Week 1

Reading for the Week

In-class Work

Syllabus; how service-learning works and what the client relationship asks of us; introduce Grand Riverkeeper Labrador: the Grand River, the organization's advocacy work, and why a science-driven nonprofit has a distinctive content problem; discuss Krug Intro & Ch. 1.

Assignments

Post a 150-word first-impressions response to grandriverkeeperlabrador.ca on D2L before Week 2 (credit only).

First-Impressions Response (before Week 2, credit only, 150 words)

Do not read about Grand Riverkeeper Labrador or Muskrat Falls first, and try to forget what I said about them in class on Tuesday. Come to this cold; that is the whole point.

• Open grandriverkeeperlabrador.ca. Look at the home page for ten seconds; then, close the tab. Before you reopen it, write down everything you remember.

Next, reopen the site, look around for no more than five minutes, and then answer these four questions in ~150 words total:

• After ten seconds, what did you think this organization does? Name what on the page gave you that impression, or say that nothing did.

• What did you expect to find that you could not find within five minutes?

• Name one specific thing—a page, a heading, an image, a link, a block of text—that stopped you, confused you, and/or made you want to click. Identify it precisely enough that I could find it.

• Were you on a phone, tablet, or a computer? Say which.

Two things this is not: It is not a design critique: I do not want to hear that the colors are dated. And it is not a recommendation: do not tell them what to fix. You will do that later, but with evidence. Right now you are a first-time visitor, and I want the record of that.