The History Behind Hindenburg Balloons

Well. You can probably guess this company doesn't really exist and the products aren't available for sale. I have not been addressed on any legal isues for this page, that was just an excuse to not do more work. This site was created for a class called "Human/Computer Interaction" as taught by Peter Tarasewich in Spring of 2003 at Northeastern University in Boston.

I must admit that the class was a complete waste of my time. Any class where the final assignments are "read my research and find some way to expand/improve upon them" should be suspect if taught at the undergrad level. The course content (especially the book "The Design of Everyday Things" by Donald A. Norman) was pretty good, with the exception of the teacher's publications, but there was nothing accomplished in class but chit-chat about the readings.

I realize that this was an Information Science class rather than a Computer Science course, but it is offered by the same college and yet it was so much lower a level of an intellecutal challenge. Naturally, there was no programming -- this is fine, it isn't a CS course. However, there was no real discussion about things like a good GUI. The teacher even seemed computer-illiterate, not understanding basic concepts of how they work (this is outside the realm of programming, which was hardly mentioned). I was left feeling the teacher was hardly qualified to be a graduate student let alone a professor ... it was more of a "ooh, look at this" class than a critical thinking class.

This paper earned the highest possible mark on the grade sheet. However, we never really discussed why it was well designed or what good design really is. Similarly, papers were graded based on a checklist of required aspects. This completely defeats the point of having a class on Information Science as it restricts the type of information that is graded, failing to teach design.

Adam Katz
http://www.ccs.neu.edu/home/katz/balloons/
is1420 Assignment 1
4/17/3

This site was designed to have a menu at the top as a consistent design to give users a familiar design throughout the pages. Screenshot of site - Welcome pageIt opens with a welcome page containing news and a picture to familiarize with the name. The navigation bar at the top guides the user to one of the four other sections: Products, History, Contact, and Order.

The site conforms to web standards set by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), the standards body for HTML, CSS, and similar specfications. It complies with the web accessibility guidelines provided by the W3C. To satisfy these rigid standards, the site was written to be viewed with Mozilla, the only fully standards compliant browser, (Mozilla is the new engine found in Netscape Navigator versions 6+). Internet Explorer, the most commonly used browser, has been tested for this page and renders it acceptably. I felt it important to make sure the site is readable by any browser so as to not lose those who use odd viewers. This includes text browsers such as lynx.

The products page contains inputs for quantities of items customers could buy. I minimized the use of white-space in order to make scrolling more efficient. Screenshot of site - Products pageUsers can proceed to the order page by hitting enter in the text boxes or by pressing the NOW button or by using the order button at the bottom of the page (all three perform the same function). I would like to also add the ability to press NOW and not need a quantity for it to show up in the order form.

The color scheme was chosen to be a pleasant set of gray colors, not too bright a background and a contrasting text color that is not jarring to read. The only images on the site are the pictures of the products (the welcome page's zeppelin is the same image seen in the products page), which makes the page easier to access on a slow internet connection.

The order page uses text inputs for product names to allow users to write notes, such as specifying colors for the exploding party balloon. Otherwise, I might consider using a drop-down box, though those often become annoying with a large number of products to scroll through before finding the one you want. I prefer this method over the "shopping cart" one because it is simpler and more customizable. It is similar enough to seem like a shopping cart to people familiar with other online stores and is designed to be simple enough for a customer buying online for the first time.

Screenshot of site - Order pageThe order page also contains a javascript form-checker to ensure that orders contain all of the needed information. Additionally, the form on the order page can be submitted (I will receive an email).

The site was created as a hoax, so it states that due to violations in laws, sales are no longer taken but information is still accepted. The news on the opening page (news) are intended to show the progression of the company and its fight to stay in business without the licenses to sell explosives.

The history page is not developed. I originally intended it to be a link to this write-up (as I do all of my word-processing in HTML), but decided that this might not be appropriate for this assignment. The page will stay up even after this class finishes and I will likely add this report at a later date.