Okay, we finally have the site up and all of it is just about working! Finally!! We met with Judie on Thursday just so she could look over the site and some of the content to see if we were doing it the way she wanted - she said she loved it and many people at her office agreed! We still have more that I wish we could have finished - setting up the classes/courses registration, setting them up with PayPal, and getting the photo album set up in the virtual tour that she wants. Luckily, this "project" won't be dropped in the summer and Melissa will have a team working on it to get it up to perfection. With the addition of DonorPerfect in the fall or spring of next year, this project will be able to serve Melissa's class for a long time!
I definitely thought that we would be done sooner than we were - but we had to continue with a lot of changes along the way. I learned the importance of starting things early and staying on task at all times. I also learned that it's not always easy to work in a team because people have a lot of other commitments and it's often hard to coordinate schedules. We were able to overcome this as a team and pull together to get the work done. I know that the team members often stayed up late and put many hours into making sure this project was successful. And though it did take a little longer than I expected, I really learned a lot about project/time management. Things don't always run smoothly and often take more time than expected. If I were to do another project, I would take that more into consideration and give our team a lot of extra time to get it done.
I used many skills that I learned throughout my time at FSU - a lot of HTML and Dreamweaver knowledge as well as use of graphic arts. I also used my writing and grammar skills that I've been taught since elementary school (and really do enjoy!) to make sure all the information was readable and easily understood. I definitely learned a lot more HTML and CSS skills just by watching others work on their parts of the project. Looking over the code was very helpful in getting my web design skills up.
I took away many things from this project - the main thing being that working on teams take a lot of commitment and time management skills. If one person is off, even a little, it throws the entire team off and people often have to do more than they should. I also learned how rewarding it can be to have a satisfied client - Judie was very happy with our redesign and that fact that we won't be abandoning her in the summer. This project was a good learning experience for me, showing me what it will be like to work with clients and sponsors in "the real world". Overall, I felt the project went very well and though I wish we had a couple more weeks, this is a good stopping point for our team. It's time to pass it on to another group of students who will hopefully want as much success for kidsincorporated.org as we did.
View our Project Plan and Gantt Chart.
Sunday, April 22, 2007
April 22, 2007 Post - Project Closeout
Okay, we finally have the site up and all of it is just about working! Finally!! We met with Judie on Thursday just so she could look over the site and some of the content to see if we were doing it the way she wanted - she said she loved it and many people at her office agreed! We still have more that I wish we could have finished - setting up the classes/courses registration, setting them up with PayPal, and getting the photo album set up in the virtual tour that she wants. Luckily, this "project" won't be dropped in the summer and Melissa will have a team working on it to get it up to perfection. With the addition of DonorPerfect in the fall or spring of next year, this project will be able to serve Melissa's class for a long time!
I definitely thought that we would be done sooner than we were - but we had to continue with a lot of changes along the way. I learned the importance of starting things early and staying on task at all times. I also learned that it's not always easy to work in a team because people have a lot of other commitments and it's often hard to coordinate schedules. We were able to overcome this as a team and pull together to get the work done. I know that the team members often stayed up late and put many hours into making sure this project was successful. And though it did take a little longer than I expected, I really learned a lot about project/time management. Things don't always run smoothly and often take more time than expected. If I were to do another project, I would take that more into consideration and give our team a lot of extra time to get it done.
I used many skills that I learned throughout my time at FSU - a lot of HTML and Dreamweaver knowledge as well as use of graphic arts. I also used my writing and grammar skills that I've been taught since elementary school (and really do enjoy!) to make sure all the information was readable and easily understood. I definitely learned a lot more HTML and CSS skills just by watching others work on their parts of the project. Looking over the code was very helpful in getting my web design skills up.
I took away many things from this project - the main thing being that working on teams take a lot of commitment and time management skills. If one person is off, even a little, it throws the entire team off and people often have to do more than they should. I also learned how rewarding it can be to have a satisfied client - Judie was very happy with our redesign and that fact that we won't be abandoning her in the summer. This project was a good learning experience for me, showing me what it will be like to work with clients and sponsors in "the real world". Overall, I felt the project went very well and though I wish we had a couple more weeks, this is a good stopping point for our team. It's time to pass it on to another group of students who will hopefully want as much success for kidsincorporated.org as we did.
