website is a British site that has multiple sections
dealing with coffee and various other caffeine related
material. Upon first visiting the site immediately the user
is struck with a very busy and distracting image that is tiled across the entire website. The visual distraction that
the background creates makes it difficult to focus on the
text. In regards to the text it is actually the only content
on the page. Located on the left side of the page are about
20 or so links that send the user the various sections of the
site and in some cases to different websites entirely. There
is no form of local or global navigation so if the user is to
leave this site they must rely on the browser’s back button
to get themselves to the main page. Even though the title
of the page has the word club in it there does not seem to
be any form of a club in the sites content. The webmaster
did supply a link to his email address however the purpose
is unclear as to what a person should use the email address
for. The only image used other than the one for the
background is that of a small coffee cup that is placed next
to every one of the links. The coffee cups vary in color
and are either red, yellow, or blue. There isn’t any apparent
reason or connotation that the color suggests and they are
not ordered in some sort of patter so I can only assume their
Overall: 6 Content Overview The Coffee Club site content is primarily targeted towards
the members of the club as well as anyone interested in
joining The Coffee Club. The main sections of the site
content include: about the club information, news and
events, recipes, members, as well as a forum.
The home page contains a welcoming paragraph; this will
reveal the club’s background information, how the club
originated, and the goals and purpose of this club. The site will have a section for the club’s news and events. This
page will be frequently updated, consisting of information
related to the club. Topics discussed in club meetings and
upcoming events related to the Coffee Club will be found
in this section of the site. The news and events section
will have an organized monthly calendar containing the
Coffee Club’s main activities and meetings. The recipes
page will consist of featured club recipes. The recipes
will be primarily for unique hot and cold coffee drinks
and desserts. The member section of our site will have a
listing of current members of the Coffee Club. Contact
information and a club photo will be posted for each
individual. The club forum will be a place for current
members to post and read each other’s ideas in club related
discussions. Functional Requirements There are several dynamic elements of the Coffee Club
website. The news and events calendar will be developed
in an organized table, each activity listed in the calendar
should be a link to open a small window displaying that
activities time, location and description. The forum section
of the Coffee Club will provide login functionality for
the current members of the club. Members will be able
to post and read each other’s comments and ideas related
to the club. Members listed on the site should also be accompanied with a link to their email address for an
additional method of contacting that member. A pages
needs to present that lists all the coffee related recipes that
have been added to the website. Clicking on a particular
link for a recipe will open up a more detailed description of
the recipe. Site Architecture Overview The website displays its content in one main section that is located in the middle of the page. This is where the entire
site’s content appears when users click on a link and it is
where the welcome message resides when the user first
loads the page. On the upper left of the page is the site’s
main logo. This may alternate on certain pages based on its
content shrinking in size to allow for more space. Directly
to the right of the logo is the site’s main navigational
menu. On this menu are links for the various sections that
comprise the website.
Global/Local Navigational Systems
The main navigation system is a global menu bar that is displayed on every page. Local navigation is either
minimal or nonexistent due to the global navigation
sufficiently fulfilling navigational needs. Located in the
global navigation bar are five top level sections, Home,
News, forum, recipes, and members. Each section serves
as a link itself and may contain a drop down menu which
has a set of sub links for additional content. Home has of
course the five main links as well as the content that speaks
about the site and its club. News talks about all the current
events along with upcoming ones. The forum section is an
The main navigation system is a global menu bar that
is displayed on every page. Local navigation is either
minimal or nonexistent due to the global navigation
sufficiently fulfilling navigational needs. Located in the
global navigation bar are five top level sections, Home,
News, forum, recipes, and members. Each section serves
as a link itself and may contain a drop down menu which
has a set of sub links for additional content. Home has of
course the five main links as well as the content that speaks
about the site and its club. News talks about all the current
events along with upcoming ones. The forum section is an
area where our users can come to talk and speak about the club and its activities. The recipes section deals with coffee
being used in many different types of food and drinks.
They range from deserts, hot and cold drinks, and food
in general. The members section deals with how to get in
general contact with the club members. It also has a section
on where to apply for someone who would like to become a
member. Hierarchical Blueprint Visual Design Logo Designs Layout Grids Main page
RIT Logo main navigation
Club Logo/Banner
copyright
Content page
Club Logo RIT Logo
main navigation (car ried over from home page)
section specific logo
section content
copyright Page Mockups Main page
home l news l forum l recipes l members
contact apply
Copyright (c) 2004 RIT Coffee Club
Content page
home l news l forum l recipes l members
Text will go in this area
Copyright Copyright(c)(c) 2004 2004RIT RITCoffee CoffeeClub Club
