Questionnaire results and what I am doing with them!

Overview

So, I decided to conduct my own questionnaire, now that my website is finished. I really wanted to find out peoples' overall opinion on the site and what they genuinely thought of it. I really wanted some feedback on things that I could improve as everything is not perfect and I believe that there is still some room for improvement on my site. If there is anything that the majority of people say on my questionnaire then I will be sure to add / amend the problems/issues.

So, I made the questionnaire and managed to get a total of 59 responses which I am very happy with.  This is quite a lot of responses and which means that I can see some of the concerns that people have with my site. Like I said before, I don't want to change something just for one person because it might be a problem to them but not to the majority and if I change the one thing for one person then people may not like the site as much. 

The results

So, at the beginning of the project, I said that I would be aiming to focus my site towards men and women, age 20-40.   After some research, I found out that women struggle more with building furniture so I wanted to focus on that gender a bit more. The results from the questionnaire turned out great! I got a wide range of responses and most of the responses were from people aged 31-40, I also got a good response from age 19-24 and 25-30. 

On my questionnaire I managed to get 42 responses from women and 17 from men. This is great because women are who I was appealing to the most and so finding out their responses will be very beneficial. I also got a great range of men, therefore I can see if they like the site too.

I decided to ask again, whether people generally struggle with building furniture. The response that I got last time was not the best and I thought that I would find that more people actually do struggle, however that wasn't the case. In this questionnaire, I was very surprised by the response. I got a very balanced result with 29 people saying that they do struggle with building furniture and 30 people saying that they don't. This makes me feel a whole lot more confident about my idea as it shows that there is a need for this site and that it is quite common that people run into problems when making their own furniture.

So, I decided to ask if people found my site easy to navigate around as this was one of the things that I wanted to nail on the head when making my site from the beginning. Out of 59 responses 57 people said that they did find it easy to navigate around - this is great and I am very proud of this result. I also decided to ask the people who chose 'no' to this question why and for this result I got 4 responses. I am happy that I got some feed back from the people who answered no, just so I could find out little problems that might be negatively impacting their experience. 

All of the responses that I got from the question said that the website was not configured for phones. I think this is something that I will change due to it being quite a major part of the site that I did not touch on. I did say in the beginning that people would use this site on both desktop and on their phones and if the phone version dose not work then they might just not use the website at all, meaning that I potentially lose users. 

I really wanted to find out what people thought of the look of the site because it is something that everyone sees on their first visit. I believe that if everything looks a bit odd and weird, they may decide to just go to another site. The response that I got from this question was 49 people saying that they do like the site and 10 people saying that they didn't. Even though this is a great outcome, I really wanted to see what the 10 people, who didn't like the site, had to say.  A few people talked about it not being 'phone friendly' while other people said that they did not like the 'art' (I guess this is referring to my logo). Some people said that it didn't really fit with the theme of the site while others said that it looked hastily put together. I think I might edit my logo a little, just to make it look a bit more professional.  It doesn't really cut away from the experience of the site but it is something that people will think of when they think of the site 'ScrewGuider' - I really want to make sure that they don't have a negative thought when thinking about the logo and the site because this is not good for the overall success of it.

One of my last questions was simply: 'Would you use this website in the future?' Judging by the fact that peoples' responses to the earlier question of  'whether they had struggled with furniture in the past' were balanced (50% struggled, 50% didn't), I believe that getting 49 out of 59 people saying that they would use the site in the future is great. It means that some people have seen what the site has to offer and even though they have not struggled with building furniture, they will go to the site to give them the extra hand.

My last question was 'Anything I could improve on with the site?'. I mostly got 'no' for this question, however I got a few little bits of advice from people. One that I saw right away was the use of other fonts, they really wanted to see other fonts used for headers. I totally agree with this but I am not sure whether I am going to be able to put this into my site due to some fonts not functioning with the web as a whole. I will have a look to see if I can incorporate any new fonts to the site but I am very doubtful of this. Other people also said that they really wanted to see more product pages and this is great as it means that people want to see other products and believe that the site will get better from this.