I definitely thought that we would be done sooner than we were - but we had to continue with a lot of changes along the way. I learned the importance of starting things early and staying on task at all times. I also learned that it's not always easy to work in a team because people have a lot of other commitments and it's often hard to coordinate schedules. We were able to overcome this as a team and pull together to get the work done. I know that the team members often stayed up late and put many hours into making sure this project was successful. And though it did take a little longer than I expected, I really learned a lot about project/time management. Things don't always run smoothly and often take more time than expected. If I were to do another project, I would take that more into consideration and give our team a lot of extra time to get it done.
I used many skills that I learned throughout my time at FSU - a lot of HTML and Dreamweaver knowledge as well as use of graphic arts. I also used my writing and grammar skills that I've been taught since elementary school (and really do enjoy!) to make sure all the information was readable and easily understood. I definitely learned a lot more HTML and CSS skills just by watching others work on their parts of the project. Looking over the code was very helpful in getting my web design skills up.
I took away many things from this project - the main thing being that working on teams take a lot of commitment and time management skills. If one person is off, even a little, it throws the entire team off and people often have to do more than they should. I also learned how rewarding it can be to have a satisfied client - Judie was very happy with our redesign and that fact that we won't be abandoning her in the summer. This project was a good learning experience for me, showing me what it will be like to work with clients and sponsors in "the real world". Overall, I felt the project went very well and though I wish we had a couple more weeks, this is a good stopping point for our team. It's time to pass it on to another group of students who will hopefully want as much success for kidsincorporated.org as we did.
Tuesday, April 17, 2007
April 17, 2007 Post
We have been doing a LOT of work on the website in the past week. We added a border around the outside to get rid of the "floating" affect. I have done most of the parts of my assigned pages - the services and events section of the site highlighting the things that Kids Inc offers the community and the kind of kid-related events they offer. I put some pictures on some of my pages as well, to help draw in the audience. My next blog entry will be my close out one once our group has met with Judie and Melissa one last time. We are going to try and meet either Wednesday or Thursday with Judie to show her the pages and see what she thinks about them. Right now, due to the amount of content on the pages, I have put in anchors to make it easier to view. I don't know if Judie will like it or would prefer it another way.
Sunday, April 8, 2007
April 8, 2007 Post
We had another meeting with Judie on Friday - Rigel, Zach, and I. We showed her the newly update site and she really liked it. We worked on changing some things - the color and background color of the side navigation, the text, the text style, the color of the banners on the logo and boxes, and some other minor details. I know that Rigel has been working on making the page a template and is having some issues. He couldn't get the header/footer thing that Melissa talked about to work. Once we get that taken care of, we just have to plug in all the content which won't be too hard. I have most of it all ready to go on and all the publications in PDF format. The pages I will be responsible for are the Services Page (with Eagle's Nest, School Readiness Express, and Early Head Start) and two others.
I am so ready to get this page up and running for them! We only have about 11 days left in the semester and then we will be finished. Luckily, Melissa is teaching this class through the summer and will still be able to help Judie out with more website stuff and the database system in the fall.
We still have to rework on the Quality Measures - I was thinking that Data Clarity, Overall Design, Data Organization, Ease of Usability, and Ease of Update(in the long run) would all be good measures to judge our performance.
Look at the web site's progress here - http://kids.infotogo.net/
I am so ready to get this page up and running for them! We only have about 11 days left in the semester and then we will be finished. Luckily, Melissa is teaching this class through the summer and will still be able to help Judie out with more website stuff and the database system in the fall.
We still have to rework on the Quality Measures - I was thinking that Data Clarity, Overall Design, Data Organization, Ease of Usability, and Ease of Update(in the long run) would all be good measures to judge our performance.
Look at the web site's progress here - http://kids.infotogo.net/
Sunday, April 1, 2007
April 1, 2007 Post
Our meeting with Judie went very well. We showed her the site (ran into some printing issues where it wouldn't print out any color or borders). She liked most of it - she did NOT like the navigation on the side and asked for a few more things. She would like a blueish background and keep the boxes white. She felt the site the way it was is a little too white and some color would do it good. We have to update the Classes part of the site so we can have it the way it is on the current site. I will be asking Melissa about how to do this sometime this week because I'm at a loss. When people register non-securely online, it sends an email with payment information to Kids Inc and they enter it into the database.
Judie also told me they will be going with Donor Perfect but not until later in the fall, possibly September. This will give them lots of time to get things set up - it will still take the six weeks to set everything up.
