The Web Project survival Guide:

Key point to follow:

If you are not qualified to make the assessment, find someone who is.
Code every page once
Establish guidelines
Client Specs. Establish parameters
Part 1: Target Specifications
Part 2: Functionality and Features
Part 3: Design and Layout
Part 4: File Structure and Directory
Preferences
Part 5: Server and Hosting Information

If you are not qualified to make the assessment, find someone who is.
I think this is a key trait to every project manager, manager, or director in any field. From the review of the inmates are running the asylum it seems so many times details such as this are overlooked. In this case it was the complexity of the website that needs to be determine of what the team can handle. So many times Directors speak on behalf of their team, without addressing if their team can actually handle it.


These points are vital to delivering a project that your client is happy with and that your coders and designers are happy with.

Phase 1: Defining Project
Constantly Assess - Budget
- Complexity
- Schedule

*Do not forget Quality Assurance and testing


2: Site structure - Scope Creep
- Audience
- Content Status

3: Design Phase – Design Status



4: Setting File Structure - refer back to client spec sheet
- aligned with redesign and maintenance goals
- Scalability, growth in the next 12 months
- Updates; how often?
*Starting out organized will help you stay organized, so make it a priority.



5:HTML Production - Review information
- Check files are sliceable and optimizable- meet requirements of client specs.
-HTML templates
-implement light scripting
-smaller is better
-simple, simple, simple.


6:Content- some content not ready
- Don’t forget invisible content -tags
- Communication between backend and front end

7: Quality Assurance Testing – make sure it works
- budget 10% total time for QA
- create QA plan
- Do not overlook QA
- Prioritizing and fixing bugs
8: Final Check –make sure all systems are a go
- Design Check
- HTML Check
- Functionality/engineering check
- Content check
- Client approval

Keep It Simple!

Simplicity is so underrated. The common belief amongst non-designers is the more the merrier, which cannot be further from the truth. For a reader that is well versed in design and web flow, both readings probably seem “obvious”, however if you have ever worked for the government or in healthcare you would know what I am about to say next.

“Hierarchy And Contrast: The Basis of Good Design” hit a sore spot. I had flashbacks to a recent meeting that I support, where the PowerPoints used the “water”
background (wich is light to begin with), with white text on it. A colleague turned to me and asked if shutting the lights would help people read. I just shook my head and said nothing could help this right now. First of all, I apologize to Microsoft, but why? Why do most of the free backgrounds that exist in PowerPoint, exist? Who uses the tropical backdrop? Or the water? I’m sure Microsoft realizes who the average user of PowerPoint is, and trust me, it is not pretty when you are at a meeting and people are using all the fancy backdrops with animated gifs and bizarre fonts in weird sizes.
Finally, here was a reading saying most of what I have been saying, keep it simple and organized. Next time someone asks about a presentation I will bring up this reading and read off of it.

Blueprints for the Web: Organization for the Masses offered great organization ideas for life, that can be applied to the web. Getting organized allows the creativity to flow better.

I like doing research and watching motion design from different companies, and the best design be it motion or graphics, is simple. Simple lines, clearly organized. This is what both of the readings were leading to. www.imaginaryforces.com is one of my favorites; From the company name, being able to shorten it to “if” to their environmental design to their motion design, everything seems clearly organized and simple, but yet gives off the aura of high design.
And everything is organized under what the potential client would want to see. Sites like this make me happy!

Design This!

A friend who was taking a computer programming class once referred to my pretty little icons as “gooeys”. I didn’t know what a gooey was, but I had some image in my mind of a big pink piece of bubble gum that had already been chewed. She explained to me that a “Gooey” is an icon for simple users, like myself, to use in the main screen of the Mac. Or rather people that didn’t know Unix, or how to really converse with their computers. So a gooey is the techy’s word for human-computer interface design.

HCI is the basis for how simple or difficult it is to use your computer and the defining threshold between the Mac user and the PC user.

Gesaults theories are similar. Consistency, simplicity, continuity, closure, blalance, are all elements in HCI design. Avoid cluttering is a Gesault theory that gets explained in HCI as easy to navigate. Simplicity is a basic law in Gesault theory, HCI claims that you have to design for the novice user as well as the expert user.

