Digital and Emerging Media Design I

Parts of this site

There’s a global navbar at the top of every page in this site, with links to:

• The course home page (this page)
• A full week-by-week schedule, with more about reading, assignments, and instructions
• A list of projects, with further links to assignment sheets
• The syllabus, which lays out key ideas for this course, walks through expectations, and provides guidance on how to succeed
• A collection of supporting documents, including notes about how to submit work, the citations and copyright policy, and a compendium of university support services (including a note about disability accommodations)

There’s also a second navigation system, a set of breadcrumb links at the very top of the page, which let you move through the site in a hierarchical fashion. Some longer pages, like the syllabus and the full schedule, have an additional in-page navigation bar on their left sides, which allows you to move heading-by-heading or week-by-week.

You’ll find my contact info and a link for office hours information at the top of the page. The footer would be a more common location, but this inverted format better fits this site’s content.

Start noticing these structures

Make a practice of looking closely at the websites you’re using, especially informational, document-centered websites. Notice the conventions for how they handle navigation systems, and where different types of information tend to fall. Look at when design decisions work for you—and when they work for other students. You don’t necessarily have to observe these conventions, but you’ll need to design with them in mind.