The site has been updated and still needs a lot of work. I'm starting to worry we won't get this done in time - we only have 13 days left. I hope we can pull it all together. I have all the information organized and ready to go up on the site.
Judie also told me they will be going with Donor Perfect but not until later in the fall, possibly September. This will give them lots of time to get things set up - it will still take the six weeks to set everything up.
The site has been updated and still needs a lot of work. I'm starting to worry we won't get this done in time - we only have 13 days left. I hope we can pull it all together. I have all the information organized and ready to go up on the site.
Sunday, March 25, 2007
March 25, 2007 Post
The prototype site is now much more compatible in all browsers. We ran into some weird issues where the picture on the banner would move as well as the navigation buttons (only in IE 7 though). Sometimes, the boxes themselves would move but everything looked fine in Firefox. It's weird how that happens - makes it very difficult to design web pages! We've tried it in Opera and Safari as well - it all works fine.
We have a meeting with Judie this Friday at 1pm. We're going to show her the site we have so far and keep her up to date with where we will be next week.
We have a meeting with Judie this Friday at 1pm. We're going to show her the site we have so far and keep her up to date with where we will be next week.
Sunday, March 18, 2007
March 18, 2007 Post
The prototype site has gone up on Rigel's account - here is the link
https://campus.fsu.edu/bbcswebdav/users/rkt03/it_project/prototype/kidsinc.html
It still needs work - we have to fix the buttons on the top (they were supposed to transfer over with white borders but that didn't work for some reason). All of the graphics had to be resized for the web. The site is on our school server right now - we got access to Melissa's work server but haven't transfered it over there yet. When we all tried, we ran into a couple connection issues and haven't resolved them yet.
We should have a meeting with Judie next week to show her what we are doing so far.
https://campus.fsu.edu/bbcswebdav/users/rkt03/it_project/prototype/kidsinc.html
It still needs work - we have to fix the buttons on the top (they were supposed to transfer over with white borders but that didn't work for some reason). All of the graphics had to be resized for the web. The site is on our school server right now - we got access to Melissa's work server but haven't transfered it over there yet. When we all tried, we ran into a couple connection issues and haven't resolved them yet.
We should have a meeting with Judie next week to show her what we are doing so far.
Sunday, March 11, 2007
March 11, 2007 Post
We have the prototype site basically designed the way Judie wants it. After another meeting with her (and taking a little break for Spring Break in between) - we have come up with the design we will definitely use. We have the logo on top with a fly out side navigation. We are creating a Donate Now button, making it much easier for donors to access that page. We also have one main box and three smaller boxes on the main home page. As we switch from one page to the other, it turns into one large box for the content. Hopefully, we will be able to get all of this together and made on time.
Judie said they are still deciding on when to purchase Donor Perfect, so we shouldn't worry too much about the full blown databasing. She was happy with the side menu idea but hasn't seen what it looks like yet (we still have a lot of work to go). She didn't like how, on other website, you can mouse over the link and the fly out menu would pull out - but you can accidentally move away from it and it will disappear.
Judie said they are still deciding on when to purchase Donor Perfect, so we shouldn't worry too much about the full blown databasing. She was happy with the side menu idea but hasn't seen what it looks like yet (we still have a lot of work to go). She didn't like how, on other website, you can mouse over the link and the fly out menu would pull out - but you can accidentally move away from it and it will disappear.
Sunday, March 4, 2007
March 4, 2007 Post
I have been working on comparing what is needed on the site to what Judie actually sent me. We are now waiting on the template to be converted to HTML - hopefully done in header/footer way. Melissa explained that to us and it seemed to better choice to Dreamweaver templates.
Sunday, February 25, 2007
Febrary 25, 2007 Post
This week, Melissa came to the meeting with us. It was really helpful because she knew what she was talking about in areas that we felt lost in.
We were able to decide that the things Judie wanted us to do needed to be broken down into two or three different projects - only one for this semester (which would be simply a redesign and organization of the website). Since they need at least 6 weeks to get the DonorPerfect software together (not including the time it will take for them to decide to actually purchase it), there's no way we could incorporate it into our project.
Also, we will be transferring their new site onto Melissa's server since their current site is done in ColdFusion and we are not sure what the server will support. Tiffany and Rigel are going on Friday to meet with Melissa and learn how to turn our Photoshop template into HTML and also the basics of "screen scraping" the old site on the new site.
