Having yesterday submitted our team website project I think that the most important lesson I have taken away from this project is a discussion we had concerning the systematic approach to designing a website.
The most technically difficult stage of producing a website is in making small changes at the end of a website project. As all web pages are linked into a complex filing system and a common appearance has to be maintained among all the sites pages, the simplest of changes, for example changing a comma or inserting a new picture, can turn into a complex process and entail changes being made to a number of different pages.
However with a systematic approach the need for small scale changes can be reduced at the end of a project or even be eliminated. A fellow team member pointed out that a systematic approach was patented in the 1990s. And having been through two website projects on this course, I can personally see the benefits in adopting this approach. For example in my own website project I spent an awful lot of time implementing small changes as the deadline loomed.
Such an approach would presumably mean that a project would progress through a number of stages, with each stage having to be signed off at a certain date. Each stage would be mindful of the end product, and of the consistencies that are needed in the final product. By signing off each stage, there should in theory be no need to have to make any changes at the end of the project.
This approach I think, would also work on any type of project, and it is something that I now wish to apply to all of the remaining assignments on this course. Hopefully this will allow me to manage my time better, and hopefully produce better work.
Brian.
Saturday, April 2, 2011
Thursday, March 31, 2011
Considering the User
During this team website design project I have realised the importance of considering who the website is being designed for. Though we have been taught to consider the user from the beginning of this course, this project, for me, has made me properly appreciate this point. This is perhaps because the project involves the design of a website that could be potentially used by the public.
Not only does this emphasise that we learn more from projects that are authentic or have a real component to them, but also that we are not just learning to develop content on this course, but also to design.
The reason this point was highlighted for me in this project was because of the needs of the different groups we have had to cater for in the design of the website. Content was needed to explain the relationship of the UL Practicum to the project. There were partners information that had to be publicised in the website. Then, of course, the public had to be encouraged to engage with the website and to become involved in the project.
During all of these considerations it is easy to lose sight of who is the user of the website. This is is of course, the public. The project does not work without them, and the website is one of the most important tools in generating their interest in it. The website can't be weighted too much towards the partners or the practicum therefore and the public must always be born in mind.
Therefore the website is designed for a specific purpose, with a specific audience, and is not just fulfilling a list of requirements, though these have to be kept in mind throughout the project also.
This is definitely a consideration to remember in further development projects.
Brian.
Here's a link on the subject of the user in web design: http://www.stcsig.org/usability/topics/articles/ucd%20_web_devel.html#1-involve-users
Not only does this emphasise that we learn more from projects that are authentic or have a real component to them, but also that we are not just learning to develop content on this course, but also to design.
The reason this point was highlighted for me in this project was because of the needs of the different groups we have had to cater for in the design of the website. Content was needed to explain the relationship of the UL Practicum to the project. There were partners information that had to be publicised in the website. Then, of course, the public had to be encouraged to engage with the website and to become involved in the project.
During all of these considerations it is easy to lose sight of who is the user of the website. This is is of course, the public. The project does not work without them, and the website is one of the most important tools in generating their interest in it. The website can't be weighted too much towards the partners or the practicum therefore and the public must always be born in mind.
Therefore the website is designed for a specific purpose, with a specific audience, and is not just fulfilling a list of requirements, though these have to be kept in mind throughout the project also.
This is definitely a consideration to remember in further development projects.
Brian.
Here's a link on the subject of the user in web design: http://www.stcsig.org/usability/topics/articles/ucd%20_web_devel.html#1-involve-users
Tuesday, March 22, 2011
Thoughts on the Team Website Development
Putting forward our proposal for the development of the Practicum website last week was a positive learning curve from my own perspective. I took away a valuable lesson which I hope I can apply to my future working habits. This lesson was the imprtance of minute planning of a development project.
While this seems a simple thought, it is true that the best lessons are often simple ones. Planning is something that has been missing from my own work habits. My predominant method is to begin with furious activity and hope that everything comes together in the end. As well as creating needless extra work, this method is not good for getting the best details into a website. There are so many elements to a website that despite good intentions, it is very difficult to get it to come together if all of these details have not been thought through and worked out before hand.
These are also the benefits of working on a team where you get to observe the methods of other people, and thereby what it is that is deficient in your own habits.
This is something I will take from the project, and hopefully will apply to good effect in the future. Teamwork it seems, does quicken the learning curve.
Brian.
Speaking of details, here is a good link for help with picking a colour scheme for websites. It offers more options than the colour tool on Dreamweaver, and it will also suggest a colour scheme based on the predominant colour that you wish to develop with.
http://colorschemedesigner.com/
While this seems a simple thought, it is true that the best lessons are often simple ones. Planning is something that has been missing from my own work habits. My predominant method is to begin with furious activity and hope that everything comes together in the end. As well as creating needless extra work, this method is not good for getting the best details into a website. There are so many elements to a website that despite good intentions, it is very difficult to get it to come together if all of these details have not been thought through and worked out before hand.
These are also the benefits of working on a team where you get to observe the methods of other people, and thereby what it is that is deficient in your own habits.
