hey guys. this is a report just a few things to address

-no slang and don't try to be funny. think professional.
-be concise like you say in your paper
-check for english errors
-oh and ha, unless you have to reason to live, change out the word he for user. hahaha yeah not a good idea.

since i can't attatch something here i will have a blog on the other website that has an adobe acrobat file of all the mistake that i found.
the blog will be called "usibility AA".

Here are some spots that I think you may want to take a look at:

There is a spelling error in the 5th paragraph of the introduction.

"..but rather are dissabled because of technological conditions.."

change 'dissabled' to 'disabled'

Also, the paragraph could be more concise:

Accessibility refers not only to the portion of the population that suffers from disability (auditory, visual, etc) but it also pertains to users who are not physically disabled, but rather are dissabled because of technological conditions such as internet speed. Furthermore, this could also relate to younger audiences who may not be able to understand how to use a site.

try this:

Accessibility refers not only to the portion of the population with physical disabilities (auditory, visual, etc), but to those people who have a slower internet connection or limited experience with the internet.

There is a typo in the 'Don't Make Me Think' portion of the Page Layout section.

"Steve Krug, a usability expert and the author of one of the foremost books usability, says: “People often.."

I think you meant to say "..and the author of one of the foremost books on usability.."

You are not very consistent with the word 'web' in your paper ('Dont make me think' section). In some places it is capitalized - "Web site" - and most others, not capitalized - "web site". This makes it feel like there were several writers involved. If I was writing the paper, I would not capitalize the word 'web' at all.

The overall spelling and grammar of the white paper seem refined. Minor nitpick: I noticed the words "Layout, Speed, and Accessibility" were capitalized in the introduction, and I don't think they need to be. My only other comment is that I think the conclusion could be worded a little better or maybe added to as most people only read the introduction and the conclusion. The paper is clear and to the point, and an easy read.

There are some unwanted words like the and other fill-in words could be removed to make the paper be easier to read. When I read your document I read sentences that could be 3 or 4 words shorter. I think that some of your sentences have to much fill. In a white paper, I would try to make the sentences as short as possible but still be able to get your point across. The spelling and grammar of your paper is great. We talked in class the last couple of periods about making your sentences as short as possible but still getting your point across and I think that your white paper could use that in some areas. Again the spelling and grammar in the Web Design and Usability paper is good but you could go through and change some of those wordy sentences. Overall I don’t see any huge errors I just think that you could touch it up a little here and there but overall I think the paper is very good.

I observed you're working on reorganizing paper, however I have a few suggestions:

The introduction and summary could use some more work. The introduction in particular is extremely short and doesn't seem to address the paper well.

The flow of the paper is pretty rough. Transitions aren't smooth like they should be.

Citations are there but there appears to be an overall lack of citations in tha paper. I'd recommend adding more citations.

The headings seem appropriate for the subtopics. I'd recommend using an overall paragraph describing the upcoming fine points however.

I'd also recommend a read through to make sure the paper reads as one writer. The styling of the paper varies across sections.

• Could not find the 200 word description for this draft.
• No first person in a white paper. And avoid talking about the paper as a paper.
• AJAX consumes half the introduction. This seems strange since it is a much smaller portion of the paper.
• " Allow you to purchase something." Allow "someone" -- avoid "you" where possible. Notice how use of "you" here is more instructional: " If you are conveying information, your text can be as clearly written and easy to understand as possible" than report like. The paper is telling the reader what to do. Save that for writing instructional documents. Report here what the sources say.
• " Web pages that sell products are usually the best designed" Can you provide a source to back up this opinion? In fact, there seem a lot of opinions in this paper--whole paragraphs--related to usability that should be cited. I'm getting the feeling this paper may some more research on web usability.
• Notice how the Speed and Accessibility sections seem to written to web designers and the first part of the paper more in general. It really switches audiences a good bit. Would be better it were more consistently written for the primary OSDDP audience of students and teachers that use the site the most.

One thing about the white paper: please use more citations. There are several large paragraphs that contain a lot of information in them that only contain one citation at the end and don’t have any quotes at all. (consider the 2nd paragraph under the “speed” heading)

Though the short section about blind web users is cool sounding, I don’t think that it fits into the scope of the paper…

I think you guys use the acronym CSS without explaining what it is, until the conclusion.

I can definitely tell that the first section is from a different writer than the rest of the paper, make sure that you guys have each other go through and reword/rewrite some of these sections to make them flow better.

Hey kids, easiest way to give feedback is to post it real-time as I come up with it from reading the paper. Strap in...

• Use of "we" in exec summary/Intro should be trimmed out. The rest of the paper doesn't use that form, anyway.
• Exec summary doesn't necessarily need "start, next, finally". I'd suggest just putting the topics in chonological order, and make it a single, tight paragraph.
• The sunheadings under "Introduction" were so similar to main headings, I thought you had a two line intro! Probably just need to tone down the subheadings so they're more obvious.
• The topics covered in the Intro don't seem to match up with the two sections that follow, "Speed" and "Accessibility". I find myself confused if the Intro trying to explain those things in a different way, or is actually inserting unique information. Either the connection from the Intro to the other sections need to be clarified, or you've got info that's not brought up later, and that just isn't the purpose of the Introduction. Consider prioritizing your topics, list them in the paper body, then go back to write the Intro as a short overview of each of those sections (one to two lines each).

