Week 16:
This is portfolio week. Having a chance to look back over the course of the project has let me see a few things. A lot of the time through this project, it didn't feel like I was accomplishing much, but looking back I can see that I completed several important parts of the project. A lot of the time, the work I was doing was not creating new parts and content on the website, but ensuring that all the websites parts worked together, by compiling the work done by others, and tracking down bugs they caused. I think I had a unique view on the project, as I was embedded in several different peoples parts of the project, aside from just my own, which gave me a unique perspective on how various parts of the project where progressing.
While I am fairly happy with how the project turned out in the end, I still think that our group could have improved the site in various ways.
Thursday 13 November 2014
Week 15:
We finished the website this week for submission, and got everything uploaded fine. We split the documentation into several parts, and every member of the group finished and submitted their chosen parts with plenty of time, bar one. Fortunately, we all picked up the slack for the one group member who let us down with his part, and got the documentation finished in time.
I did the implementation&use of data sets, and instructions for use parts of the documentation write up.
We finished the website this week for submission, and got everything uploaded fine. We split the documentation into several parts, and every member of the group finished and submitted their chosen parts with plenty of time, bar one. Fortunately, we all picked up the slack for the one group member who let us down with his part, and got the documentation finished in time.
I did the implementation&use of data sets, and instructions for use parts of the documentation write up.
Week 14:
Most of the work this week has been on styling the website. Most of what I've been doing is changes to the CSS. Also, as the only member of the group with easy access to the UQ network, AND a working copy of filezilla (Phillip's antivirus software flags it for some reason), I've become the main path for uploading pages to the server after people finish working on them. Because of this, I've been doing my best to ensure that people don't accidentally overwrite changes others have made, something that I realised was important after a large portion of changes to CSS I made got accidentally wiped out (it was an easy fix, since I still had the original file). The sites coming along nicely now, I think. We've switched from a solid color background to a retro-looking image background, and we have several image buttons that Angus made. I've been doing a lot of bugfixing as well, tracking down problems where people have used the wrong capitilization, or used the wrong CSS ID because of an outdated version of the CSS file.
I've also expanded the code that sends the player character information from the character select screen to the battle screen to also include the enemy character information, since the character select page chooses a random enemy now, as well as loading all the characters for the player to choose.
Most of the work this week has been on styling the website. Most of what I've been doing is changes to the CSS. Also, as the only member of the group with easy access to the UQ network, AND a working copy of filezilla (Phillip's antivirus software flags it for some reason), I've become the main path for uploading pages to the server after people finish working on them. Because of this, I've been doing my best to ensure that people don't accidentally overwrite changes others have made, something that I realised was important after a large portion of changes to CSS I made got accidentally wiped out (it was an easy fix, since I still had the original file). The sites coming along nicely now, I think. We've switched from a solid color background to a retro-looking image background, and we have several image buttons that Angus made. I've been doing a lot of bugfixing as well, tracking down problems where people have used the wrong capitilization, or used the wrong CSS ID because of an outdated version of the CSS file.
I've also expanded the code that sends the player character information from the character select screen to the battle screen to also include the enemy character information, since the character select page chooses a random enemy now, as well as loading all the characters for the player to choose.
Week 13:
We've gotten to the point where we have data to put into the webpage, so that's pretty good. There's nothing to complex going on at this point, but Angus gave me the javascript for loading character information, so I've got that being output onto the screen (Angus wrote the javascript to assign variables to stuff on the webpage, I just had to set up the CSS ID's for each value, and put it into the character select page). I also had to write some code so that once a selection is made, the current page is changed to the battle page, and the selected characters information is sent along with it. I sent the character information along in the URL, since this was the easiest method, and the information isn't sensitive.