What I am going to do with the results

Overall, I am very proud of my results. I got some great feedback that I can use to change my website to make it even better and found out that there is a real want and use for my site. I will definitely change my site to be phone friendly and I will have a good look into getting new fonts.  This is something that if done right, shouldn't affect those peoples' opinions who already like it but will change others who may not have liked it before. This questionnaire was so useful and I am now so glad that I conducted it, to really find out what people thought.  

My changes to ScrewGuider

When I changed my website so that it would be mobile friendly, I used a site called 'Creative Muse' to create my hamburger menu. I really had no idea how to make a hamburger menu, however this website that I used, made it very simple and easy for me to understand. I followed the guide step by step and added my own features to the menu. I am very happy with how it turned out - it works well and is easy to use and I also like the whole look of the header now as it looks very clean. 

Unfortunately, the mobile phone version did not work, when I tired to re arrange everything to fit for phones, something would go wrong. If I would move one thing it would alter another. I could not resize things, this would change the size of the image for example for every alteration of the site and I did not want this. The font also included a lot of spacing to fit well on the desktop version, however this resulted in there being massive gaps in between text on the phone version. There was no way I could change the spacing without completely messing up the desktop version. The hamburger menu works great though, if there is one thing that I am proud of for the phone version it is the menu. It fits well with the site and doesn't intrude with anything that it shouldn't.

I decided that I might as well make it so it works on tablets, this was more or less the same thing as making the phone version but luckily, this one actually worked well. It also looks great and I am very happy with how it turned out. Hopefully, if people were ever to visit the site again, they wouldn't run into the phone problems and would be more likely to look around and see everything that the site has to offer.

Bibliography:

Creative Muse website (2016) How to Create an Accordion Menu
in Adobe Muse Available at: https://www.creativemuse.co/how-to-create-an-accordion-menu-in-adobe-muse.html [Assessed: 1 May 2017]

Making my website Day 4

Link to Time-Lapes: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xOeEK8oYnX8

So, today I got on right away with my forum.  I decided to add examples of posts because I could not integrate a forum type way of posting content on Muse and so I would have to use other alternatives. This annoyed me a bit but at least I could show examples of how posts would look and the whole voting system. I really wanted the forum to be as easy to understand as possible. I didn't want there to be lots of clutter on the page and put people off sticking around. Like I have said before, the forum is one of the main parts of the site and I don't want people to 'not' try it and therefore 'not' get the full experience. My users shouldn't have to learn even more and jump through numerous hoops to understand the site, this will just turn people away. 

I also created the product page and this would allow you to look at some of the most recent posts and content made for furniture. I wanted this to be on the top bar so that when users visit the site, they can easily check if new content has been made. I really don't want users to miss out on new content and I don't think users would be happy if they were not told about new content for the site. It also shows that the site is being cared for and managed well and that it is constantly growing - users will appreciate this especially if they have an account with the site.

I was also reminded about the rating system for each reviewed product so I added that to the products as well. This was something that I pushed at the start and was one of the main things I wanted to put on the site so I am glad that I remembered this in time. 

One of the last things I did today to complete my site was the FAQ. I thought that this would once again make the site a bit easier to understand. I decided to show my site to a few of my friends and asked them if they had any questions and if they didn't understand anything. I got a few great questions from them and decided to add them to the page. This page would be edited in the future, if new pages were added or if common questions were posted on the forum then they would be on the FAQ. I need to make sure though, that there are not too many questions on the FAQ as people just want to see if their answer is there and do not want to read through 10s or even 100s of 'common questions'.

I also readjusted all pages to make sure that they all have the same page layout. For example, a gap in between the footer and the main page and making sure that all the fonts and the colours were used in the right place. I didn't want anything to look out of place or give anything attention when it really doesn't need it.

Making my website Day 3

Link to Time-Lapes: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L9lEiKGn6U8

So, day 3 was probably one of the best days I have had so far. It had been quite a while since day 2 and in between this time I decided to look at my scheme in lesson and try and find one that really suited the theme. 