  This follows the old maxim "Tell me what you're going to tell me (intro), tell me (body), then tell me what you told me (conclusion)."

• Seeing some commentary, e.g. "Web pages that sell products are usually the best designed – look at Amazon or the Apple Store". Not only does this seem out of placed in a report, I don't even think it's valid (Google is mentoned in the same paragraph, and contradicts the statement!). Just a reminder to keep the discussion objective. If Amazon is an example of a well designed site (of course it is), then show why. At least then if you make a claim that it's one of the "best designed" sites, there's some justification.
• I'd like to see less generalization: "It’s always a good idea to cut down on the number of words on your page" might be a good rule of thumb, but it's too broad for a research-based paper. Absolutes are dangerous, and there's no basis for even thinking about using them unless you provide overwhelming evidence or a monumental expert opinion.
• Personally, I think the paper could get a boost in formal tone by avoiding the second-person reference to "you". Here's an excerpt: "If you are an online newspaper or webzine, you don’t need to cut back on your actual content- your users are there to read it."

  It makes perfect sense, but it has the feel of a tutorial, and not so much a report. The same thing can be said in the third person. (As an example, reread the last line, and think about how I could have said "You can say it in more than one way.")

Hey, I know you don't want to break you backs sweating the details, but when you're going back over the paper on another pass, you can keep these in mind, and edit them along the way. I think you'll see a big difference afterwards.
--Fluke

I like how you talk about what web design is going to today and where it came from. I don’t know if you can focus more on what it is going to. It seems like you are focusing more on where it has been and not where Web Design is going. How usability became a problem was explained well. The flow of your paragraphs was writing nicely with using the transition words like lastly for example. I understand where you are going with the “don’t make me think” idea though I don’t really agree with the topic. We are always going to have to put our own little thought into any webpage in order to get out of the webpage what we want. If the “don’t make me think” idea was capable of happening it would also be great. The break down of web applications was great. You touched upon all the great features we expect the web to have. You also talked about what web designers could do tackle the speed issue at hand. Speed is one of the biggest issues with the internet. Consistency and concise was a good way to get designers thinking about ways to improve there sites. Very good paper overall.

This paper seems to jump from place to place without any transition or material to ease into a new section. The general outline seems to be alright, but the subdivisions kind of confused me. As an example, there are two sections on accessibility. This was a bit misleading and made it a bit hard to understand what the paper or section was about. I also feel that with web design being in the title of the paper, there was enough solid material on that subject. The information in the paper I think is well done, but it lacks focus. There are also a plethora of acronyms and words that while a lot of people do understand, there are probably many who don't. These terms could use explanation early on I thought i.e. CSS, HTML, XML, server.

I think one of the most important sections in the paper is the first one, "Web Page Layout & Accessibility" because I think this section touches on what the paper is titled to be about really well. I think the least important section is the, "Cascading Style Sheets" section. I think there is a lot of great information here, but I think it could be considerably cut down and possibly just described in another section of the paper instead of being given a section of its own.

I think the strongpoint of your paper is how much information is presented. There is a lot to be discovered in the writing, however, its kind of scatterbrain to me. It reads as though four people each had a section to do, but interacted little with everyone else's writing. I think it could be revised to present concrete information on each subject such as web design itself through software, with maybe a little better explanation of your terms as I listed above.

Those things being said, I think the paper fits the white paper genre pretty well. The information presented lacks opinion and presents the reader with information to learn about usability and web design.

Your format is good and the layout appears to be on track, but there are some issues that you may want to address. For starters the executive summary and introduction seem quite choppy and don’t seem to link the usability to the technologies that are laid out. Also the statement about “Equal Opportunity” I found to be quite odd. I say this because the usability of a website affects all not just the young and disabled, I think this bit should be cropped due to it sounding out of place and in a way misleading. If a site has a good layout and is simple to navigate it would be a benefit to all as frustrations with poor design hurts us all.
There is a lot of chatter in the paper about present and upcoming technologies, especially in the executive summary which I feel would be better suited in the body of the paper. The paper doesn’t flow very well together and would defiantly benefit from some blending of the different portions. I can see that some members of the group know a wee bit more about this topic and about web technologies than some of the others. And the use of technical jargon can easily confuse the reader if they are not savvy.
In the issues section a lot of technologies are listed and not fully explained or the relevance to usability is not made clear and the paper seems to contradict itself when it starts talking about clear concise information and yet it does not seem that way to this poor reader. It almost feels to me that I can tell that the paper was written by several persons because there are parts that I can understand easily and then other that I had to read more than once to understand, and I’m an Engineer so tech jargon I am used to. So I say clean up the tech, and what I mean by that is introduce into your paper exactly what you state about a good website, make it concise, easy to read and don’t make me think… well too much but ease of readability and work on its flow, would be a good start. This is a good start and the direction you are generally heading is a good one and I do believe, even after all this tongue thrashing. Well, finger thrashing is more accurate. This paper needs to pull over and sleep it off because its weaving back and forth across the white line.

