Demo!

This part of the study is a crucial step in the development. First of all, I would like to mention that I am not going to design or redesign an already used them but I will be designing a theme from “scratch” (will be based on kubrick theme). After of much thought, I came to decision that, in this experiment I will be designing a Gaming Portal Theme. I am not a gamer myself, but there is a game or two that I play once in a while so more or less. Before beginning the actual process I would like to remind you all what the “analysis” part is all about. As mentioned before:

1. Analysis. Firstly, preliminary investigation of the existing theme or layout, and developing plans for the remainder of the study. Moreover, this phase involves the analysis of the current layout in order to identify the information needs, strengths, and weaknesses of the existing system.

The first thing to do is “brainstorming“. I prefer to write down anything that comes to my mind in terms of keywords.

keywords: pes, world of warcraft, civilization, unreal tournament, counter strike, half-life, need for speed, gran turismo, clan, portal, cms, black, white, weapon, armor, defence, attack, robots, mecha, cars, speeding, sci-fi, fantasy, guns, maps, singleplayer, multi-player, online, offline, demo, strategy, fight, tekken, martial arts, swords etc…

Now, take a look into the keywords that came to my mind while I was “brainstorming”. I have written names of few games (7), web-based terms(2), colours(2), game tools(8), genres(3) and number of players(2). More or less, I have an idea of what on to base my theme and what expectation are to be satisfied if I want to release this theme. BUT if possible a survey or questionnaire should be done with “potential” users of this future theme to get a better result for brainstorming part.

Anyway, as of now, I have an idea about the future layout which is hand drawn using regular windows paint program.

Black colored part is the overall page, brown colored part is the header while green colored part is footer. Anything in between header and footer is going to be body. Dark red part in the header is where possible menu is going to be. Gray colored rectangular box in the right side of header is the space for advertisement. Rose colored parts (right and left) in body represent sidebars, while blue part represent where the content is going to be. Same as the header, gray rectangular box in content part represents advertisement. Lavender colored boxes in footer refer to widget boxes that could be added.

I will focus on a theme with two sidebars because I’m planning to design it for PORTALS!!! It’s going to be blog design which could be sufficient with just one sidebar. Advertisement part, I’m not quite sure, but more likely I’ll try to make it so that it will be as an OPTION not a MUST HAVE (at least in the header). I may change the location of sidebars too, so maybe both of them will be on right side or left side. In the next, part we will discuss the “Research” for the Gaming Portal Theme!