Presentation

On Thurs 17th March we presented the scrapbook to Phil Batty at uni. Me and the rest of the group produced a Powerpoint presentation to show Phil the development stages of the scrapbook. I introduced myself and my team to Phil and Sally our tutor. I talked them through the brief we were given and the feedback we had got from our meetings with Phil what he wanted on the scrapbook. I then showed them a mood board I had created to show the type of things we had to include on the scrapbook ie videos, ad campaigns etc. Following on from me Dave Jones talked about the wireframes he had created. Then Dan Whittaker talked about the themes we had looked at and why we chose to use the Light Bright theme. Andy Howard then followed Dan and talked about the technical side of wordpress and what he had done in the css to change things on the dashboard. Dan Farrell then followed Andy and talked about the social network links and other add ons we had added to the scrapbook. We all then showed Phil and Sally our finished scrapbook and talked them through it. Below are screenshots of the final scrapbook.

Feedback

The feedback we got from Phil was that he liked what we had done and that he would like to use it. He would like his all to go in to Force-7 and talk him and his team through how to use the dashboard and upload things to the site.

Amended Documentation

After sending Sally the documentation to check she asked me to make the following adjustments to it. She asked me to add a contents page and front cover with everyone's names on it. I made the adjustments as you can see below:

Documentation typed up

On Sat 12th March I finished typing up the documentation and posted it on basecamp and emailed it to Sally to have one final check on it to make sure it was ok before I printed it out and got it bound. I have typed up 15 pages with a word count of 4905

Finishing off the scrapbook

On Thurs 10th March in our lesson with Sally we finished off the scrapbook. I asked Sally to look at what I'd wrote so far on the documentation. Sally looked through my documentation and said it was good and that I should start typing it up. She asked me to print 3 copies of it out and get them bound which I will do once I get it typed up. We added as much material as we could to the scrapbook and Dan Farrell worked alongside Sally adding content about Force-7 to the sidebar. All that is left to do is for me to type up the documentation and arrange for Phil Batty to come in so we can show him the finished scrapbook in a presentation.

What we need to do

On Mon 7th March I posted What we needed to do next on basecamp

Hi guys

I'm going to work from home tomorrow and crack on writing the documentation for the scrapbook. If Andy and Dan W could carry on working on what they are doing from home and if Dave and Dan F can finish adding the content to go in the scrapbook. I've added all the videos so if you two can add the rest between you that would be great. We will then finish it off in Thurs lesson and I will contact Phil Batty to ask him to come in a week on Thurs to present it to him. Also could you all write and send me your thoughts on wordpress so I can add them to our evaluation.

Thank you

Chris

Carried on writing the documentation

I carried on writing the documentation down in my A4 writing pad so I could show it to Sally in our next lesson. This was to see if what I'd wrote so far was ok before I carried on writing up the documentation.

I added the videos

On Thurs 3rd March I posted the following on basecamp.

Hi guys

I've added the video's to the scrapbook if Dave and Dan Farrell could finish adding the rest of the content that would be great. I will carry on writing up the documentation and if Andy and Dan can carry on with coding and putting it together.

Thank you

Chris

Documentation

I asked the other members of the group on basecamp to send me what each of them had done for the Force-7 scrapbook so I could write it up in my documentation. They all in turn sent me what they had contributed to the project so I could add it to my documentation.

Adding Content

On Thurs 17th Feb in our lesson we began to add the content to the scrapbook. Me, Dave and Dan Farrell sourced the Force-7 tumblr site for material to add to the scrapbook. We did this because Force-7 had already uploaded material to their blog so we thought we should use this because the scrapbook is for them after all. So me, Dave and Dan Farrell did this whilst Andy and Dan Whittaker worked on the coding side of things. I sourced and uploaded the videos to the scrapbook and Dave and Dan sourced for quotes and images etc.

Below are some of the images we uploaded:

I started to write the documentation

On Tues 15th Feb I began to write the documentation I was assigned to write by Sally our tutor documenting how we worked on this project as a group.

We decided to change the theme

During our next lesson with Sally on Thurs 10th February we came to a group decision that we should change the theme from The Style theme to the Light Bright theme. We decided to do this because the Light Bright theme had all the features we needed and would suit our needs better. Dan Whittaker changed the background colour of the Light Bright theme from black to a dark grey gradient and also found out how to change the icons to match the posts. Dan also managed to get the side bar working so we could add the options we wanted to add. Dan also added a twitter feed so the scrapbook can show feeds from twitter and a search function so Dan contributed a lot on this over the weekend.

So we changed the theme to the Light Bright theme below:

Following on from this I posted a plan of action on basecamp on Sun 13th Feb which was as follows.

Hi all

Can we please all come in on Tues to crack on with the scrapbook. On Fri we decided to change the theme from the Style to the Light Bright theme, because it was going to be hard to make the Style theme look like we wanted it to. Also the Light Bright theme looks more like a blog which Phil was looking for us to create them. On Fri we decided on having a black background and white logo, but after seeing what Dan W as done and posted up I like that so we should go with that. Dan as found out how to change the posts and he as added a side bar so thank you Dan for your input. If we crack on with it on Tues and stay after our lesson with Kev and Sally I think we will be almost there. We need to implement the icons Dan F created and change the colours of each icon to those used by Force-7 or similar. Let's see if we can implement some accessibility code into it also so we have that covered. I posted some info on wordpress and accessibility on here last week.

