Tentative title: Pvt. Olguin, Aidman U.S. Army
– One Man’s
Experience in World War II
This site is about my father’s experiences as a soldier in the U.S. Army in Europe during World War II. During the war he was thrown into the job of Aidman, more commonly called Medic, shortly before his division was sent into battle in France. His experiences along with photos that he took with a camera he carried with him will provide interesting content for a web site. This project also provides me the opportunity to gather, organize, and preserve this material for my family.
Present my father's experiences in an informative and entertaining style.
Organize text and media in a logical fashion to make the material easy to navigate through.
Present the text material in small portions so that viewers don't feel overwhelmed with text.
The primary audience for this site will be family members and friends of my father. From family get-togethers, like family reunions, I have noticed that those that are most interested in my father's experiences are virtually exclusively male. However the age range is quite broad ranging from older teenagers to those in their senior years. The educational background for this audience would be from high school to undergraduate college.
A secondary audience would be those interested in history and in personal experiences during a war. My guess is that this is a very broad group of people with varied backgrounds. It is reasonable though to assume that a minimum age would be about 15 years of age and though not exclusively male, but predominately male.
Jake is a 25 year old male. he has a laptop computer with a 14 inch screen and is connected to the Internet through a broadband connection. He has a busy lifestyle. He likes to watch and participate in sports. He enjoys watching action movies. He prefers web sites that are graphically interesting and keeps text to small "chunks."
Bob is a 55 year old male. He has a desktop computer with a 19 inch monitor and connects to the Internet via a 56k modem. He likes watching the news, sports, PBS, and the History Channel. He is an avid reader, including the newspaper, magazines, and books. He prefers web sites that are simple to navigate, carry meaningful content and are easy, text wise, on the eyes.
Scanned images of photos taken during the war by my father.
Images
downloaded from web relating to my father's division during the
war.
Facts about the war and my father's division during the war
gathered form sources other than my father.
Written accounts of my
father's experiences as told by my father.
Photographs or scanned
images of items from the war, like uniform patches, Queen Mary ship board
newspaper, etc..
Written accounts of my mother's experiences, such as
receiving news about my father through letters and her life during the
war.
Winfield
Scott Cunningham
World War II -
Personal Accounts
Walter McElvain's
Letters From World War II
Heroes: The Army
- Jacques Fuselier
My
Grandfather, Ernest Ryan Baker
Things seen in sample pages to Avoid:
- Big Blocks of Text
- Single very long web pages
- Poor typography
- Excessively large images
- Missing page title
The interface will be styled to give the impression of the US Army in 1945. It will use a slightly larger type size for the text for many of the "older eyes" in my family that may view it. The text will be kept down to smaller chunks. The home page will use images that relate to each sub page. These images will be laid out in chronological order with a timeline underneath so it will be easy to navigate through. Image file sizes will be kept small to aid those with 56k modems.
Each sub page will have a copy, though smaller, of the main title along with a highlighted subtitle that indicates where the viewer is in the site. Also buttons will be included at the bottom of each sub page to move to the next or previous page in the timeline. The text will most likely be white with a black background, similar to coffee-table history books that I have seen.
Click image to see larger view