Research Delivered Yesterday

My news site project for Emerging Web technologies looked at lots of sites over the past 12 days to determine what features work, don’t work and what styles of responsive design is being used with more popular sites. I will add prototyping images here tomorrow but some more need to be considered for the site and I would like to keep them in one blog post. Looking back I am glad I did a task analysis on each site and I feel more confidant about what I am doing.

Yesterday we got our first lesson in Git and using the server to push our code up from the command line. What appeals to me most is the idea that once the code is up on Bit Bucket any changes from the previous commit can be seen and analized. This is exciting and I just got a glimpse of it on a classmates computer but it is great. No doubt there will be some learning the commands and getting into another habit on the mac side of the machines we use in college.

Below are images of my sign in to both Bit Bucket and Git Hub accounts.

bitbucketBLOG

GitHub_BLOG

Week 6 Begins!

Today my tutor met with me. We went over the stages of interactions and went a bit more into details of the data base side of the project. The ‘hole’ in my sequence of steps was raised – I realised this after the presentation last week. To go through the selections of options again for each Avatar was useful.

So far for this project it will be necessary to have the following tables:

Employee 1 Details

Session ID Table

Employee 2 Details

Options Table  (Could have image in this table)

 

I am posting some images used  from today that relates to the above points.

Feb_24_blog1

Slides where on the left there is a ‘successful’ match for doing a meditation with another person. However the pop up for USER 2 is missing. It should be inbetween both slides above.

Feb24_Blog2

Schedule on the left we are in week 6 and the presentation for this project is week 9, on 16th March! Yikes – get cracking Fiona :) blog3

table sketch of sessionID table design for MySQL. Feb24_BLog4

Pop up For user 2 should appear on screen sketch from slide notes from presentation last Wednesday, 17th February.

 

News site research continues!

The research was in full swing this weekend for this project for a news website. I am still toying with names for the site: IrelandGoWest or GoWest Ireland? Comments welcomed! Websites looked at included for analysis:The The Huffington Post, New York TimesNew York Post  and The Sun were anaylsed for issues:

– Usability (including number of steps to get to content)

-Layout ( how they were built in bootstrap & what is the structure ie grid system)

– Content delivery including the balance between news articles, videos and images

-Navigation (easy of use between pages fyi the New York Times has no home page!)

-Use of social media icons / overuse of media icons

Other blog sites were looked at too to see what is being offered to someone interested in exlporing the West of Ireland including Ireland’s Hidden Gems, Blogging from the Bog and sites such as The Burren Centre.

SIte Map done but Balsamique is not working for me out of college :(.. and all articles outlined!

Critical Path analysis has to be done and a task analysis breakdown.

One full article has been finished (very exciting) and now unto another….

Skellig 8

Research online news sites

Today has been spent doing more research of web applications and websites that publish news. The news this week is that the Independent in England is going to stop printing of some of its weekly print run, here is the article outlining the cut of the Sunday edition edition so it is really apt that our first project in Evolving Web Technologies involves this subject matter.

Today I looked at traditional news sites like Reuters, CNN Yahoo and more traditional ones such as the Irish Independent. Task analysis are being carried out to determine the use of space, grid systems and use of columns with responsive designs. These are included here as research.

As a matter of statistical interest I am including a link to this site ebizmba that lists the numbers of readers of the 15 most popular sites monthly: http://www.ebizmba.com/

 

Reuters

Reuters American News Site

Huffington_post three_columns

Huffington Post  English News Site

yahoo

Yahoo News Site

This is being included as it is so popular, it is mostly sensationalist and includes a lot of advertising but is worth looking at nonetheless!

 

Presentation of initial prototypes, scenarios and design concepts

This was an interesting week the official presentation for our final year project was yesterday. Each person presented so we got to see the interesting projects being worked on so that was a treat and an opportunity to learn something.

‘Curious Room’ was explained using wireframes, sites maps and prototypes of possible outcomes for design. The wireframe and flow of events diagrams have been updated as well as the colour scheme from greens to blues. Help was received from two tutors and this was a great help to me to see what questions were missing from user profiling and requirements. The scope of the project so far seems to be manageable and will work within work break schedule.

Included below are some images from the actual presentation. For this project different snap points will be used to create the website and possible mobile application – let the building begin!

 

FEB 15__HOmePageFEB 15_About Page

Login and what Curious Romm is about.