This is something I will take from the project, and hopefully will apply to good effect in the future. Teamwork it seems, does quicken the learning curve.
Brian.
Speaking of details, here is a good link for help with picking a colour scheme for websites. It offers more options than the colour tool on Dreamweaver, and it will also suggest a colour scheme based on the predominant colour that you wish to develop with.
http://colorschemedesigner.com/
Sunday, March 13, 2011
Online Discussion Boards
Doing my essay this week I was reflecting on the impact the discussion threads concerning various third-level educational issues had on my writing. In this essay, compared with the others done before, I have found that I have grasped the issues much more quickly, and that the fluidity of my writing has improved - I am guessing that this is also to do with having a better grasp of the issues with which the essay deals.
I am driven to conclude first of all that there is significant educational value in online discussions thread. It's particular value for me, is the way in which it forces you to make an opinion. When addressing a subject in a thread, you do feel the need to progress the subject, or at least add something that hasn't been said before.
In my opinion I think the discussions our class was involved in helped develop my own essay style in a way which merely writing the essay on its own would not have done.
My thinking now is that the more they can be used the better. At the moment I am wondering if they are used on Arts courses, and whether they would be of benefit.? I, of course, think that they would, but it is an issue that definitely warrants debate.
Brian.
I am driven to conclude first of all that there is significant educational value in online discussions thread. It's particular value for me, is the way in which it forces you to make an opinion. When addressing a subject in a thread, you do feel the need to progress the subject, or at least add something that hasn't been said before.
In my opinion I think the discussions our class was involved in helped develop my own essay style in a way which merely writing the essay on its own would not have done.
My thinking now is that the more they can be used the better. At the moment I am wondering if they are used on Arts courses, and whether they would be of benefit.? I, of course, think that they would, but it is an issue that definitely warrants debate.
Brian.
Thursday, March 10, 2011
World's Worst Website
For those of you desigining websites at the moment, here is a link for you. Rather than provide any salient advice I thought I would show you something that might cheer you up.
The World's Worst Webstie is a nice example of some of the pitfalls we may stumble over as we grapple with our designs.
At the very least it is nice to know that there will be at least one website that ours will be better than.
Brian.
World's Worst Website: http://www.angelfire.com/super/badwebs/main.htm
The World's Worst Webstie is a nice example of some of the pitfalls we may stumble over as we grapple with our designs.
At the very least it is nice to know that there will be at least one website that ours will be better than.
Brian.
World's Worst Website: http://www.angelfire.com/super/badwebs/main.htm
Sunday, March 6, 2011
My Role in the Project
In dividing up the responsibilities in the report I was allocated the role of dealing with the references and appendices. While at first I thought that this would be a small role it proved to be larger than what I had originally anitipated.
Essentially the role involved gathering the team's references and listing them according to the Hrvard style. I also had to go through the report and check that the references in the text were properly done.
As I was in charge of this, it allowed other team members to give me the essential details of their references without having to worry about them being in the correct format. This also freed up their time so they could concentrate more on the content they were producing. Going through this list took me more time than I thought it would. Between editing my own podcast section of the report and formtting the reference list, the task took about two days. The most time consuming aspect of this was making sure that the internet links referenced worked, and using the cite it right templates to make sure the details were listed correctly.
The most dfficult task - and which took me all of Tuesday and Wednesday to complete was getting all of the details into the final report. This was mainly because the final draft was updated on Tuesday night, so much of my work on an earlier draft had to be redone into the completed version. Also on Wednesday I had to get extra details off team members so that all of the references could adhere as closely as possible to the templates.
However I learned a lot from the experience, and it definitely improved my attention to detail. It also introduced me to an essentail part of working in a collaborative effort to produce a document, which is dealing with the numerous updates to the final product which occurs frequently in such projects.
What I found is that my role was about being prepared to make changes and to deal with whatever occurs for the sake of producing a better document, which is what working in a team is about. And while my role didn't involve producing as much content as the others, it did take a lot of time to complete properly, as the content that I did produce had to adhere to specific templates. Therefore my time was taken up in communicating with other team members, co-ordinating my efforts with the editors, and chacking and rechecking all of the relevant details.
I also learned that spending time on small details is no bad thing, and that just because a role seems small at first does not mean that it is unimprtant.
However it was a different role than anything I had performed before, and it was exciting to be fully involved at the end of the project when the activity was at its highest. All in all, I found it to be a satisfying role, particularly when I handed over my finished work to the team editor on Wednesday.
Brian.
Essentially the role involved gathering the team's references and listing them according to the Hrvard style. I also had to go through the report and check that the references in the text were properly done.
As I was in charge of this, it allowed other team members to give me the essential details of their references without having to worry about them being in the correct format. This also freed up their time so they could concentrate more on the content they were producing. Going through this list took me more time than I thought it would. Between editing my own podcast section of the report and formtting the reference list, the task took about two days. The most time consuming aspect of this was making sure that the internet links referenced worked, and using the cite it right templates to make sure the details were listed correctly.