Code for sending character information:
(part of a larger function, runs when the player selects a character)
{
charinfo='';
charinfo=charname + ',' + charclass + ',' + charrank
}
Function that runs when the player confirms their choice:
function battle(charclass) {
window.location = "battle.html?"+charinfo;
}
Code for recieving character information:
var query = window.location.search;
if (query.substring(0, 1) == '?') {
query = query.substring(1);
}
var data = query.split(',');
charname=unescape(data[0])
clas=data[1]
rank=data[2]
We've gotten to the point where we have data to put into the webpage, so that's pretty good. There's nothing to complex going on at this point, but Angus gave me the javascript for loading character information, so I've got that being output onto the screen (Angus wrote the javascript to assign variables to stuff on the webpage, I just had to set up the CSS ID's for each value, and put it into the character select page). I also had to write some code so that once a selection is made, the current page is changed to the battle page, and the selected characters information is sent along with it. I sent the character information along in the URL, since this was the easiest method, and the information isn't sensitive.
Code for sending character information:
(part of a larger function, runs when the player selects a character)
{
charinfo='';
charinfo=charname + ',' + charclass + ',' + charrank
}
Function that runs when the player confirms their choice:
function battle(charclass) {
window.location = "battle.html?"+charinfo;
}
Code for recieving character information:
var query = window.location.search;
if (query.substring(0, 1) == '?') {
query = query.substring(1);
}
var data = query.split(',');
charname=unescape(data[0])
clas=data[1]
rank=data[2]
Week 12:
Still not much I can do at this point. The javascript written by angus and phillip is fairly complex at this point, so there is not much I can do to help them without requiring them to waste time explaining what they've already done. I've been working on a layout for the battle page in the meantime, creating the 'player' and 'enemy' ID's in CSS, with the following code:
#player{
background-color: #a4d1ff;
padding-bottom: 40px;
margin-left: 1.7%;
padding-left: 5px;
padding-right: 5px;
text-align: center;
float: left;
width: 39%;
border-style: solid;
border-width: 3px;
border-color: #074680;
}
#enemy {
background-color: #fca65b;
float: right;
padding-bottom: 40px;
padding-left: 5px;
padding-right: 5px;
width: 39%;
text-align: center;
border-style: solid;
border-width: 3px;
border-color: #074680;
}
This produces a pair of lighter-coloured blocks side by side on the battle page. At the moment I have no content to put in them, but Angus says he is getting close to being able to return character data to but in these blocks, so thats good.
Battle page appearance:
Still not much I can do at this point. The javascript written by angus and phillip is fairly complex at this point, so there is not much I can do to help them without requiring them to waste time explaining what they've already done. I've been working on a layout for the battle page in the meantime, creating the 'player' and 'enemy' ID's in CSS, with the following code:
#player{
background-color: #a4d1ff;
padding-bottom: 40px;
margin-left: 1.7%;
padding-left: 5px;
padding-right: 5px;
text-align: center;
float: left;
width: 39%;
border-style: solid;
border-width: 3px;
border-color: #074680;
}
#enemy {
background-color: #fca65b;
float: right;
padding-bottom: 40px;
padding-left: 5px;
padding-right: 5px;
width: 39%;
text-align: center;
border-style: solid;
border-width: 3px;
border-color: #074680;
}
This produces a pair of lighter-coloured blocks side by side on the battle page. At the moment I have no content to put in them, but Angus says he is getting close to being able to return character data to but in these blocks, so thats good.
Battle page appearance:
Week 11:
This week not much happened. I messed with the websites CSS a little, but made no obvious changes. Mostly right now I am waiting for the Javascript to be in a state where it creates obvious outputs on the site that I can format to match the rest of the site. Most of my time in contacts is spent discussing the rules of the game, and suggestions for things we might change. I've also spent a little bit of time looking at trove, as I am becoming a little concerned that we may not have enough different famous people on trove to make this concept work well.
This week not much happened. I messed with the websites CSS a little, but made no obvious changes. Mostly right now I am waiting for the Javascript to be in a state where it creates obvious outputs on the site that I can format to match the rest of the site. Most of my time in contacts is spent discussing the rules of the game, and suggestions for things we might change. I've also spent a little bit of time looking at trove, as I am becoming a little concerned that we may not have enough different famous people on trove to make this concept work well.
Week 9:
This week I have been working on the layout for the website pages, trying to make an appealing layout that will be easy to add content into. I have created a 'Content' class in the CSS file, which I intend to use to hold the content for each page, so that all pages content should appear the same, regardless of which team member created it.
