The Fermoy House is a bed and breakfast guest house located in the Blue Mountains of NSW. The business provides overnight accommodation and breakfast to couples. Currently, the business has four guest bedrooms with a private garden which has a detached private garden for every bedroom. For each bedroom, a maximum of 2 guests are accommodated. To differentiate itself from other similar businesses, Fermoy house allows its guests to have up to of their own dogs to stay in the attached kennel. Each dog has a personalized dog collar with its name. The guests specifies the name of the dogs during the time of booking. The guest is also supposed to choose between continental breakfast and Irish breakfast during the time of booking.
Currently, the business does not have a website through which interested customers can access to get information about the guest house or make a booking thus there is need for a website which will help create an online presence for the business and provide a way for customers to make bookings very conveniently.
2 Design concept overview
The proposed website will help customers to access information about the guest house and make bookings using the same website thus the website should have quality and credible information and all functionalities that the user needs to achieve specific user goals. The design of the website is supposed to follow all the industry guidelines to make it usable by both new and existing users.
Apart from the good and aesthetically pleasing appearance or visuals the design should follow all the principles of a good website design to make sure any visitor can use the website to get any information they want or to achieve any goals through the various functionalities and features provided by the website. The design should be simple enough not to distract a visitor from the main purpose of the website. Simplicity will be achieved by using a lot of creativity to make the website aesthetically appealing to its visitors. To achieve this, a study of how most users think is important. Some of the key points on how user think are;
All the points mentioned above will be followed in while adhering to all the principles of a good website design to achieve a good website design
3 Business and user requirements
3.1 Business requirements
Business requirements are requirements that explain the purpose of the website for the business or organization in need of the website (Parker, 2007). For the Fermoy House proposed new website the following are the business requirements;
User requirements are also referred to as user needs and describe what the user does or hopes to achieve while using the website. For the Fermoy House proposed new website the following are the user requirements;
To come up with the design of the Formey guest house website, the following key assumptions were made;
The process of designing different interfaces of the pages making up the website is a systematic process which involves reviewing both the business and user requirements to come up with the specifications of the design. The specifications are then used to come up with wireframes which are then used to design the final interface of every page making up the website. The following are the pages making up the website;
The home page is the landing page of the website and is the first page that the user sees when they open the website. This page creates the first impression about the website to all users. The structure of the home page is shown in the wireframe below;
The home page is made up of three sections;
The header sections is at the top of the home page. It consists of a logo and the navigation menu of the website.
The content section contains a banner and information about the guest house. The banner is in form of an image.
The footer section is the bottom most section of the page and consists of the copyright information about the business.
To illustrate the design of the home page from the wireframe shown in figure 1 above a prototype of the design has been designed to show different components making up the home page, use of colors and use of other elements and functions.
The home page is the landing page of the website and is supposed to be aesthetically pleasing to the user. From the figure above the home page is divided into three sections as shown in the wireframe in figure 1. The first section which is the header has a black background. TO make text visible, an orange has been chosen to design the logo and the font used for the navigation menu. The navigation menu consists of links to all the other pages making up the website.
The next section is the content section which has a white background. The section has an image banner and information about the guest house. All the titles have a font color of orange while the rest of the text has a black font color.
The footer section at the bottom of the page has a black background. The text in the footer section is orange in color to make it visible over the black background color of the footer section. Use of black background color for the header, white for the content section and black for the footer section helps structure into sections thus making it easy for the user to scan through the page.
5.2 Login page
The login page is used to login by users who have already registered. Just like the home page, the login page is made up of three sections;
The header sections consists of the logo and the navigation menu while the login form section consists of a banner and the login form. The footer has the copyright information. To illustrate the design of the login page the following prototype has been designed.
Figure 4 above shows the components making up the login page. The header is similar to the header making up the home page and has a black background. The login form section has a banner which is an image mimicking The Fermoy House. The login form consists of three components; username text field, password text field and the login button. To login the user enters his or her username and password and presses the login button. The details are verified and the user gets a message of whether the login was successful or not. If the login was not successful, the user is prompted to enter the correct login details or recover the password through a link. This information is displayed as a pop up.
The footer section is similar to that of the home page as described in section 4.1 above.
5.3 Registration page
The registration page is used by new users to create an account with the guest house. The page is made up of three sections;
The following wireframe shows the structure of the page.
The header section and the footer section is similar to that of the home page. The registration form section consists of the registration form. The figure below shows a conceptual prototype of the registration page.