So, I came up with a few colours that seemed to compliment each other well. I really liked these colours, the yellow and the dark blue really stand out and was great for pointing out things that the user needs to look at. They really did do their job as well.  After I had finished what I did today, I showed my friends the website and asked them what they looked at first and they all said that they looked at the things that were either yellow and dark blue. The light grey looks really nice as well against white and this is the colour that I was going to use behind my content. I decided to do this first when I started and I really like the overall look of everything - it really brings life to the site and I am happy that I made the change. I also changed the colours on the logo (as you can see above) and once again, I think the logo looks ten times better than it did before.

I also decided to tackle another page today.  I really wanted to get the the product pages done now that I had a great colour scheme and I had the content for both pages. These pages were going to take a bit longer than the other pages because they had the most content on them. I really wanted to nail these pages, they are really important to the site and will be the place that people will probably be directed to if they were to google the name of the product that they wanted instructions for. I am really happy with how these pages look as they are both really easy to read and provide some great information. 

For my images I used one of the photos from my house while the other image I used was IKEA POÄNG Chair (Kan WuI, 2012) had got from another source. This was because I could not get my own image and this image worked well with the other images on the site.

I also decided to add a forum part to my homepage so I could get in the right mindset for tomorrow. I think that it works well on my home page as people might just want to visit the site to see how their post is doing or how other posts are doing and if this is on the homepage, this means that they can get to the forum as fast as possible, while still being able to see other more resent posts since their last visit.

Bibliography:

POÄNG Chair source: Kan Wu (2012) IKEA POÄNG Chair. [Digital] Flickr. Available at: https://www.flickr.com/photos/alunwk/7285058338/in/photostream/ (Accessed 24 April 2017).

Making my website Day 1

Link to Time-Lapes: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gxP4hMZywu0

So, this was the first time ever using muse and I felt like I was ready to start using the software. I decided to watch the video that I talked about in my Research in Web design blog just to familiarize myself. 

First off I designed the header, I thought that this was very important to do first due to it being the main navigation around the site. I also added the colour scheme I talked about in my How did my timetable for the holidays go? blog to my website. To be honest, I was not overly fond of the look of the colours I used, however once I started using Muse I just really wanted to get my ideas, that I was coming up with, on the page. I knew that I would have to come back to the colour scheme at a later date. I tried to see if I could put the hamburger menu on my site but while I was about to do this, I decided that it didn't really fit with the theme of the site and so I put a normal menu bar on the page instead.

I briefly worked on my front page but I only added the initial main image and the logo to the page because I knew that below this, I would have to put images and links to other pages that weren't made yet. After this I went on to a page that was quite easy to make and I wanted to do this so I could get to grips with Muse. I think this was a good idea because after I made the 'log in' and 'sign up' page, I understood everything pretty well, I knew how to layout pages so that they all looked the same and I knew where to put colours for certain things. For example, I would use the red colour for things that were very important and use the cream colours for things that were still important but not as important as the things that were red. 

I also made the footer and when I was making this, I realised that I really didn't have a whole lot of pages meaning that I would have to include more. I decided to look at other websites to find out the sorts of pages that they include. Doing this at the start meant that I could get a good understanding on the sorts of pages that I will have to add. I decided to look at an article titled, '24 Essential Pages To Include On Your Website'. On this page, I got a lot of ideas for pages that would suit my website so I decided to add them to my footer. This made my website look a lot busier. I also have plans to add social icons to the footer so people can quickly get to our social media. 

Bibliography: Websites 4 Small Business (2016), 24 Essential Pages To Include On Your Website Available at: http://www.web4business.com.au/resources/articles/24-essential-pages-to-include-on-your-website/ [Accessed: 24 April 2017].

Why did I decide to continue making this website?

I am deciding to make this type of website because it is something that people will find useful. During Unit 12 I decided to conduct my own survey and found out from 62 responses that at least 37 of the people who responded have run into problems while making their furniture. I believe that my website will decrease this number significantly and this is the goal of the site, to make it as simple and easy for our users to construct their own furniture. 

