Design

The design methodology I will be employing will be the top-down approach. That is, I already know the details of the overall system I am creating, and I will go about doing that in a structured fashion. The obvious choice for which information space to use is the World Wide Web, the pages being implemented in HTML.

The design process involves the following elements;

• Packaging
  The ICS web is not provided on a single page. Therefore, how is the information separated?
• Linking
  How are the separate pieces of information linked together?
• Page Layout
  How should the pages be designed?
• Cueing
  How does the user know what they are looking at? How do they know where to go?

Search Engines

I have already mentioned creating a search facility to locate members of the department, as well as an index for the whole web. A search function which searches all HTML and text files within the web may also be of use. However, I believe the web index and menu navigation system will be adequate, and I will leave the possibility of a text search engines to the maintainers of the ICS web.

A 'map' of the ICS web may also be a consideration, but I have not taken it any further for similar reasons.

Concurrent Versions

The information within the ICS web, as well as the menu names, I have written in English. Members of the department may prefer this information to be in Swedish, and there are a couple of methods of achieving this:

• Mirror the entire directory structure of the ICS web, and create two versions, one in English and one in Swedish. The roots of the two directory structures would be /english/ and /swedish/, respectively. This would, however, double the work involved in maintaining or updating the site, and would introduce issues concurrency.
• Create two version of key documents, and name them english_document_1.html and swedish_document_1.html. At the top of each document, provide a link to the alternative language, written in the alternative language. This would still involve concurrency issues.

With regards to a text-only version, I have browser through the entire ICS web with the graphics switched off, and I found that it was still quite readable. Therefore, no text-only version is necessary.

A Warm System

I think that putting a 'questions to…' link on every possible page would create the feeling of an interactive, or 'warm' hypertext system. (A page with no possible feedback could therefore be considered to be a 'cold' page.) This is distinct from the web maintainer, because the maintainer addresses problems concerning the implementation of the page, whereas the 'questions to…' recipient addresses problems relating to the subject of the page. This idea has been implemented on the degrees page. I may also be noted that current student could effectively act as question recipients, especially on pages such as the life page.