All pieces of art, whether paintings, movies or some other form, are accompanied by a distinct visual style that conveys specific messages and feelings to the audience. As arguably the most intricate form of art conceived, video games are no exception. Each video game is unique in not only gameplay, but also the style of graphics used to portray its visual (and sometimes audio) components. This thesis explores why visual styles in video games exist as well as some of their more well-known components, functions of graphic art styles, and the psychological impacts that stylistic choices may have on the player. This will be accomplished through a literature review on the subject, detailed analysis of two specific games with highly distinct art styles, and finally the valuable opinions and observations of three industry professionals.

Law enforcement, schools and universities, health service agencies, as well as social service agencies, each acquire information from individuals that receive their services. That information gets recorded into the respective application system of each organization. The information, however, gets recorded only in the context of each service rendered and within each system used to record it. Information that is recorded by the police department for one individual is entirely different from the information that is recorded by the hospital for that same individual. What if all the organizations used the same system to record information? What if all the organizations followed the same protocols to record information as well as access it? The goal of this research was to analyze a system that allows for all organizations within a community to share information with each other. Technically, this system is feasible. However, public opinion says sharing personal information is unethical, and Federal regulation says it is unlawful. To accomplish an information-sharing system of this type, both regulation and public opinion need to be addressed.

The Jon Finn Group, a four-piece instrumental rock band based in Boston, MA, was in need of a website redesign, http://JonFinn.com. They required a website to showcase and sell their music and merchandise, promote upcoming performances, interact directly with their fans, integrate with social networking websites, and administer paid membership subscriptions via a content management system. Making this possible required an overhaul of the website, which was based almost entirely on static HTML files with limited capabilities for dynamic content updates. The band also requested a complete visual design overhaul compatible with traditional desktop computer web browsers, cell phone-based web browsers, and modern touch-based web browsing interfaces. WordPress, a free open-source content management system, was chosen to implement technologies to meet the Jon Finn Group's needs. Using WordPress required the development of a custom visual theme supported by various free and commercial plugins. WordPress and the supporting plugins required customization to extend functionality for becoming a revenue-generating platform through which paid membership subscriptions could be supported and administered. A survey instrument questioning end users on usability was used to measure the success of the website redesign and WordPress implementation. To evaluate the success of the redesign, analysis was performed on empirical data collected from web analytics and responses from the usability survey instrument as well as subjective data including stakeholder feedback and comments provided by the usability survey instrument respondents. Following the completion of the site redesign, it became clear that the site better engaged users than the previous site iteration and met end-users' usability expectations. Web analytics data indicated that users began spending more time on JonFinn.com and viewing more content than they had on the former website design. Usability survey data indicated that 95% of all tested functionality was found to be either "not difficult at all" or only "slightly difficult." Some comments and response data clearly indicated areas for improvement in the design and usability of the site.