Most of the things stated in both theories seem a little obvious, however, they are rules that are overlooked everyday.

The best design is no design.

I have a dream ... that certain standards worked better....


ONE media player... no Quicktime that doesn't work on PC, nor Real Player, or Windows media player that don't work on Macs, nor the Yahoo media player.
*Attempting to edit a movie accross the country on a MAC and have the files transfer coherently accross platorms is pain!

ONE international broadcast medium, no PAL, no NTSC, nor SECAM

Websites working on all browsers. I HATE the error that pops up when I go to certain ecommerce websites saying sorry this only works on internet explorer. Well Internet explorer refuses to work on my MAC.

Standards are important because things need to work seemlessly with other things. People need to communicate, currency needs to work all over one area, one website needs to work with its server. I found this article to be mostly greek to me, but what I did take from it that every standards organization has their own standard and thus it is hard for that standard to communicate with another standard.

Valuable, compelling, empowering information and experiences for others... these are the things that all visual artists wish that they could accomplish in every piece of work. Shedroff kind of hits on what I would liek to focus on, Intercation Design, figure out a way to mke the interactive medium, CD-ROM, DVD or website a medium for storytelling.

Shedroff talks a bot about using other sense besides visual and auratory, like olfactory senses, and there were some artists that tempted the sense of smell with Smell O Vision!

http://www.retrofuture.com/smell-o-vision.html

THe issue of information design runs rampant fopr in house marketing and communications departments. I face it every day. The "client" has tons of information that they would like to relay, I skim it down to"key" messages that will be easy for the viewer to absorb and interesting to watch. the client returns and I have to add laundry lists of info. I try to relay "It is not about information, it is about experience" but the client always has trouble understanding that.

Hour 3... Online Class

I’m having a bit of a spaghetti experience…
If we do the immigration experience we could include immigration gone bad stories.. I found these two very close to home for us…

Immigration gone bad…possible interviewees for the site
Close to us… at UW
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A21897-2004Jul28.html

Ramzy Baroud, a graduate of the MCDM program - re an email from Dr. Lau on Dec 17th


I guess the goal I’d like to have with the website is that instead of looking at the website as an information outlet, it would be nice to look at the website as an art form. I don’t mean by using tons of flash, but to really tell a story have each page leading and expanding on a story.

Websites are used to present information but why not be on the cutting edge to use the website as a medium for artfully telling a story. I believe that everyone in the class holds interesting talents, either in video production, audio production, music production, photography and design.

The following websites were just great design ideas. The RGA.com one has amazing uses of storytelling for ecommerce, I guess for us it’s a matter to take those ideas of design and transfer them to our ideas…

Bad example but good integration of video and web: http://perks.com/video/index.asp

Cool movie for "I Remember" http://www.virv.com/movies/lookback.mov
www.RGA.com all the different websites that create a mood and feeling. Could be enhanced with moving images and music, audio

http://www.levistrauss.com/anniversary/main.html
This was a very nice usage of the web for storytelling purposes. As well as classy use of FLASH.

I could look at websites all day for inspiration. The good design companies seem to always have amazing sites. I guess a great site really emphasizes the mood and feeling and takes the audience in.

In conclusion, I think we shouldn’t choose subject matter that is too difficult because we are going to face a huge learning curve and be able to support the skills that everyone in the class want to learn .

In that light either the Immigrant site or the Greenlake.

All good ideas though.

On-Line Class


My Three Personal Goals:
1. To learn how to incorpporate video with the web or how to maximize on the interactive side of video.
2a. Learn Flash.
2b. Learn the basics of DreamWeaver
3. Learn some design elements

Ultimately, I would like to create a documentary via a website or be able to storytell through a website.


My Goals in the next five months…

I’m not really a planner, nor do I make resolutions. I have things that I would like to do in my life and I find that they have a way of falling in place. So this is a stab in the dark of attempting to put goals down on paper…

My ultimate goal is to make myself a valuable asset to a company in Seattle and to find out what HTML and FLASH mean, besides required skills in a job posting that I know I don’t have.

So far, I liked Drew explanation of the Spaghetti Theory, kinda like the mind map from Dr. Lau’s class, only doing lots of research prior to the brain dump. This touched on one of my weaknesses, having tons of ideas but then being too overwhelmed with them to do anything.