Another real big reason why I picked to do this website, and not a website based on something else, is because other website from companies that provide the actual furniture, do not include very simple things for their products that users value greatly. I found out on my survey that just under half of the people buy buildable furniture online. This is quite a large proportion of people and the websites limit people to what they can see.

My website will combat these issues.  Websites like Ikea's do not include their own review system, you do not get to see what others think about the product and whether it is worth the money. Even though Ikea furniture is cheap, people know that the materials used are not the best and can wear out and break after two, three years or so. Allowing people to talk to one another about these types of topics would be great, it would allow people to be more selective about their furniture and it might even save them a bit of money.

My website is going to focus a lot on the social side of things, kind of like a community where they can all help each other. People like socialising and by making this one of the main parts of the site, makes people want to come back.  This is why sites like; Facebook, Twitter, Snapchat, Reddit are so popular. I think having this will entice people to visit again and if they find that for example after watching a video on the site and finding out that they have saved themselves a bit of money, they might buy more buildable furniture more often. People always relate 'building furniture' to being quite stressful and annoying, hopefully with a clear video, this will tackle this issue greatly.

I talk about my research in Unit 12 but just to go back to it, the website Ifixit is a very successful website. It has stayed so popular and relevant over the years due to its community and once people stick with one community, they usually find it hard to break away from it and go to different places. This is why there are no real other contenders for Ifixit. If I use this technique and execute properly, I should have a pretty successful site on my hands.

How did my timetable for the holidays go?

Final Animation Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9IkdP9b46O0

So, before I started my holiday, I set myself a plan to stick to so that I would be ahead with my work, when it came to coming back to college two weeks later. 

I thought that I did rather well here and even though I did not hit all of my official goals, I still believe that I set myself up well for when I got back and that was the main goal of the timetable.

The Video

The first objective that I decided to have a crack at, was making the construction video for my website. Like I said before hand, I wanted to get all of the content done for the website before I started it. This would mean that I would know what to talk about and it would give me a good idea on how I want those product pages to look while fitting alongside the video and animation. 

So, as I said in my reflective blog posts, I ran into a lot of problems throughout this project. However, because I gave myself lots of time it meant that it didn't throw me back and put me in a bad position. One of the problems that I ran into was struggling with building the shelf. Me and the person I worked with on the first day did not think that it would be that hard to build. We ended up making a lot of mistakes, having to go back on ourselves and consequently deleting footage that was unusable. This was quite annoying and it really stressed us out at points. We also ran into these same problems when I worked with my mum on the second day. However, it does also show me that we all struggled with constructing furniture and that we would all benefit from the site. 

Another problem that pushed me back was that my friend decided that he did not want to help me after the first day. At first I had no idea what to do, my other friends were on holiday and would not be back until college started again. I did not want to wait this long, I wanted to finish what I had started and having a gap in-between that far apart, would mean that I would have to keep the pieces back and deconstruct the set that I had set up for the video. I did not want this to happen. Thankfully, my mum decided that she would come help me, I was very grateful for this and even though she was not the best with a camera, she did a great job. I did not believe that shooting the video would take more than a day but as you know, it did and luckily I had forward thought and set myself some extra time on my timetable, just in case something like this happened. 

Editing the video was the next challenge.  Fortunately, I edit my own videos in my own time for fun and I already had a good idea on how to use the software. I have to say, if I did not do this, I would have had no idea what to do when it came to editing my construction video. This part was quite easy, all I had to do was make sure that I got the right footage in the right order. After looking at the footage, I realised that the lighting was not as good as it looked on the camera and this was rather saddening because it meant that the video looked quite grainy. Also, the parts where my mum was filming were quite shaky - I tried to stabilise the video to the best of my ability, however it still looks rather shaky at times. I managed to get this done in a day which was the exact time I gave myself in my timetable.

The Animation

This was the next project that I had to do, I was at college for this because I did not have the software at home.

