iBook Evaluation 

This has been a very enjoyable project because I found it quite straight forward and it gave me many opportunities to experiment with the interactive elements, layout and structure.The research was time consuming because so much is written about the different aspects of the arctic, ranging from the climate to global warming. I had not previously studded the arctic and so my knowledge base was low but it gave me an opportunity for learning about this important region and I am now much more interested in all aspects of the arctic.

I had a good look at existing ibooks but found that i didn't like many of them because they were not very interactive and this made me understand that for a lot of people, this would be an important element of their enjoyment of the ibook, especially as it is aimed at a teenage market. 

I found the website “www.Bookry.com” particularly helpful as it gave a wide range of interactive widgets that could be used in my ibook. In my book people have especially enjoyed the videos that i embedded using the ‘Youtube” widget. As they were taken from authoritative sources (BBC and National Geographic) it shows that they are factually correct as well as being enjoyable. 

As there is so much information written about the arctic one of my problems was to decide what to include in my ibook, I am aware that it dose contain quite a lot of text but as it is designed as a reference book I felt this was justified. 

Initially I struggled with a colour scheme but in the end it naturally evolved from the colours of the snow and ice in the natural environment, lending its self to the use of different shades of blue and lots of white with some stark contrasts such as the bright colours of the Northern lights. 

I also struggled at the beginning of this project when learning how the structure of ibooks works, but by learning the structure of chapters, sections and pages it gave me the knowledge I needed to structure my book and decide on the chapters I would include.

I tried to keep a simple layout as this would help make the book more accessible to the audience. I used a page to show each chapter of my ibook and a page to show the contents of each chapter, this became difficult to show the difference between headings and different sections that were linked to parts of the book. After feedback I had to go back and change this adding a box around each chapter heading separating it from the sections in that chapter. In addition I had to add clear links on each page that would take the reader back to the previous page of my book. I wanted the reader to be able to access any part of the book without always having to go back to the index and this enabled this to work consistently. 

I feel it would have been beneficial to have created my ibook on a subject that I had previous knowledge and interest. This would have allowed more time to focus on the design and structure aspects of the project rather than on researching a topic that I had no existing knowledge of. It would have also been beneficial to create an ibook to a younger audience as the visual language would have been less formal allowing me to be more creative and use different visual aspects rather than sticking to factual and informative images. I realise my challenge is to learn how to be both formal and creative!

If I did the project again i would try to make my ibook more visually creative and still informative as this would attract the audience without taking away from the information offer that is being provided. I would also look at creating pages with less text that would be less overwhelming to some of the teenage audience and would increase the number of pages, leaving room for more interactive elements.