Trying to blog…

I was feeling a little intimidated when I first got into this class. I came into the class late because of a canceled class, so I missed a great deal, so I didn’t really get to know anyone from the get go. After working with my team, developing our class project, and spending time with each member, I feel like Ive been here the entire session.

I got to know all the members of my group by working along side with them on this project. I really liked working with this particular group of people. Having a sense of humor is important to me, and my team members definitely all have one.

Our final project is fantastic. We all came through and created something that is really useful, live, functional, and serves a real purpose to a real audience. Its really interesting to be part of something that’s live on the internet where users can interact with the site.

I really feel like a got a lot out of this experience. Being a part of this team and being given a big responsibility was a lot to take on. I feel really good about what I contributed to this project and really enjoyed the overall experience.

Here is my rubric for our website. We are clearly still in the process of finishing the site. This rubric was done on 12/3/2010 @ 10pm

Campus penguin rubric

Here is a video of my user testing: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sfYm88Y5KPk or

My user was my fiance, Preeya Corbin. She is a 29 year mother of one, part time student, part time worker, and full time mom. I would rate Preeya as a novice when it comes to using the web, web based apps, and pc/technology knowledge; she is not the biggest fan of technology, though she does enjoy using the web. She enjoys spending time with her family and friends, and is a former ballet dancer. She is constantly shopping for bargain items and deals on the web, mainly because she is a very busy mother and needs to get the most out of whatever extra time she has. She is a frequent user of Craigslist.com (I mention this because they would be our main competitor).

This first thing that she clicked on was the animated banner in the middle of the site, I think mainly because of the animation. A link from that made her leave the site, but she went back. She then continued to click the “next” button on the middle banner, then she clicked on the “For Sale” button on the top navigation. After that she seemed a little lost, but soon after clicked on a apartment link under the housing category. She went thru most of the images for this housing listing, and continued to look around.

It seemed that the usability of the site was simple enough that Preeya was able to navigate easily through the website. Though, content seems to be sparse, and a bit unorganized, the animated middle banner on the home page seemed to be the first thing she saw. I think if we utilize this area and really make it a key component of the home page, we can be very successful in luring users deeper into the site.

Ive completed the “Scroll GoToTop apparition tutorial for class, and I have to say that I really enjoyed it. I can see how this jQuery script can add some interesting functionality to your website:

Tutorial here: http://blog.netisme.com/tutorials/xhtml-css/scroll-gototop-apparition-jquery-css.html

I applied this jQuery to a restaurant menu I had created for a local San Jose restaurant. It functions really well for this type of application/graphic.

Restaurant menu: http://organicgraphics.net/school/kaitner/jquery_week7/

After doing some research on a number of apps, I thought some simple ones that could be used that are quite powerful are the Google Translate, and Google Search.

The Google translate elements enables your users to translate the entire page into there preferred language. Inputting the translate button into your web page is simple enough, all you really need to do is copy a function and access a script here: http://www.google.com/webelements/#show-translate

The other is Google search, which enables your user to not only search Google through your site, but uses the power of Google search to search your website. :http://www.google.com/webelements/#show-custom-search

This is the first rendition of our actual coded site. The layout matches exactly what we decided on for our website in our final mock-up, with the acception of some colors and fonts. We’ve made a lot of progress. We decided on going with the aqua color because it carries the name of the site, campus penguin, mainly because penguins live in cold icy weather.

The grey is a good neutral contrast to the blue, and ads a sort of sleek styling to the site. We plan on using white for the text boxes and posted items area. The dimension are about 980px wide by 770px high. We thought that would be a safe size. Thinking of the end user, students, we assumed since most students dont have a great deal of money, they wouldnt have extremely large monitors, and this dimension would be a safe choice.

Here are some new ideas I can up for the logo. We chose to go with more of a blue color scheme for the site; I think it speaks more the logo, with the blue giving off a cool feel, it speaks to the idea of the penguin.

This is our most current layout for our website. I really like this layout and color scheme, but I think the previous cool blue color scheme speak better to the logo and penguin concept. We are still ironing out the final color and design details, and beginning the coding process. I am also going to play with the logo design.