Websolutions Proposal Guidelines Proposals

(to be presented to the class March 27)

Since our class is not large enough to do all the projects proposed, your task in this presentation is to persuade me and the class why the project you have chosen is worthy of a team’s attention. In order to succeed, you will need to have done some preliminary research. Remember, your task is to discover a group that does not have a website but would like to have one. Alternatively, you can find a group that has a website in need of redesign.

In the proposal, you will need to identify the group and explain how you think a website (or an improved website) will be of benefit to them. This task requires you to carefully analyze the rhetorical context and purpose of the organization and the site.

In order to do a good job, you will need to answer the following questions:

What does the organization do?

What are its goals?

What is its mission?

Who is its audience?

Who is the audience for the services provided by the organization?

Who would be the audience of the website?

If the organization already has a site, the following questions might be more useful:

What is the stated purpose of the site?

Who is the site’s audience?

How is the site falling short of its potential to meet audience needs?

What design or other features interfere with the site’s ability to achieve its goals?

How might a redesign improve the site’s and organization’s ability to meet its goals?

Once you’ve answered these questions, you will be able to identify a problem in the organization’s ability to fulfill its rhetorical purpose. You will then explain what that problem is and how a website or an improved sight might solve this problem. In other words, you will cogently argue how a website (or redesign) will help the organization to better meet its rhetorical goals. You will make some preliminary recommendations as to how these goals might be met and how a team could work together to implement these recommendations.

You must demonstrate that the project is feasible by making initial contact with the organization to make sure they would be willing to accept your consulting services. Evidence in the form of interviews or email communication will strengthen your ethos and support your claims. You will present your proposal to the class on March 27. Presentations should be no more than 5 minutes long. If you can’t say it in five minutes, then you don’t have a clear enough sense of what your purpose is.

Tips

I strongly recommend that you practice your proposals with whatever visuals you intend to use, before you give your presentation in class. You may want to use the Center for Communication Practices as a trial ground. We will vote as a class, and the top four proposals (in the 10 am section) and the top three proposals (in the 2 pm section) will be used as a basis for final projects. At the end of class you will submit a list of your preferred projects to me.