There are five structures used for website design discussed by Martinec and van Leeuwen in The Language of New Media Design: Theory and Practice. The five website structures include the given and new, ideal and real, star, tree, and network. Some websites will decide to use one of these structures, while others will combine more than one structure to create a complex website.
The Milwaukee Bucks website (http://www.nba.com/bucks/) is a perfect example of the ideal and real structure. This particular structure is a top down information system where the top information (i.e., ideal) is general or broad. Then, as you move down the website, there is more specific information (i.e., real). Martinec and van Leeuwen state that “the company logo is usually found in the top-left corner of the web page, indicating the importance of the company’s image and elevated status in the mind of the company’s executives, and consequently designers” (p. 22). The Bucks website follows this guideline of the ideal and real by having the logo and simultaneously the link to the home page in the top-left corner.
The ideal information, or the general, is located at the top of the Milwaukee Bucks website. There are links to Tix, Team, Stats & Standings, Schedules, News, Digital, Bucks 2.0, In The Community, and Fan Fun that never change. Each and every day, these links are the same because they are same broad information the Bucks want to have available. Moving down the website, there is the real, or more specific, information. Daily news stories including past scores, injury updates, and upcoming games are all real information that is more specific. These stories change from day to day.
Further down on the website, there is even more specific information and links. There are links that include specific ticket sales (e.g., single game tickets, promotions, groups and discounts), follow us links (e.g., bucks mobile, facebook, twitter), game night links (e.g., hoop troop, energee, rim rockers), archives (e.g., press releases, features, game recaps), teammates links (e.g., bucks buddies, bucks radio network, sponsorship site), and general information links (e.g., roster, front office, careers, parking, maps). All of these links are the most specific information available on the website.
Therefore, the Milwaukee Bucks use the ideal and real structure of website design to appeal to a basic audience who may not want to read about press releases or the Bucks on twitter. The more average fan and reader of the website will see the general information first such as past scores, injury reports, etc. first and then can find more specific information if necessary. Overall, the Bucks website designers chose a very good structure for the average audience that visits their website.
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