Week 4, Exercise 4, Hypertext design and navigability

Readings for class of Sept. 26.

All of the readings are about hypertext links, which are the soul of the Internet. 
  1. Erica Negri, typologies and usage of hypertextual links. Some best practices are illustrated. 
  2. Mindy McAdams, 10 rules for creating links
  3. Here are some navigation maps for websites. that show how hyperlinks can be used to organize information.
  4. Moz, External Links, Best Practices for SEO (Search Engine Optimization). Search Engine Optimization means making your blog or website "findable" by Google, Yahoo, and other search engines. The higher your content rises in search-engine results, the more traffic you will get. 

Optional reading

How should you view failure? In media startups, there is good, fast, and cheap. You get to pick two. The Virtue of Being a Failure, By David Cohn, founder of Spot.us and Circa.

Exercise 4, Hypertext design and navigability
1. Work in pairs. Two people (no groups of 3, please). Download or copy the form for analyzing a website or app.

2. Choose a website or app that you enjoy using or that interests you. (Not the big ones like Facebook, Google, Snapchat, etc.). If you don’t know what to pick, I have suggested some on the form.

3. Give a rating of 1-5 to each of the characteristics of usability, navigability, and transparency. 

5-excellent, 4-very good, 3-good, 2-fair, 1-poor.  And write brief comment on each. 

4. Upload your responses to ADI, Exercise 4.




Blog post 3, due Friday Sept. 28: Main online sources and references for your blog topic

Each member of your team will write a blog post that lists at least five online sources that you use for researching your topic, and why you consider this source useful, relevant, inspiring, and so forth. Try not to duplicate all the same sources other team members use. Each team member should look for some different sources. (Some duplication is inevitable.

Blog post 4, due Friday Oct. 5: Profile a prominent figure in the area of your topic

Each team member of the team will profile a different person who is prominent in the field. (It could be a persona; that is a person who adopts a pseudonym. "Prominent" is a relative term; the person should have some kind of a reputation in the field, either positive or negative.

Blog post 5, due Friday Oct. 12: How social media cover the topic

Each team member will search social media for people and organizations that regularly post material about the team's topic. Identify the ones that are most useful and interesting to you and write a few sentences on why each of them is relevant to your topic. Search using hashtags or other indicators to help find material. 

Blog post 6, due Friday Oct. 19: The best material posted on your topic in the past 12 months

Each member of the team will list several examples of what they think was the best work on your topic in the past 6 months, and why you chose them.

Blog post 7, due Friday Oct. 26: Collect all 6 of your links, and reflect on blogging

Each member of the team will put links to all six of their blog posts on one blog entry and then write about their experience of blogging.

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