Making the animation was not good, I really struggled with the software and I could not get to grips with it. I decided to pick an Item from Ikea that was very, very popular but did not include a lot of steps to make, I knew that I would struggle with the animation and I wanted to make it as easy as possible for me so I could get it done in the time provided and still learn a lot of skills. For the first day I did not make a lot of progress, I really got lost with moving everything and it ended up looking clunky and not good at all. I was really not proud of the animation, however I gave myself another day to try and improve what I had done.

For the second day, I decided to go back over what I had done and change a lot of things. I did this because I believed that it did not look good enough. It did not look clear enough for users to understand what was going on and it looked very clunky. I decided that I would only include the first part of the build for the animation because I was really not making a whole lot of progress and it was really stressing me out. I have shown a few people the animation and they thought that it looked good, it was clear and it was paced well. I am happy that at least it achieved it's purpose. 

I had another crack at the animation when I got back to college.  I did this because I knew peers that had a good understanding of the software and they really helped me clear it all up and make it look a bit more understandable. Even though this process was a failure in my opinion, I still learned quite a lot and gained a simple understanding of animate. 

Making my website Day 2

Link to Time-Lapes: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gTED1coB9po

So far I am continuing to make my website from what I have done yesterday and I feel like I am getting to grips with the software now. Today, I focused on some of the more text heavy and widget heavy pages. 

The pages were quite short but were vital to the site and I am glad that I did those pages first. One of the pages that I did was the 'about us' page - probably one of the most important and major pages on any site. It allows the user to find out what the site is about and for my site specifically, it tells the user how things work. On the 'about' page, I talked about the site itself and also talked a lot about how the forum works. I believe that the audience that I am focusing on for my site might not have used a forum before so I decided to break it down for them. I also talk about the advantages of taking part in a forum and a few of the plans for the site in the future. The project is all about me showing my idea and the plans that I have for it. I think placing a few of my goals for the site for the future on the 'about us' page is a great place to put this. 

I also did the contact us page as I thought that my website might need it because of how social it could be. This is a place where people can contact me about disturbances going on in the forum, grammatical errors on product pages, problems with video animation and errors around the site. I think users will really appreciate that this is on the website. They might have a few problems and knowing that they will get their voice heard and will be able to get a response in a quick amount of time, will greatly increase their happiness when using the site. I also added a few social media links that they can use to contact us as well. This will not only be on the 'about us' page but will be on the footer so that people are constantly reminded that we have social media that they can follow to keep up to date with the site. 

Overall, I think that today was a very productive day. I found some more pages that I could include on my site that before starting the productive work I had no idea I needed. I am also very happy with these two pages - I am happy with the content I included on both of them and I am happy with how the pages look.

Tomorrow I have plans to make the more content heavy pages, these might be hard jobs, however I have a lot of ideas to make the pages a lot more interesting and engaging. Hopefully tomorrow I can also figure out how to fix my main page, I am still having a bit of trouble with it but I might look at some video tutorials to see how to resolve the problems, I might also learn some new skills while doing so.

The second day of shooting the instructional video

Final YouTube Video Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zEEolv6djlo

So, today was not a good day for shooting, my friend had told me that he did not want to continue helping me with the video so I was really stuck with how I could finish it in as quick a time as possible. Luckily, my Mum was about to help me in my time of need but she however, really did not want to be in the video and that was fine. Due to this, there was only one other job she could do...filming! I had doubts that her camera skills were even as good as mine, and mine were not the best! I had to make sure before every shot, that things were focused properly and that the lighting was good, however I believe that some shots were not the best. 

Obviously, with my friend being the star yesterday and me having to take his place, the continuity of the video was not good. I am sad that he would not budge from his motion and it was too late to take part what we had already built. This was a big problem that we ran in to throughout the process of making the piece of furniture but thankfully, we managed to recover in a lot of stages.

Things today were a lot more straightforward when it came to shooting. We got the exact shots we wanted, we took a step back at times and thought about better approaches to make the video simpler for people to understand.  Furthermore, we had the right tools for the job and this allowed everything to run as smoothly as possible.  Despite today being much more positive and successful, we did run into some problems and get a bit stuck when building the product, once again showing that it is not so easy to build your own furniture.