The layout that I have currently for the site is okay, I feel, but I also feel it could be improved. In particular the footer is giving me trouble, as it always sticks to the bottom of the page, and is a set height. This could cause problems on certain computers, and it limits how small the page can be re-sized to as the footer will cover other elements if allowed to.
This week we had some of the current java script code put into the website for a demo, although the java script does not currently affect the appearance on page, it only outputs into the console. There weren't any troubles incorporating the java script into the web page, simply copy-pasting worked fine.
Picture of the web page as of this week:
This week I have been working on the layout for the website pages, trying to make an appealing layout that will be easy to add content into. I have created a 'Content' class in the CSS file, which I intend to use to hold the content for each page, so that all pages content should appear the same, regardless of which team member created it.
The layout that I have currently for the site is okay, I feel, but I also feel it could be improved. In particular the footer is giving me trouble, as it always sticks to the bottom of the page, and is a set height. This could cause problems on certain computers, and it limits how small the page can be re-sized to as the footer will cover other elements if allowed to.
This week we had some of the current java script code put into the website for a demo, although the java script does not currently affect the appearance on page, it only outputs into the console. There weren't any troubles incorporating the java script into the web page, simply copy-pasting worked fine.
Picture of the web page as of this week:
Week 8:
This week we began work on the website itself. I was assigned the job of designing the page layout/coloration. I had trouble coming up with a suitable coloration for the game, as I wanted it to be interesting and dynamic, but not overpowering to the user. I tried several color combinations, my favorite being a red and orange scheme (see below), but most were rejected by the team for various reasons. Eventually we settled on a darker, blue color scheme (based on the background of the poster we produced). While I wasn't totally happy with the result, I think the color scheme is serviceable, and I intend to test other color schemes as we continue working on the project, and new ideas come up.
Red and orange scheme:
This week we began work on the website itself. I was assigned the job of designing the page layout/coloration. I had trouble coming up with a suitable coloration for the game, as I wanted it to be interesting and dynamic, but not overpowering to the user. I tried several color combinations, my favorite being a red and orange scheme (see below), but most were rejected by the team for various reasons. Eventually we settled on a darker, blue color scheme (based on the background of the poster we produced). While I wasn't totally happy with the result, I think the color scheme is serviceable, and I intend to test other color schemes as we continue working on the project, and new ideas come up.
Red and orange scheme:
Focuses on your experiences with the Paper Prototyping exercise.:
As a computer/observer - what did/didn't the paper prototype allow for?
As an observer, I found that paper prototyping allowed me to see chains in the navigation options easily (ie, chain from a home page to a specific page). Paper prototypes also allowed me an idea of how the finished concept might look, however this was held back by the slowness of the paper prototype in modelling dynamic features (such as simply changing a tab), which reduced how well I could envision the finished concept.
As a computer, I found that the paper prototype made it hard to convey certain information (for example, part of our design includes text popups when mousing over elements. This was hard to recreate in a paper prototype). The paper prototype did allow us to see things that we hadn't considered when designing our concept however: for example, several testers had no idea how a fighting game such as ours worked, where we all assumed that it was common knowledge (due to all having played such games at some point in our lives).
Was this due to the form of the prototype itself?
Some prototypes were better at being an example of what the finished concept would look like than others, so the form of the prototype possibly did have some effect, however the slow speed of paper prototyping held all of the prototypes back by some degree.
What types of feedback did you receive & was it useful to furthering the concept?
A lot of the feedback we recieved was focussed around making the rules of the game easier/more obvious to users, and making what was happening in the game more obvious to the characters. Obviously this sort of feedback is very useful.
As a tester - what types of feedback did you give? How did the form of the prototype influence your responses? What limitations did you find?
As a computer/observer - what did/didn't the paper prototype allow for?
As an observer, I found that paper prototyping allowed me to see chains in the navigation options easily (ie, chain from a home page to a specific page). Paper prototypes also allowed me an idea of how the finished concept might look, however this was held back by the slowness of the paper prototype in modelling dynamic features (such as simply changing a tab), which reduced how well I could envision the finished concept.