FEB 15__ScenarioOne_StepCHECKBOX FEB 15__Secenario1-Req-Step -One

What Meditation is and on the right the options are ‘successful’.

 

FEB 15__S1_Yes_2 Avatars_medFEB 15__S1_TWO_STAR_RATED

Screen shot of users interacting with Meditation screen and on the right: afterwards a simple feedback area.

FEB 15_Change Avatar _Page FEB 15_Comments _Page

Choosing an avatar on the left and the comments area for users to leave comments.

Mobile-LOGINMobile-REGISTER

Mobile Screens for Curious Room

Mobile-SUCCESSMobile-SUCCESS TWO

Choosing an activity on the left and moving to the most right and screen: two avatars meditating

 

 

 

Research Responsive Website

First this process was started by doing a mind map. The concept is to do a newsletter based on the Wild Atlantic Way from a different point of view to give the whole take on it a more personal experience. One of the most enjoyable things to do in Ireland is to visit our local areas here in the West. The first impression of a mind map came up with phrases such as: The West, adventures, goals, food, scenery, summer evenings, frosty weekends walks, sharing, getting ill on boats, food, people, the experience of  something new, discovery of new places. This idea was discussed with my tutor this week and the general idea is to create a newsletter on these five key areas:

Aran Islands/West Clare

Ballyvaughan/ North Clare

Near Skellig/ West Kerry

Clifden / West Galway

Malin Head / Donegal

West Cork Possiblitly

These are places that have been visited and explored with friends from the United States and Canada. In the brainstorming stage it was worthwhile to see what sites pertaining to travel and adventure are out there to see what works and doesn’t work. A task analysis of each site mentioned below was carried out in a general way to take note of positive and negative features. There were some good choices after Googling adventure travel, some were compiled lists from companies such as Forbes. This aim of these searches was to bring up a variety from a wide spectrum and to find websites that are both responsive and offer quality on both sized screens.

So far travel sites and blogs are being looked at are:

Visit California

The Expeditioner

A Forbes best of List

and some promising ones that were dead ends, sadly these usually have  good titles like the ‘Infinity List’.

 

Moodboard-One-Expeditioner

Collections of screen shots of the Expeditioner Website 

Of course it should be mentioned that the Wild Atlantic Way website was looked at also.

 

SiteMap and Wire frames

Today was a follow on from basic site maps from last week

Activity Concept2

Basic Activity Concept Diagram

 

frontBackEnd

Front End / Back End Initial Diagram

site map OPTIONA and B

Site Map using options of User Option A & User Option B

User A is to use the meditation app alone. User Option B is to use the app with another individual.

Then some prototyping took place as the following images show. At this moment it is not possible to border the images so I will put the up now and re-edit tomorrow.

PrototypeHomePage

landing Page Prototype Only

About-Only-Before-AvatarPlugins 2fionakiely.ie/…/About-Only-Before-Avatar.jpg

Protptype – After Login – Avatars Available

Page THREE Prototype-Long-Partner

Prototype – Choosing an Avatar

Page Four-Partner-Request-Long-First-Pass-No

Prototype – Room Not Available

Page Four-Partner-Request-Long-First-Pass-Yes

Prototype – Room available

Single-Person-Yes-Meditiation

Single Use Person Meditating

Single-Person-End-of-session

Single Use Person After Meditating – Comment section and digital token update

About-Meditiation-Page

About Meditating – Easily Explained but need a ‘How long’ & ‘Benefits part

 

 

 

Week 4 begins…

So far this week time has been spent looking at user requirements in further detail. Yesterday,  8th February in our project management module we looked into a critical path analysis in further detail,  as well  as as doing a level 1 analysis work breakdown structure. This diagram is what I will be using to help with develop requirements this project’s website.

FYP_WBS

Image: ‘I am Away’ Initial Work Breakdown Structure of requirements.

 

Today we looked at bootstrapping sites and the advantages and disadvantages to using one. This tutorial walks through the initial stages of laying out the css folders and linking. It is available here on tutorial republic’s website

Later on time was spent using css do develop a grid system with snap points. This is an option that may be used for this project. Although an account was created (ahem 19 days ago…) today was the first time it was installed locally on the PC in college so the code can be pushed  – this is the link to the first repository This tool needs to be investigated further to see if it is being used correctly!

pull request-For-Blog

Image of the first ‘push’ to Git Hub