Your project is looking good. I've got a few comments.
Strengths
- You make good use of color and graphics in primarily using the school's existing color
scheme. It will allow the users to have a sense of familiarity when using the product.
It also allows you to easily call attention to specific items on the screen when you
differ from that color scheme, such as by using red balloons.
- I like the FAQ as a whole. It's often helpful to have a section like this, and making
it XML based means that adding questions and answers later on shouldn't be hard.
- It's an interesting idea to force people into a linear progression in the tutorial,
but after they've successfully traversed the progression, allowing them to go back to whatever
screen they wish. I'm not sure if that was a side effect or an intention, but I think the
result is good.
- I think that using navigation similar to the navigation on the real site is also a plus,
since users are effectively learning from the real material.
Weaknesses
- I was confused as to why View Calendar and Discussions had no DHTML-style context menu,
while Resources did, even though there was only one link under Resources.
- It might be helpful to show the screens that occur after you click the Edit Personal Data
link.
- In the FAQ, it confused me when there were two select menus (after I clicked Both), since
it appeared at first glance that two questions were highlighted, with only one answered.
There are a couple of different things I think might work better, but I don't know how
difficult technologically they would be:
- When Both is selected, merge the two select menus together into one.
- When a question is selected in one of the menus, have the other not have any
question at all highlighted.
- I think it might be a good idea to have some kind of assessment to see if the user has
learned from the product.
Overall, you're doing a nice job. Good work.