As a computer, I found that the paper prototype made it hard to convey certain information (for example, part of our design includes text popups when mousing over elements. This was hard to recreate in a paper prototype). The paper prototype did allow us to see things that we hadn't considered when designing our concept however: for example, several testers had no idea how a fighting game such as ours worked, where we all assumed that it was common knowledge (due to all having played such games at some point in our lives).
Was this due to the form of the prototype itself?
Some prototypes were better at being an example of what the finished concept would look like than others, so the form of the prototype possibly did have some effect, however the slow speed of paper prototyping held all of the prototypes back by some degree.
What types of feedback did you receive & was it useful to furthering the concept?
A lot of the feedback we recieved was focussed around making the rules of the game easier/more obvious to users, and making what was happening in the game more obvious to the characters. Obviously this sort of feedback is very useful.
As a tester - what types of feedback did you give? How did the form of the prototype influence your responses? What limitations did you find?
Most of the feedback I gave as a tester was suggestions to make things more obvious to users. I think the slow speed of paper prototypes influenced these suggestions, as it makes me unwilling to experiment as much as I would in a digital environment, meaning I want to be sure that what I click will do what I need to do.
Week 6:
This week our group made several personas, and began working on a site layout during the contact. Every member of the group was tasked with creating a single persona (see below for my copy), and the team worked collaboratively on the site design, with each member making several suggestions on how the site should be laid out.
This week our group made several personas, and began working on a site layout during the contact. Every member of the group was tasked with creating a single persona (see below for my copy), and the team worked collaboratively on the site design, with each member making several suggestions on how the site should be laid out.
Persona: Reluctant student
|
Info;
Name: Gavin Connard
Age: 13
Male
|
A basic day for gavin:
Gavin is woken up in the morning by his father. Gavin has breakfast,
gets dressed, brushes his teeth and packs his bags for school. His father
drops him off at the school gate and drives off to work. Gavin spends the
time between getting dropped off and first period talking and playing with
his friends. Gavins first period is history, and he normally arrives late on
purpose because he finds it boring. Gavin pays little attention during class,
preferring to chat and play with his phone. At lunch, Gavin spends his time
talking with his friends, eating and playing games on his phone. After
school, Gavin goes home and plays video games on his computer or goes to the
football fields to play with his friends. Gavin does not do his homework most
of the time.
|
|
Interest in games: High
Interest in learning: very low
Interest in computers: moderate
Attention in school: very lowp
|
|
Experiences in the Poster & Pitch
What did I learn about our concept / the project / the
brief / the design process…
- from the feedback received?
Our team did not receive much feedback in response to our pitch, so I can't draw many conclusions about our concept/project or brief from this.
- from seeing other teams’ concepts?
Comparing our concept to the other teams, I realized that ours was very different in the basic idea. Most groups seem to have come up with concepts that center around making an interesting interface for retrieving specific data from trove, rather than using trove data to create something to interest the user, as our game concept does.
- How have these realizations affected my/our own
concepts & process since?
Looking at the other teams concept has made our team realize that our concept doesn't directly present much data to trove. In response to this we have been thinking of ways to present the data from trove directly to the user. At the moment, our favored idea for how to do this is to display a short biography for each character somewhere, as well as a link to their trove page.
What did I learn about our concept / the project / the
brief / the design process…
- from the feedback received?
Our team did not receive much feedback in response to our pitch, so I can't draw many conclusions about our concept/project or brief from this.
- from seeing other teams’ concepts?
Comparing our concept to the other teams, I realized that ours was very different in the basic idea. Most groups seem to have come up with concepts that center around making an interesting interface for retrieving specific data from trove, rather than using trove data to create something to interest the user, as our game concept does.
- How have these realizations affected my/our own
concepts & process since?
Looking at the other teams concept has made our team realize that our concept doesn't directly present much data to trove. In response to this we have been thinking of ways to present the data from trove directly to the user. At the moment, our favored idea for how to do this is to display a short biography for each character somewhere, as well as a link to their trove page.