I feel like we are actually getting somewhere now with this project so let's try and get as much done as possible on Tues.

Thank you

Chris

Accessibility

Following on from our meeting with Sally last week I decided to look into the accessibility of wordpress. I found some documentation on accessibility on the wordpress site. This is the url for the page I found http://codex.wordpress.org/Accessibility. This site was very useful because it showed how people who are visually impaired or disabled use the internet and the ways we can make it easier for them to use. So this was very useful because it showed code we could add to our scrapbook to make it accessible to all. Below is the code to add an alt tag to an image or photograph.

Adding the above code helps people who are visually impaired or disabled because it reads out to them what the image or photo is using a screen reader such as Jaws.

JAWS - Job Access With Speech

Jaws is a screen reader programme that helps the visually impaired to use their computers and surf the net. It helps them by giving them the information that is on screen via what is known as text to speech. This converts the text that appears on screen into speech so a voice on the computer reads out to the user what is on the page of the website they are on.

So we will look to incorporate some accessibility code into our scrapbook.

Progress Meeting with Sally

On Thurs 3rd February 2011 we had a progress meeting with Sally our tutor. In this meeting we discussed the feedback we got from our meeting with Phil. We told Sally what Phil wanted us to include on the scrapbook, but after talking to her we decided we wouldn't be able to implement everything he wanted us to include. This was due to the constraints of wordpress so we removed some of the things he asked us to include. So we revised the things we could include in the scrapbook to as follows below:

• The scrapbook wants to be a resource for inspiration with loads of information on it.
• It needs to include campaigns, strap lines, quotes and quirky videos
• it needs to be minimal in design, organised, clean, sharp and tidy
• Colours Black and White and incorporating the 7 colours Force-7 use or similar colours

We then looked at the themes Sally had purchased for us in wordpress to see if there were any we could use. We found two the first of which was called Light Bright which is below.

This theme used icons for each post so a video would have an icon next to it relating to film.

The second theme we looked at was The Style theme this was more organised than the Light Bright theme. Below is The Style theme.

Mood Board

Following on from our meeting with Phil I created a mood board of images to show Sally the type of things he wanted us to include in their scrapbook. Below is the mood board I created.

2nd Meeting with Phil Batty

When we came back from our Christmas break I was asked by some members of the group if I could organise another meeting with Phil. This was because not all the group could attend the first meeting we had with him. Also we had more questions to ask him so on Mon 24th January 2011 the whole team went in to see him. We found out more in this meeting then in our initial meeting with him before Christmas. I think this was due to the whole team being there and asking him questions.

The feedback we got from Phil was: the scrapbook wants to be a resource for inspiration with loads of information on it including ad campaigns, strap lines, things that are quirky etc. They would like the scrapbook to be clean, sharp and tidy and minimal in design. They like Black or White colour wise and they would also like to have a refine by search on it if possible. They want the content to be organised and under categories so they can be searched for and found easily. They would like a main blog page which will be used to upload and display the work/inspiration whenever. They would like to assign colours to categories so they can be found easily eg Blue for Videos, Green for Images etc. They would also like links to social networking sites like Facebook, Twitter etc.

Presentation

After our meeting with Phil I was asked by Sally our tutor to show a presentation to her and the group of what we had found out from Phil. I included in my powerpoint presentation adverts, quotes, posters and videos that I had found on the Force-7 tumblr site. I included the videos etc to show the kind of things Phil wanted us to include on their scrapbook. So now we had an idea for the kind of thing he was after we could start work on it after our Christmas break.

Below are screenshots from my presentation:

Meeting with Phil Batty

After working out what each persons role was going to be on this project I arranged our first meeting with Phil Batty at force-7. I arranged the meeting for 11am on Mon 29th November 2010 for me and the group to go into Force-7 and dicuss with Phil what he wanted us to include on the scrapbook. We met at uni at 9am to come up with questions we wanted to ask him in the meeting. Below are the questions we asked him and his replies to them:

Q1: How do you want people to use the site?

His reply: It needs to be an element of internal resource that you can pull information from. It also needs to have a search and tag feature on it. We want it to just go to clients so the client can send something back via a blog etc and see what's inside our heads.

Q2: What is the purpose of the site?

His reply: Evidence base our work.

Q3: What content do you want on the site?

His reply: It needs to include videos, blogs, twitter and anything that inspires young people. It needs to submerse itself in youth.

Team Roles

For this project I was assigned Project Manager by our tutors and I assigned my team the following roles:

Me (Chris Dunn) = Project Manager duties include research, design and organisation

Andrew Howard = Research how wordpress works and coding

Daniel Whittaker = Coding and Design

David Jones = Design

Daniel Farrell = Design

Client Related Practice for Web Design

For our client related practice project we where given a brief to create an online scrapbook for Force-7. Force-7 are a youth marketing and research agency based in Hull. Phil Batty is the director of Force-7 marketing and communications agency based on High Street in Hull. Force-7 offers a wide range of services which include graphic design, strategy and research, street team activity, consultation and social media management.

For this assignment we were asked to create the scrapbook using wordpress. This was a programme new to us all because we had never used it before. We each installed wordpress on our own computers I installed it through my bluehost account because it was alot easier to install that way. Once it was installed on our own computers at home we could have a look at it over the Christmas Holidays.