Week six: Workshops

11Nov09

Thanks to all who gave presentations last week. There was some very good work but on the whole I feel your blogs need more systematic work. I will be setting tasks each week for you to complete on the blogs to bring them up to speed. Apart from that I thought the design ideas were solid and a lot of thought that has gone into some individual projects.

This week I want to concentrate on a solid workshop session – getting your web templates in place and working on storyboards/plans for the Flash elements of your sites. This can take the form of an advertising banner, interactive header, slideshow or movie.

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Tags: 103EPA, workshops

Week five: Presentations

04Nov09

Presentations this week will begin with an informal discussion. I will be taking notes in order to provide each of you with feedback in individual tutorials during the afternoon. You will all be required to give peer feedback on one anothers blogs during/after each presentation. Remember:

• Try to give a clear outline of your project/theme/intended audience
• Show the research into similar websites to the one you intend to make
• Show any mock-ups (comps) and site plans you have made
• Outline any technical issues you anticipate and what support you will need to overcome them
• Reflect on and evaluate your progress so far in both the sessions and skills instruction workshops
• Use your blog as a presentation tool AND any paper mock-ups, Powerpoint slides, production documents you have produced
• 10 mins (max) is all that is required for each presentation

After the presentations (which I expect to take no more than an hour) I will see each of you individually to discuss any problems and give you feedback on your presentations.

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Tags: presentations

Week four

28Oct09

This Thursday we will mostly be doing:

• Seminar discussion of CSS documents from last week
• Looking at your blogs and responses to sessions so far – AND looking exactly what’s required for your presentations next week (see post below)
• Looking at the separation of presentation and content in more depth with regard to XML in particular
• Group working – making web comps in Photoshop
• Practical workshop – Dreamweaver & CSS using your PS elements

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Your blogs

28Oct09

I thought I’d do a specific blog post reminding you exactly what your blogs are for.

As you know your assignments for 103EPA are split into coursework 1 and coursework 2.
Coursework 1 being your blogs (in place of a report/essay which has been set in past years)
Coursework 2 being your artefacts (websites).

Coursework 1 - your blog – is worth 40% of the overall mark so they need to be good and full of thoughtful insights into various aspects of Interface Design, the governing concepts and underlying Internet architecture that makes online GUIs possible. Most of you have responded to at least 2 of the sessions we have had so far. But this week is session 4 and you should have started uploading various information about your projects.

Below are some of things that should be on your blogs before your presentations on Thursday November 5th. They can be uploaded as PDF files or displayed in the body of posts. You ALL have quite a bit to do before the 5th.

• What will your website theme be?
• What is the budget? (If this is a ‘live’ project you can do this for real – but get in the habit of producing budgets even if it’s a simulated project)
• Who is the audience? (Detailed analyses please describing design features specific to your target audience)
• 3 web comps (made in Photoshop and ’saved for web’ (800×600px) as .jpgs and uploaded to your blogs)
• A ‘design rationale’ to include:
• What interface elements will you be using on your site and why?
• What multi-media elements do you intend to include?
• How do you intend to make your website ‘sticky‘?
• A site plan with all file names in place – and content for each page detailed – plus navigation (clicks to content)
• A production schedule (when will each part of the process be achieved? What images/audio/video need to be made, by whom and by when?)

Use the Web Style Guide and Jakob Neilson’s 10 Heuritics to guide you further with other considerations you might bring to your presentations. Think about USABILITY and ACCESSIBILITY and W3 STANDARDS (all relevant links on the links page).

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Tags: Blogs, coursework 1, presentations

A ticking off@@**!!

24Oct09

I know one person turned up late to last week’s PhotoShop skills instruction session – but Pete waited for everyone and no one came – so he went back to his office. Hence the latecomer didn’t find a workshop happening because there was no one there for it to happen with!

It is imperative that you go this coming Friday’s session: An Introduction to Flash.

The department has to pay for the sessions even if you’re not there AND you have to pay for them too – they’re called FEES. Rant over – take advantage of the resources on offer.

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Tags: skills instruction

My other blog…

21Oct09

Have a look at my Open Media blog for all things interesting and interactive.

Week three 103EPA – Thursday 22nd October:

We will be

• discussing the Web Style Guide chapter I gave you last week
• exploring Dreamweaver in more depth and making our first website.
• looking at CSS and the separation of presentation and content
• using new Photoshop skills to create a web comp

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Tags: 103EPA, css, web style

Tasks for next week

17Oct09

I’ll put up some links on the links page by the end of the weekend to some online Dreamweaver resources. Also, as we had to finish 10 mins early last week I probably gave rather garbled instructions about the requirements for next week – so I’ll set them out again in a more orderly fashion.

1. Read the handout – Chapter on Interface Design from the Web Style Guide. If you weren’t here then you can read the chapter online here. The handout is NOT as up to date as the online version but information is all relevant regardless.
2. On your blogs respond to the exercise we did in the session (the appraisal of the online music store sites). After your reading think if there’s anything else about the sites that could be done better – or that would have wider appeal. Remember reflection on the process of the exercise and evaluation of the benefits of the exercise are more important than a blow by blow account of what you did.
3. If you weren’t here – then read the Web Style Guide chapter – then look at one of your favourite websites and see if it conforms to the guidelines outlined in the chapter – then blog your findings.
4. Pay particular attention to Jakob Nielson’s 10 Heuristics of Interface Design (IE read the page this links to). We will be discussing ALL this in the seminar session at the beginning of week three.

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Tags: 10 heuristics of interface design, jakob ielson, web style guide

Why the slashes Tim?

14Oct09

Take a look at this recent interview with Tim Berners-Lee, inventor of the WWW. Interestingly the first thing he’d change would be to get rid of the slashes // – made me laugh.

Wikipedia gives a good biog of TBL and his work to date.

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Skills instruction

14Oct09

As I explained in my earlier email, skills instruction will begin this Friday 16th October and will run as follows:

1. Friday Oct 16th 2-4pm GS318: Introduction to Photoshop
2. Friday Oct 23rd 2-4pm GS318: Photoshop – moving forward
3. Friday Oct 30th 2-4pm GS318: Introduction to Flash
4. Friday Nov 6th 2-4pm GS318: Simple animation for the web

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Tags: 103EPA, skills instruction

103EPA week two

14Oct09

Apologies for late posting. As discussed last week I want to kick off on Thursday with a discussion about the short article on Internet Infrastructure I handed out in the session – you can download it from CUOnline – or link to it here. I hope you’ve had a chance to look at and respond to the link about the History of the Internet – a little dry and badly formatted I know (sorry).

After the discussion we will continue with a short lecture followed by a group exercise. After the break we will move on to a practical workshop introducing you to Dreamweaver. Handouts from last week’s session are available on the Documents page.

There are also new links on the links page which are basic/essential resources you will be using throughout the term.

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Tags: 103EPA, Photoshop, skills instruction, week 2