This paper seems to be veering away from the original topic: Usability in Web Design. Instead, it seems to be trying to talk about usabilty and web technologies and forcing the web technology information into the usablity box, and as described in the post for this draft, having difficulty doing so. A good white paper on usability does not "relate most, if not all of our material to Usability" but rather discusses the important usability issues. Don't try to force it.

The best strategy to solve this problem is to reorganize the paper around usability issues. For instance, there is a "Speed" section about AJAX and a mention of "Speed" in CMS. Speed is a usability issue. Rather than breaking this into sections the way it is split by technology type, have a general "Speed" section and mention AJAX and CSS as appropriate. Don't organize by technology. Read through the paper and right out the main usability issues covered, then reorganize based upon them.

There also seems to be a lot information and opinions in this paper that need citing. In fact, it feels like there are a lot of opinions of the writers in this paper.

BTW: The bibliography goes with the paper.

For the most part, the white paper follows good format. There are some areas that are somewhat short and choppy that I feel could use some revision. I think you need to keep in mind, that in the revision we are going to have to condense these papers a lot, and this will be tough to do. Maybe the two sections of "Be Consistent," and "Be Concise" could be collaborated to make one section.

Overall I think that the paper flows well, and is structured good as well. I think the sections that explain what is important to creating a good website and the section on Web Applications are the most important to the paper. These are two topics that anyone interested in wanting to create a website someday are going to play a role in the future. It sounds like Web Applications are what is up and coming in the world of websites.

The section entitled "Issues" is a little bit confusing to me, because it has a short introductory paragraph, then a lits of things, then it ends somewhat abruptly. You might consider adding some content to this section of the paper.

Overall the paper is pretty good, just some minor things to revise, and then work on shortening the entire paper.

I feel like overall your paper is on the right track. The layout flows well and besides the barely smaller subtitles of sections it is easy to follow along with. The information is doing the job of letting the reader know exactly what is going on. I do have some suggestions that will hopefully be of some use to you.

First off there is the use of the word "you" in the first description section in the body. From there it jumps from first person to third person, so thats something that needs to be watched. Also in the Webpage Layout and Acessibility Section watch the amount of depth in the 90's search engine example, this is certainly a place that could be cut down a bit but have the same amount of impact. This goes for the "Be Concise" section too, good info but we dont need a large paragraph before we get the point.

In "Cascading Style Sheets" watch the "Accessibility" section. This can be focused on by the first two sentences in the paragraph, just one example of quote could suffice. Also in "Web Applications" it gets confusing with the 3 different types of applications, so in just a few sentences throw down what they all do, rather than double the size of the paragraph to add depth.

In the "AJAX" section its good, but with all of the examples in each section it becomes a bit lengthy. Such as in "Speed" the giant example of Google is not necessarily needed, maybe a mention of it, but not as much as there is, it could get tiring to the reader.

Last thing is to format all of the quotes in the same manner. As it is the first draft its understandable, my groups is the same way, but something one must make sure gets done. Overall great writeup, good luck on the 2nd draft.

You did a great job on your first draft of the Usability and Web Design white paper. The topics covered are very relevant and offer some good up to date information. This topic can be of interest to audiences from wide, varying technical backgrounds, so I think it is most important to be informative but while making sure the descriptions are not too technical. From a new, outside reader’s standpoint, I have a few suggestions that I think may make your paper stronger and clearer.

As far as the overall structure of your paper is concerned, I think that the sections are in a very logical order except that some of the length or detail could be cut out. For example, the first section on usability is a very important idea for the paper but it runs a little long when it comes to the examples. The real value of the usability section is to tell the reader about the four main important points of usability, but it takes almost a page to get us there. To save some room and be more concise, I suggest getting rid of the paragraph about the search engines in the 90’s and how they battled for users. The rest of the paragraphs could be summed up into one lengthy paragraph around half a page in length. Also, it may be beneficial to trim down the bigger descriptions such as the “Be Concise” section.

Another part of the paper that I think could be removed or cut down would be the section on the issues of AJAX. This section is used to tell the reader that there are several technologies that go into the AJAX methodology of creating web applications. I think that this point could be made in the introduction in one or two short sentences and would be more fitting there. The existing paragraph may be a bit too technical for your audience and could potentially lose them. I don’t think that it is very important for them to know exactly what main technologies are used together, just that they are.

With these changes in mind, I would also think about finishing the paper with a stronger conclusion. Give a little more length to this by separating usability, CSS, web applications, and AJAX out and say a sentence or so about each. I think that doing so will help restate what the paper was supposed to get across to the reader.

Hey, so I did they combiney-magic on the sources everyone emailed me. If you guys want an editable version, email me and I'll send you the RTF (or doc) - since I don't think you can attach files to comments here, and class is about to start.