Greg Carrick – HND Interactive Media

This term has flown by and I can’t believe that A5 and A6 are due in next week. Even though there is not as much to be submitted as on previous assignments, I still feel there is a lot for me to do to get it up to submission standard. I’m not sure why I feel this as I only need to write the evaluations and add link decoration to make the links more noticeable.

I’ve done plenty of testing on the website and could probably full up a sketchbook with all the screen shots I’ve taken and after using browser shots and getting 54 screen shots of the website in browsers I’ve never heard of, in versions as old as Firefox 1.0.8. But still more testing is needed as I’ve not managed to find one of the browsers from my goals and as I’ve tested the website in all the other browsers; I need this one to achieve the goal. So if anyone knows where I can get hold of AOL 6, I would be very grateful.

The feedback I received from John was very helpful and has made the website a lot more accessible. I’ve implemented most of his ideas and just need to add one more thing then the website should be done.

I really enjoyed the timed task today, but I have to say I’m not looking forward to the timed task/s next Tuesday as I can see it been very difficult. For this weeks timed task I was unprepared for the need to put exact measurements on the designs.

I’ve finally got the presentation done and now I just need to practice it a few times before the real one.

This week has been yet again an enjoyable one and even though last week was a half-term it didn’t really feel like it, as I have been working through out it. The main thing I worked on was the website as after feedback from Steve I need to do quite a lot of work on it. I’m quite regretting spending some much time on the website and neglecting the presentation because I still have quite a lot of work to do on the presentation.

Monday morning was actually really enjoyable and went very fast. I’m quite pleased with the feedback I got because I’m now able to improve the website some more and make it more accessible. The main changes I am going to make from the feedback are:

• Add images to all the terms as I did not have ones for all the terms in Data Communications & Networking
• Make the links more noticeable as they blend into the header too well
• Have a link straight to email so you can contact the website without having to use the form
• Add a link on the thank you page that takes you to the home page
• Add a footer to the bottom of the page as it just seems to end suddenly

There were a few mistakes found that I’d not noticed, which were two of the images on the home page had missing links that was down to my own mistake because I changed the image and didn’t add a new link. Another mistake that was brought up was that you could not put a space between your names on the feedback form, which was down to me using the wrong word in the JavaScript. The final problem was that some pages moved when the scroll bar appeared and I didn’t have that problem on my computer at home!

Well as I got some good feedback from the usability questionnaire, I’d appreciate it if you could take another look at the website and give me some more feedback. Here is the website and just to show you here is the original website.

The timed task on Tuesday was really enjoyable and this time I actually got feedback and on several occasions. I really wish I had got feedback on the last timed task as it was very helpful and improved the design so much. I was quite pleased with the design and what was more pleasing was getting it finished quite early. I hope I’ll be able to do that in the other timed tasks.

Monday was another get on with it week and as I only needed to add the CGI script to the website I was concentrating on the usability questionnaire. I got the questionnaire done in the morning as I’d done some mind maps and thought of some questions in self study. I had planned to get the CGI script on the website in the afternoon but due to unseen circumstances I ended up starting the process of redesigning the website header and layout. This came in the form of feedback from Steve and all though I quite liked the previous design I have to agree with Steve there are some parts of the website layout that need changing.

These are mainly due to the measurement I chose on the screen design and have created long line lengths and a lot of white space between the terms. I need to redesign the header to make it more appealing and make it look like there has been some effort put into it as at the moment it’s plain and boring.

This has increased the work load a bit so I can get it completed for testing after the holidays, but I enjoyed creating the previous one and it will make the website more accessible. But I have to say Steve made a point that it’s good to just play with the design in Photoshop a bit to try and improve it, when he redesigned the header and came up with several different designs in a few minuets.

The timed task on Tuesday was enjoyable and I improved on my time planning from the last timed task. But there was still one thing I didn’t do, which was getting feedback on the designs from Steve early on. My excuse for this was that there were a few people waiting for feedback and I didn’t think I would have time to wait. This could have turned out quite bad, if I’d made a mistake in the design and had to amend it later on.

In the afternoon I got quite a lot of work done on the hand out and I’m quite happy with how it’s going. I still have some work to do on it and the presentation, which will be the main thing I concentrate on over the holidays. But I’m going to make sure I get the website and usability questionnaire completed.