Phase+4

INDEX: ENVISION | PROTOTYPING | USER TESTING | REFINED PROTOTYPE Artists' Online Portfolio 

A USER-CENTERED INVESTIGATION EUGENE, SAMMY & TRACY

**__PHASE FOUR__** REFINED-PROTOTYPE
 * Tracy, Eugene, Sammy Final's prototype**

The main idea behind our CCCA website prototype was that the site would be fully supported by artists themselves. Built on Wordpress, our CCCA prototype offers a simple interface for creating and updating an individual based art portfolio. Artists would not need any additional help from webmasters as they do with the existing website. Also, individual-based websites may be used as online portfolios, which many artists would find beneficial.

**CCCA main website** Front end: [|CCCA website] Back end: [|Log-in] <-- user: **admin**, password: **sinister** The website, as displayed for the casual viewer, appears as an online portfolio. The user can browse artist's works, examine personal information and biography, learn about the past and upcoming exhibitions and, read the blog that the artist can update as often as it is desirable. The styling of the website is quite minimalistic in order to focus on the work of the artist itself and offer a single template that would be appealing to the majority of artists who would use it. The portfolios might be linked trough in-text hyperlinks or a larger system, development of which remained outside of scope for this project. For the final prototype of the front end, the following changes were made: When artist logs in, s/he may see the interface that is going to help in building and updating an online portfolio. During our user tests we have found a series of flaws with the existing wordpress interface. Our refined design addresses these flaws and is aimed to make the user experience more intuitive and comprehensible. During the final refinement we have removed most of the wordpress features that did not serve the purpose of our website and only created a visual clutter and confusion. We have made it more comprehensible for the user by adding some guidelines and labeling information (such as title). Finally we have changed it stylitically in order to go along with the main CCCA website.
 * softening of the colours to shades of gray
 * making sure all elements are aligned in a grid
 * uploading the entire oeuvre of one CCCA artist - Max Streicher
 * got rid of the "news" section; we heeded to the problems during the user testing: telling the difference between the "gallery" section and the "updates" section. however, depending on the needs of the artist, this can be added with one button in wordpress.
 * CCCA for the artist** Back-end improved: [| CCCA for artists log-in] <-- login: **q**, password: **pass**
 * Due to the high risk of corrupting both versions, they weren't combined into one website. **