The most dfficult task - and which took me all of Tuesday and Wednesday to complete was getting all of the details into the final report. This was mainly because the final draft was updated on Tuesday night, so much of my work on an earlier draft had to be redone into the completed version. Also on Wednesday I had to get extra details off team members so that all of the references could adhere as closely as possible to the templates.
However I learned a lot from the experience, and it definitely improved my attention to detail. It also introduced me to an essentail part of working in a collaborative effort to produce a document, which is dealing with the numerous updates to the final product which occurs frequently in such projects.
What I found is that my role was about being prepared to make changes and to deal with whatever occurs for the sake of producing a better document, which is what working in a team is about. And while my role didn't involve producing as much content as the others, it did take a lot of time to complete properly, as the content that I did produce had to adhere to specific templates. Therefore my time was taken up in communicating with other team members, co-ordinating my efforts with the editors, and chacking and rechecking all of the relevant details.
I also learned that spending time on small details is no bad thing, and that just because a role seems small at first does not mean that it is unimprtant.
However it was a different role than anything I had performed before, and it was exciting to be fully involved at the end of the project when the activity was at its highest. All in all, I found it to be a satisfying role, particularly when I handed over my finished work to the team editor on Wednesday.
Brian.
The End of the Collaboration Project
This week saw the hand in of the collaboration project. It was a busy week spent tying up loose ends and trying to present a complete unified project for the team. It was a fascinating experience which introduced me to new tools and a new way of going about a project. As a team, I think we were all satisfied with how it all went in the end.
At the beginning of the week we met on Monday to co-ordinate our final three days of activity. Here we discussed the details of the report such as the use of bullett points and how we could get the whole report looking the same way. We also discussed the logistics of passing the report around so that everyone could put their final contributitions into the report. I was in charge of the appendices and references so this was important for me to know as a lot of my work had to be done on the final version of the report.
We also discussed the structure of the conclsuions and reccomendations section and what Katrina was going to put in here. We gave some of our perpspectives, as the job involved distilling our own individual reports. Podcasts were discussed quite a lot in this regard as it was largely found that they were not the most effective communication tool for collaboration in a project such as this. For example it was mentioned that podcasts were good at giving information from one to lots of people, but that in a small group there were other tools that were more effective in doing this. But it was mentioned that they did help shape the social dynamic in the group and so in this repect they had a positive influence.
We also had a meeting on Tuesday, Most of the work was done by this stage. We confirmed that we were all happy with the sections, and discussed some oustanding issues, such as listing the limitations of the project for inclusion in the report. We discussed the structure of the presentation which John had kindly volunteered to do.
By Wednesday the report was handed in to the team's relief. It was a very enjoyable project and a good experience. Overall, the report definitely impovved my knowledge of the vaious tools that we worked with, and how modern communications would work in the workplace. From a learning perspective, my understanding of these tools is a lot more robust. I am really now looking forward to the next team assignment that has already commenced, where we are designing a website for the UL Practicum Project Hopefully I will learn as mcuh in this as I did in the previous project and it will be interesting to apply the knowledge gained in the collaboration project to this new endeavour. Web design is a subject that I am interesting in, so I am looking forward now to my skills evolving in this area also.
Brian.
Here is an interesting link discussing the collaborative potential of wikis, podcasts and blogs. Hopefully a good way of summing up the collaboration project!:
http://www.biomedcentral.com/1472-6920/6/41
At the beginning of the week we met on Monday to co-ordinate our final three days of activity. Here we discussed the details of the report such as the use of bullett points and how we could get the whole report looking the same way. We also discussed the logistics of passing the report around so that everyone could put their final contributitions into the report. I was in charge of the appendices and references so this was important for me to know as a lot of my work had to be done on the final version of the report.
We also discussed the structure of the conclsuions and reccomendations section and what Katrina was going to put in here. We gave some of our perpspectives, as the job involved distilling our own individual reports. Podcasts were discussed quite a lot in this regard as it was largely found that they were not the most effective communication tool for collaboration in a project such as this. For example it was mentioned that podcasts were good at giving information from one to lots of people, but that in a small group there were other tools that were more effective in doing this. But it was mentioned that they did help shape the social dynamic in the group and so in this repect they had a positive influence.
We also had a meeting on Tuesday, Most of the work was done by this stage. We confirmed that we were all happy with the sections, and discussed some oustanding issues, such as listing the limitations of the project for inclusion in the report. We discussed the structure of the presentation which John had kindly volunteered to do.
By Wednesday the report was handed in to the team's relief. It was a very enjoyable project and a good experience. Overall, the report definitely impovved my knowledge of the vaious tools that we worked with, and how modern communications would work in the workplace. From a learning perspective, my understanding of these tools is a lot more robust. I am really now looking forward to the next team assignment that has already commenced, where we are designing a website for the UL Practicum Project Hopefully I will learn as mcuh in this as I did in the previous project and it will be interesting to apply the knowledge gained in the collaboration project to this new endeavour. Web design is a subject that I am interesting in, so I am looking forward now to my skills evolving in this area also.
Brian.
Here is an interesting link discussing the collaborative potential of wikis, podcasts and blogs. Hopefully a good way of summing up the collaboration project!:
http://www.biomedcentral.com/1472-6920/6/41
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