Evaluation

In what way does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of media products.

We began looking at popular STD websites and seeing what made them stand out from the others, we tried to follow these by using the same ideas for the layouts,  I believe my website challenges typical media conventions through many different mediums, its layout is bright and modern looking and gives you a playful, less so serious feeling. We have developed the website by using the traditional conventions but challenged them by making new and modern. The conventions of a normal website are for the layout to be in columns, I have copied this to give it a typical website look. Most websites of this nature have a very boring background, our webpage is different as it is very colourful and it keeps the reader interested where as others may not, the images many websites use express people of all different types, of different ages, class etc. we have expressed this is in our website by using many different people.

These are the websites we looked at when constructing our website, they have a good bright colour scheme and we have expressed in our website. I have followed the photo style as most sexual health websites brighten up the page by using an uplifting colour scheme.

How does your work represent particular particular social groups?

The video we used ‘Dr Jack Baxters Take on STDs’ is very relaxed and layed back unlike many other websites that we looked at were they say you must do certain things, we used a younger person in the video as it reached out to the youth more as its one of there own telling them about the facts. I have also done this with our images on our webpage.

My media represents particular social groups by using people of different ages, culture, class and gender. I have made it very politically correct so everyone feels comfortable being a part of our site, we have almost a fifty/fifty of boys to girls on our pages and we did this as we want everyone to know that STDs affects everyone, boys and girls, any age, and any class, we have more young people on our page as it tends to affect young people more than the older generation. The affect this will have on our viewers is very important, as we want them to feel comfortable with there surroundings.

What kind of media institutions might distribute your media product and why?

There are many different media institutions that will distribute my product, it is difficult though as it is not a product for sale like a film or radio programme, our webpage has been put onto google, the most renowned search engine in the world, this helps as it will help people to find our page. It is not as easy as it could be as products such as newspaper can be distributed in many easier ways, I have looked into what institutions would be interested in advertising my website through a small advert using the same forms that would interest younger people. We have also made our website reachable on other websites such as facebook, bebo, myspace and twitter.

Who would be the audience for your media products?

The audience for my webpage are those who are most at risk of sexual infections, the young generation of people aged around 14-25, but our webpage makes help available to all ages, as we believe everyone needs to be aware of the dangers that come along sexual activity. I attracted my target audience through asking around 55 people within my targeted age limit what preferences they have on a website that is targeted at the younger generation. Many of the people we asked said that colour is an important factor on a website targeted at young people and that I should try not to stick to a obvious 2 colour schemes so I tried to apply this knowledge as best I could.

We have addressed our audience as younger people by making it more available to them, we have used a playful background layout and most of the people in our photos are of the younger generation, we have also got a video addressing sexual health and it is addressed more to younger people than an older generation. We have used non formal wording to help people stay interested when reading through our site. My audience will be mainly young adults and teenagers, between the ages of 14-24, which was discovered though asking people who completed the surveys age. Even though the page is addressed mainly at this age group is available to every age group. The target audience will be those who support online campaigns as opposed to face to face campaigns, this was gained through our survey.


Our target audience will be very sociable people, as in our survey when asked 'what do you mostly use the internet for?' 67% used it for socializing. This is represented in our site as we make it mostly available to those people. 


We also found that my audience wold confide in a friend, 70% answering so in the survey.


What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing your product.

I found that the use of software such as photoshop, final cut express etc. have really helped me along my way in manufacturing a website as many of the parts of our website that people would say draw them in the most were made on here, our title, background, buttons any many more were made on photoshop and a lot of time was spent to perfect them and make them as aesthetically pleasing as possible, our film was made on final cut express and we spent a lot of time on this also, as a lot of editing was needed to bring it up to the standards of a good website.

My attitude has changed from doing the preliminary school website to doing our sexual health site, I have noticed the need to use typical conventions but vary from it to make our site stand out from the rest, I have approached it differently as our website tries to bring a message and alert people. I have learnt a lot since I started on this website, my skills on iweb, photoshop etc. have widen a lot and it will also help me further when doing media products, my photography and editing has also improved as a lot of photo taking was needed to bring our websites to a high level. Theres a big difference between my preliminary website and my STD website, mostly in the aesthetics and quality of text, I believe both sites are very good

When looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to the full product?

When comparing my school website to my sexual health website I notice many different changes that have been made on a creative front, we had a different aim for our school website to our sexual health one and this is shown in many ways, the design is different it draws you in keeps you interested, the layout is more unformal an makes you feel less tense. My skills have developed a lot since I started, I now know how to make hyperlinks, link pages to each other and much more.

By Ben Bardsley-Ball

These are a few more of our chosen photographs for our website, the use of these subjects are supposed to appeal to a younger audience as they are all reasonably young. These photographs have all been edited in some ways to make it more aesthetically pleasing.

Towards the end of our coursework, we decided to change the layout of our page including the background as we believe it made a site looking untidy and unprofessional. We changed it this, a more conventional layout as the colours are more aesthetically pleasing and come across as more comforting and calm. The blues work well with each other to bring a tender feeling throughout the site and we believe it is much better than before.

This is what our old page looked like, it is more approachable to a younger audience but we believe the layout we have now still does so but by being a lot easier to look at.

This is my diary of action that we have used as a guideline for our website development, many changes are being made to make the website as good as possible and you can see our expectations for the website on here.

This is another film we made to enhance the look and feel of our website. It is of me explaining our recent and upcoming events.

Here is the survey i designed to collect information on peoples preferences and to find out how people see STD's and STI's

These are my findings that I have found from conducting my survey. 

Thirty people were surveyed. The ages of which were between 14-24, with the majority between 16 and 18. This therefore gives me a target audience of mainly teenagers, as only two of the thirty surveyed were in their twenties. 

The results for gender showed that around 65% of people who took the survey were female, with just 35% being male. Additionally, the ethnicity results showed a majority of White Biritsh, which was around 60%, with the other 40% being made up of various ethnicities, White European, Asian, Mixed and African. 

A majority of people (66.7%) use the internet mainly for socialising, on sites such as Facebook, Myspace etc. The second most popular reason for mainly using the internet was listening to music (16.7%), followed by Research/Homework (13.3%). With just 1 out of 30 (3.3%) using the internet mainly to watch videos. This suggests that advertising on sites such as Facebook and other social networking sites would be the best place to raise awareness for my campaign. 

I also found that most people use the internet for between 10-14hours a week, a large proportion also used it for 15+hours a week. Out of the 30 surveyed, 17 have previously visited a charity/campaign website, and 13 hadn't. Additionally only 14 of the 17 answered the question "What campaign/charity site in particular has stood out to you?" Most answered Cancer Research or NSPCC.

More people were unsure or disagreed with the statement that they regularly give to charity, than agreed with it. Suggesting that not everyone is likely to donate to charity, or the people were unsure because it depends on the sentiment of the charity to them. 

Around 63% of people were more likely to support a charity if it was face to face, as opposed to online. When asked to rate the likeliness of the person visiting a sexual health awareness campaign, with 1 being the likeliest and 5 being the unlikeliest, the average rating was 3, however the majority voted for 2. Of those surveyed 70% of people would confide in a friend if they had a problem regarding sexual health, 17% would confide in a doctor, 13% a parent, and none with a teacher. 

Shockingly, 60% answered "haven't really looked" when asked if they feel their is enough information available online about staying healthy sexually. Out of the rest, 30% felt that there is enough information, and just 10% felt that there isn't enough.

Graphs Displaying some Results:




What do you mostly use the internet for?

How many hours per week do you spend online?

Would you be more likely to support a campaign if it was...?