We did manage to wrap everything up today and I am very proud of that.  I am a day behind but still doing great and this is why I set up a few days extra, just in case things did not go to plan.  Foreseeing and planning for potential problems/setbacks is so important to ensure that things like this don't suddenly have a domino effect and end in disaster. I am really happy with the footage we got and I am sure that tomorrow I will have fun editing it all together. Overall, the whole shooting phase was not what I had planned it to be from the very start but I believe that in some places it is better than I had envisaged. 

Holiday Spreadsheet

Spreadsheet

With there being less than a month left for the deadline, I believe that I will have to come in over the half term to make sure that everything is completed. To make sure that I know what I am doing and I know what my aims are every day, I decided to make a better timetable that describes in detail, what I have to do for my production work. Like I said in the past assignments, it is very important that I complete the content for the website first and this includes getting photos for around the site, shooting a video and making small animations. I have to make sure that these are done right and look great. This may take a bit more time to accomplish but I believe that this is needed.

After I have completed making the content for my site, I will begin making the website. I have not had much experience with Muse before, however I have been looking at videos on Youtube to show me the basics of the software and it has given me great confidence. I may have to do a few web searches throughout the production if I run into problems but now that I know the basics, I feel like I know enough. Pages that include more content will be focused on first. This is because I really want to make sure that those pages look good and interesting and they may also give me better ideas for the text based pages. These pages will also take more time so I want to make sure that those pages are done first, ensuring that afterwards, I only have smaller pages to complete, requiring less time.

Planning my website

Software

When it comes to actually creating my website I think I am going to use the program 'Muse' by adobe. It seems like a nice little bit of software that is easy to pick up as it does all of the coding for you. I am someone that has never really learned how to code before so this is the perfect software for me. It uses key features from other adobe software so that this means that I can incorporate designs from places like Indesign, Photoshop and Illustrator. I can also put the website up on the web to see if everything works well and I might be able to use it in the future. My FMP that I did last year was all based in Photoshop and this limited me very much.  So, being able to use this new software makes me very excited to start designing my site.

How I want my website to look 1

One of the many priorities that needs to be considered when it comes to designing the website, is how easy it is to navigate. People should know where they want to go and should be able to get there with ease.

My first design was the image you can see to the right. At this point I had not really discovered what I would call my website and I also didn't really know what colours I wanted to include. However, I really liked this design as it looks great and very slick. 

I like the Idea of having a massive image for my front page. My idea was to have a large image on the front page that shows the latest products that have been put on the site. This gives people an idea of the types of furniture we feature as well. If people visit frequently and they see that there is a new image every time they visit, they will know that the website is constantly growing and getting better. 

I like that the header is under the main image, I got this idea from the website; Ifixit I think that it works well with my site however, I don't want my site to look too similar to Ifixit, I want it to look unique. Plus, everything is the middle of the page, which looks all over the place and I don't think people will like this at all.   

How I want my website to look 2

The second image was my second attempt at the design of the website.  You can see here that I have discovered colour scheme and made a logo for the site. I tried to stick to the colour scheme throughout the site on this image. At the time I thought that it was a great colour scheme however, looking at it now, I do not like it at all - it does not really fit very well with the theme of the site. 

In this version of the site, I made it more modern and included a hamburger menu. I think this is a great way to put the menu away from everything else. Most people from my age range from 20-40 will be very familiar with a hamburger menu and will know its purpose of the bar. After looking at this and experimenting on muse with this way of setting the menu, I realised that I did not like it anymore. Once again, not really fitting with the theme of the site. 

I also copied my past wireframe, where I kept the large front image, I really like this design and I will definitely keep this for my final website. I do not however, like the new search bar - I think having the search bar more of a box and having the word 'search' instead of a magnifying glass and a curvy search box, looks more childish. I do not want my website to come off as childish at all and if this is the first thing people will see when visiting the site, it might give off the wrong impression and they may decide to go somewhere else instead.

