SJSU Photography
In January of 2007, the San Jose State Photography department held a design contest to replace its currently aging website. There were two design reviews and a number short deadlines to meet before development on the site ever began. As a result I enlisted a friend to help with coding and some of the design decisions.
The site was built with a completely modular PHP backend. The idea was to make the site easier to maintain. Our design, from the beginning, aimed at showcasing beautiful photography. Each refresh of the page randomly pulls an image from a folder giving visitors a new visual experience each time. It was simple and kept load times low while featuring faculty and student work.
There was virtually no preexisting site structure to work with for this, and while they were able to furnish content quickly, it was left to us to come up with the information architecture. After a brief meeting to discuss the intended use and audience for their information, we were able to create a hierarchy to their rather information dense content.
A highlight from this project was the high level of creative freedom. Being fine artists they were open to something that was unique and possibly challenging to web conventions of the time. Challenges and weaknesses include a number of tight deadlines, a poor attention to user experience, and a lack of interactive elements (photo gallery, course schedules, etc).