The registration form consists of seven text fields and the register button. The user is supposed to enter all the details as per the information provided inside the text field. After filling the form, the user is supposed to press the register button to save and complete the registration. Validation is done to make sure all details are correct.
5.4 Offers page
The offers page consists of information about different accommodation offers provided by the guest house. The page is structured into three sections;
The wireframe below shows the structure of the offers page;
The header and footer section are similar to the header and footer of the home page. The content section consists of a banner and a table with all the offers provided by the guest house. The figure below shows the conceptual design of the offers page;
The content section consists of a banner which is an image mimicking The Formey Guest house and a table with all the offers. The information is structured in a tabular form to make it for the user to compare different offers. The colors are used for the different sections of the page are as shown in figure 8 above.
5.5 Booking page
Booking page is used to make a booking by users who have logged in to their account. THe page is made up of three sections;
The wireframe below shows the structure of the booking page.
The header and footer section resemble those of the home page. The booking form section consists of a form with seven elements. The form is made up of four text fields, two radio buttons and the book button. The figure below shows the conceptual design of the booking page.
The booking form section is divided into three sub sections to make the booking process easier and understandable for the user. To make the sub sections a fieldset element has been used with a legend aligned on the left of the fieldset to act as the title.
5.6 Contact us page
The contact us page is used by users to drop a quick message to the guest house. The page is made up of three sections;
The wireframe below shows the structure of the contact us page.
The header and footer section resemble those of the home page. The contact form section consists of a contact form which has 4 text fields and on button. The figure below shows the conceptual design of the contact us page.
The form is validated to make sure all details are filled correctly. The email should be in the correct format otherwise the message is not sent. After filling the form with the correct details the user presses the send button to send the message.
The design of the Formey guest house was achieved by following all the principles of good website design. These principles are;
For the Formey guest house website, three colors have been used; white, black and orange. The three colors have been used interchangeably according to the background of the section of a page. For example every page has a header and a footer. These two sections have a black background color thus to make text visible and appealing orange color has been used for the font. For the content section which is the section between the header and the footer, white has been used as the background color. To make text visible in this section the color of the font is black and orange is used for the headings to make the information appealing and easy to read for the user.
6.3 Navigation
A good website should have a good navigation. The proposed website embraces this principle and has a good navigation which can be used by the user to navigate through all the pages. The following sitemap shows the navigation of the website.
6.3.1 The booking process
For a user to book a room, the user has to have an account by registering. Registration is done by opening the registration page using the register link in the navigation menu. The user fills the form with all the details and an account is created. To validate the registration, the user is supposed to open the email provided during registration and open the link sent to that email. After validation the user can now login to their account.
Login is done by opening the login page. The user enters their username and password and the details are verified. After successful login, the user can open the booking page. To book a room, the user is supposed to fill the booking form in the booking page. The user fills the start date and the end date. The names of the dogs is optional and the user can choose to fill it or not. The user then chooses the type of breakfast and presses the book button. The system will check for availability and update the user with results of the booking. If the booking is successful the user gets a success message otherwise the user is supposed to select another date.
Conclusion
The Formey guest house has been designed by first studying most common user behaviors and the existing website design principles. The final design as shown in the sections above is a good design emphasizing on simplicity to achieve user goals.
8 References
Friedman, V. (2008, January 1). 10 Principles Of Good Website Design. Retrieved December 26, 2017, from https://www.smashingmagazine.com/2008/01/10-principles-of-effective-web-design/
Laja, P. (2017, May 26). 8 Effective Web Design Principles You Should Know. Retrieved December 26, 2017, from https://conversionxl.com/blog/universal-web-design-principles/
McAshan, T. (2016, November). 10 Principles of Good Web Design. Retrieved December 26, 2017, from https://www.glidedesign.com/10-principles-of-good-web-design/
Parker, J. (2012, February 18). Business, User, and System Requirements. Retrieved December 26, 2017, from https://enfocussolutions.com/business-user-and-system-requirements/
Taeed, C. (2007, December 17). Design 9 Essential Principles for Good Web Design. Retrieved December 26, 2017, from https://design.tutsplus.com/tutorials/9-essential-principles-for-good-web-design–psd-56
Woods, S. (2014, March 4). 10 Top Principles of Effective Web Design. Retrieved December 26, 2017, from https://shortiedesigns.com/2014/03/10-top-principles-effective-web-design.
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