We were able to decide that the things Judie wanted us to do needed to be broken down into two or three different projects - only one for this semester (which would be simply a redesign and organization of the website). Since they need at least 6 weeks to get the DonorPerfect software together (not including the time it will take for them to decide to actually purchase it), there's no way we could incorporate it into our project.
Also, we will be transferring their new site onto Melissa's server since their current site is done in ColdFusion and we are not sure what the server will support. Tiffany and Rigel are going on Friday to meet with Melissa and learn how to turn our Photoshop template into HTML and also the basics of "screen scraping" the old site on the new site.
Sunday, February 18, 2007
February 18, 2007 Post
This week we had another meeting with Judie. It went pretty well. Tiffany printed out the websites she sent us and we went through piece by piece to figure out what she did and didn't like. It was pretty helpful - she decided that a lot of them she didn't even like to begin with and some she started to like more. We have come up with a general template that we feel will fit her website.
Melissa is going to come with us this week. That will be extremely helpful - I feel that though we have taken classes in this, she has a lot more experience and will help us to learn more about the web design business. I think she will be forward enough to get information out of Judie that we could never get her to say because Melissa will know the right questions to ask. I think we should have a pretty good idea of the template we are using by this Friday or next and then we are set to go. I have organized the information we had from last year and also some of the pictures. I am still waiting on more content from her.
Melissa is going to come with us this week. That will be extremely helpful - I feel that though we have taken classes in this, she has a lot more experience and will help us to learn more about the web design business. I think she will be forward enough to get information out of Judie that we could never get her to say because Melissa will know the right questions to ask. I think we should have a pretty good idea of the template we are using by this Friday or next and then we are set to go. I have organized the information we had from last year and also some of the pictures. I am still waiting on more content from her.
Sunday, February 11, 2007
February 11, 2007 Post
It has been a very productive week. We sat down with Judie last week and had a very good discussion about the things she wanted to go on the site. They are going to be implementing a database system and hopefully, we can find out how to integrate that in with the site we are going to make. Tiffany showed her a design she had made and Judie really liked it.
Sunday, January 28, 2007
January 28, 2007
I met with our client, Judie Miller, last Friday and we discussed all that would happen within the following weeks. They are in the process right now of looking for some kind of email registration software that would allow them to be able to send out invitations to certain functions and as soon as the person clicked on reply, it would store their information and basically set up a reservation for them at this event. We are going to look up more information about this, seeing as it would really help them keep track of a lot of information.
We are also creating the beginnings of a time line so we can have a general idea of when things should be accomplished. We also set up times to meet - every other Friday at 1pm. This gives us enough time in between meetings to have something solid to show her.
We also worked a lot on our project plan.
This week, I plan on doing a lot to help move the project along. I am going to research PayPal and some email programs that might interest her. I am also going to work with Tiffany on the beginnings of a general template for the site. Since we worked on it last semester, we already have a pretty good idea of what they want it to look like. I am also going to sort through the many documents she has sent us and try to group and organize them in a useful way.
We are also creating the beginnings of a time line so we can have a general idea of when things should be accomplished. We also set up times to meet - every other Friday at 1pm. This gives us enough time in between meetings to have something solid to show her.
We also worked a lot on our project plan.
This week, I plan on doing a lot to help move the project along. I am going to research PayPal and some email programs that might interest her. I am also going to work with Tiffany on the beginnings of a general template for the site. Since we worked on it last semester, we already have a pretty good idea of what they want it to look like. I am also going to sort through the many documents she has sent us and try to group and organize them in a useful way.
Sunday, January 21, 2007
Sunday, Jan. 21 - First post
I haven't really been able to officially start on my project yet. I met with my supervisor, Judie Miller, who I worked with last semester in Information Architecture. We had been assigned to redesign her website for Kids Incorporated and were unable to finish so my project is also my internship for this semester.
We plan to sit down sometime this week or the next to figure out a time line for the project. We will be researching some email software for her as well as making sure we have all the files from last semester. It will definitely be easier to work on this project because a lot of the work was already completed and we came up with a design she likes. We only have to tweak it a little.
We plan to sit down sometime this week or the next to figure out a time line for the project. We will be researching some email software for her as well as making sure we have all the files from last semester. It will definitely be easier to work on this project because a lot of the work was already completed and we came up with a design she likes. We only have to tweak it a little.
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