My strengths are pulling the story out from footage. I am a video editor that has worked by taking hours of footage and whiddling it down to a succinct story, almost never using a script. I think I can bring these skills toward any form of digital media. I am a good producer, finding creative ways to staff and direct videosand this could be applied toward the website. I have a good knack for consulting with clients and deciphering what their needs are. Since most of my professional experience has been in not for profit, I would like to learn more about business and how to run a business, including generating revenue. I would like to learn how to work with a creative or art director and design/create to fit their vision. I am highly creative but would like to work with someone else vision to see what that experience is like and push my skills further. I am not a strong writer, so I would like to work closely with the content editor if I needed to do some writing.

Publishing Team: roles and organization and Notes on Design Practice: Stories and Prototype as Catalysts for Communication:

One basic underlying AHA from both readings is the constant stuggle in any industry that involves creatives, amongst the artists and the managers that are involved with showing the profit margin. There are two different types of people that communicate in a totally different manner that are expected to cooperate and collaborate to produce a project. But each group has its own agenda, and it is very hard to meet at a middle ground. On a recent documentary film project that I had the role of the video editor, I witnessed a lot of strife and struggle between the director and the financer. The financer wanted to be sure that his investment was secure and the director wanted to know that her artistic integrity was being spared. And this is mirrored with website publishing. The publisher acts like the financer or the executive producer, worried about the project coming in at budget and be able to make a profit, while the director is like the managing editor concerned about the quality and efficiency of the website’s content.
The layout of roles in this document is an ideal situation. In some situations, we do not have the luxury of having such a large team. At the hospital where I work the website is designed, coded and updated by a team of less than ten people. I produce videos in a team of one. I wish that I could show my supervisors how many people there needs to be and should be to do this type of work. In Notes and Design on Practice, a few key items are highlighted; the need for team building, and how important it is to know your audience. When I was in college and worked for the Student Government we were always doing team building activities which I did not fully understand and I did not appreciate their value. In my professional career it is very rare that we have team building exercises. I think in my marketing department, all the employees do not know what the others do.
This seems like a very basic thing to do with the department. Communication is so key to obtaining the correct messages in the project.I found recently since I have been working closely with the internal communications director that has notes of all the key messaged we need to hit in each digital media piece that it is easier to hit them. I guess in this aspect I am in a rare place since most creatives teams are not in that close vicinity with the communications director.
Storytelling is so important too, being able to have all parties understand where everyone is coming from is such a challenge.

Several things strike me in this essay. The freedom to procreate; the fact that you need a license to drive, you need to be a certain age to drink and fight for this country, you need a degree for most jobs, but to have a baby, you just need natural instincts. Hardin had an interesting point when he sited, "In late 1967, some 30 nations agreed to the following (14):
The Universal Declaration of Human Rights describes the family as the natural and fundamental unit of society. It follows that any choice and decision with regard to the size of the family must irrevocably rest with the family itself, and cannot be made by anyone else." A family needs to pay room and board and taxes, however they can privately determine how large they can be...reminds me of certain corporations.

The tragedy of the commons can relate to politics, especially the politicians that are in power today, they care not about the whole but rather what they interpret as “common”, this can be identified with the bank robber Hardin mentions in the essay, that refers to the bank as the commons. Our politicians are referring to our tax money as the commons, but choosing to use it in ways that do not benefit the whole, but an elite few.
An image that came to mind that illustrated this was…




A bird covered with oil
The political side is that a politician deemed it necessary to drill for oil near that bird’s habitat. The tragedy of the commons as it relates to community, both human and bird, at one point were living in sync, until human chose that oil should be drilled and push bird out of habitat, what Hardin referred to as “overgrazing”. It seems that politicians cannot obey the rules of the commons, that public space cannot be shared, maintained and respected. One must capitalize on another’s innocence.

Maybe this is the tragedy of the Internet, that websites cannot live harmoniously side by side, and share content while users pay what the content’s worth, without stealing or illegally downloading. Public websites cannot be shared, maintained and respected, according to Hardin’s theory.

"The only way we can preserve and nurture other and more precious freedoms is by relinquishing the freedom to breed, and that very soon."
And I end with an image that I believe would have made Hardin happy...