This time around I think the middle part of the site, where the content is, looks ten times better. Having the slogan for the site straight after the main image will give the user a good idea of what the site is about, without having to search a great amount. I think having a lot of images on the front page is key, it will make things look a whole lot better.

Plan the pages I am going to include

I will most likely have a fair amount of pages for my site:

My front page will be the page that people visit first and a page that people can refer back to. I will probably base the colours of the site off of the logo that I make. This will ensure that the logo does not look out of place. The logo has to be identifiable and hopefully if the colours are the same for the logo and the site, then when people see the logo, they will be reminded of the website.

There will be the forum page that will show all of the posts made by the community. This will be on the bar at the top and will be clearly shown. I will show off the rating system that will be put in place.

Product page I will most likely have 3 pages, a video and 2 animations for 3 different products. I might also have another page just to show another product that has yet to have any content made for it. This will just feature text and a picture of the product. All pages will show a rating system for each product and a few comments from people saying how they got past the obstacles of making the product.

I will create another pageand this will be the log in page for either making an account with the site or just logging in with an existing account. This page will show the benefits of making an account and will also tell the audience that there is place in the future to make this a pay monthly feature.

An 'about us' page will also be made for the site, explaining what we do and the purpose of the site. Contact information will be on there including telephone and social media. These will be shown on other pages but I believe that having everything social about the website on one page with the ease of going back to, is important. 

Another page will be made and this page will tell the audience what the forum is and how everything works. This will come up when you first visit the forum but there will be a section on the forum page so people can refer back, just in case if they need any more information on how everything works.

Colour Scheme

The colour scheme and branding for my website is very important and needs to be decided before I start doing any of my production work. This is because knowing what my brand is and the colours that I will feature around the site, will mean that it will look appealing and interesting. If you start making your site without any of these in mind, everything will look all over the place and it will not make for a nice looking site. When making your own website, you have to make your own unique guidelines and this makes it so that no one else can use your colour scheme and logo unless they're given the rights to do so.

So far, I have been testing out colour schemes to see what sort of colour scheme would fit with my website. The image you can see to the top right was a little mock up of the front page that I have done for the desktop version of the site. However, I don't really think that the colour scheme, that I had chosen at the time of taking that screen shot, was particularly inviting and nice to look at. I also believe that it does not really fit well with what the website is trying to offer. This was one of the first colour schemes that I came up with and I am glad I got to test it out to see whether it worked well with the site or not, otherwise I would have ended up with quite a bland, boring looking site. 

After going through a wide range of colour schemes I decided that I would go with a few colours that fit together nicely and are colours that fit with the 'home' type of feel that I want to go for, for my site. The 4 colours that I have chosen for my site include:

A creamy colour #D7CEC7
A light grey colour #565656
A light maroon colour #76323F
A skin type colour #C09F80

I believe that all of these colours look very nice together and really do give quite a 'home' type feeling to the site.

Logo

The image you can see below is my logo that I made for my site in the early beginning stages. At the time, I thought that it was a clever idea calling the site, 'Screw it!' - it was basically meant to represent how people get angry at building furniture and how they would come to the site. However, over time I decided to look around on the internet to find out what people thought about the saying, 'Screw it'.  Overall, I found out that the word was thought of as a negative/bad word by some. I did not want to risk making the name of the site sound bad or negative to anyone so I just decided to change the name of the site to ScrewGuider. It plays with the word screwdriver, at the same time giving the audience a hint about the sort of thing the website does.

I like the logo that I have made and I have not really changed it a whole lot from the one you can see below. I might get rid of the background to the logo or get rid of a few screws, just to make it a bit more simple as this is one of the main ideas that I had got from my research and I still believe a simple logo is key!

I have to make sure that I do not breach any copyright laws.  This primarily means that I have to make sure that the photos I am using are legally okay and that I reach out to people when needed so that I can use the photos that they have taken. I will also be taking my own photos and doing this will mean that I will not run into any problems in copyright cases.

Bibliography: 
Ifixit (2017) Ifixit. Available at: https://www.ifixit.com/ (Accessed: 29 March 2017).