Fall 2002

Background:

This assignment was given in CS 495: User Design Interface taught by Yolanda Reimer. Due to the fairly recent Florida ballot problem and the then current election, the issue of easy to read and understand ballots was a hot topic. This assignment was actually a 3 part assignment, Design, [pseudo-]implement and test on users. It was done in groups. The other members in my group were Aaron Harris, Josh Stiff, and Gabe Williams. We all contributed about the same amount to the website and so it would be unfair to claim any single part as "what I did." The most interesting thing was that no one in the group had ever programmed a web page before. That meant that we all had to learn html (and a little javascript) quickly.

The Problem:

The assignment was to design and impliment an online voting website. The site had to be accessible to anyone that was able to vote no matter what their computer experience.

The Solution:

To design the website we decided it should be part of the Montana website. So we used Powerpoint to make make the preliminary layout choices. The following is one of those slides. It shows the main page.

The only difference, besides font size, etc., between the preliminary slides and the finished website was the tutorial pages. Originally there were going to be arrows pointing from descriptions to locations but that would require an extremely large image. So that was changed.

As a reference, here is an image of the final homepage.

So, without further delay, here is the Vote Montana Website

What I learned:

I learned a lot while doing this assignment. Maybe the best lesson I learned was how to plan for others. That is, how to make something that everybody (hopefully) can use. On a second note, I also learned at least a little about how to program a website. If I could do it again I might try to figure out a way to do the arrows. But, from a group with no web programing skills going into the project, I think we did well.

page last updated May 2003

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