Week 4:
This week, our group had chose our three main ideas to expand on, in preparation for choosing the best idea to work on as our final project. As a part of this, during our contact our group split, with two of us staying at our table to present our ideas to the rest of the contact, while the rest of us discussed the ideas of other groups, pointing out flaws and good points that might not be obvious to the teams that came up with them (see attached photos for notes on other teams ideas).
Our group also came up with a poster design for the idea we are currently favoring('fates collide'), however I had little input in this (my suggestions were for it to be dynamic and exciting, since 'fates collide' is supposed to be a fighting game based off of trove results on famous people.
This week, our group had chose our three main ideas to expand on, in preparation for choosing the best idea to work on as our final project. As a part of this, during our contact our group split, with two of us staying at our table to present our ideas to the rest of the contact, while the rest of us discussed the ideas of other groups, pointing out flaws and good points that might not be obvious to the teams that came up with them (see attached photos for notes on other teams ideas).
Our group also came up with a poster design for the idea we are currently favoring('fates collide'), however I had little input in this (my suggestions were for it to be dynamic and exciting, since 'fates collide' is supposed to be a fighting game based off of trove results on famous people.
- What did you learn about your attitudes to working in a team? Which Belbin roles did you identify with?
I found that I tended to be withdrawn from my team, preffering to go along with them rather than suggest different ideas. When asked specifically however, I found myself easily suggesting ideas I had been thinking of but would otherwise not have presented. I think I identified with the Monitor evaluator most, and somewhat with the Implementer, belbin roles.
- Were you surprised by either your Leadership or Team Score following the first quiz? Why/why not? You don't need to specify the scores that you received - rather was it higher/lower than you expected.
I found my teamwork score was higher than I expected, since I dislike working in teams due to my shyness. I found my Leadership score to be roughly as I expected however, as it described how I often feel in teams: like I'm close to taking a leadership role, but being to shy and uneasy with the responsibility.
- Did you identify with any of the causes of conflict? Is it something you have a tendency to do or something you have experienced from previous team projects? How will you manage this if it occurs in this team project?
I identified a little with the 'People withdrawing/losing' interest type of conflict, as I often withdraw from contact with people. I plan to stay in contact with my team using facebook, a communication medium we all agreed upon, to ensure i stay active in the team.
- What is important to you when working in a team?
Working together to achieve the best results is probably the most important thing to me when in a team.
Sunday 17 August 2014
Week 2 journal entry
Week 2:
Didn't do as much this week as I maybe should have. Haven't talked with my group much, and we still need to organize our meeting time before the next workshop.
During the contact, we all wrote down ideas for apps trove could be used for, then tried to categorize them at each table. We then merged our ideas/categories with adjacent tables. I found my table had trouble merging categories with the table next to us, since the table next to us was a lot more specific with their games categories then we had been. In hindsight, rather than trying to combine the categories, it probably would have been better to just assign some new categories unrelated to the preexisting categories, then put ideas into them as we felt appropriate.
We've got the idea our group formed around (Major events in the 9 months leading up to your birthday), which we need to sit down and hammer out a bit more, as well as a couple of other ideas. I need to expand on an idea I kinda liked, which is tracking and comparing disasters.
I was thinking for this, an app that looks through articles for commonly occurring words (like hurricane, tsunami, earthquake), and outputting them to a map. The outputs could be color coded depending on the amount of coverage they got, and have icons based on what sort of disaster they were. I have more details written down in a word document, that I plan to put ideas in as I/my team develop them.
I hope this is enough. I'm... not entirely sure what I'm supposed to say in this blog post, so yeah, hope this is right.
Didn't do as much this week as I maybe should have. Haven't talked with my group much, and we still need to organize our meeting time before the next workshop.
During the contact, we all wrote down ideas for apps trove could be used for, then tried to categorize them at each table. We then merged our ideas/categories with adjacent tables. I found my table had trouble merging categories with the table next to us, since the table next to us was a lot more specific with their games categories then we had been. In hindsight, rather than trying to combine the categories, it probably would have been better to just assign some new categories unrelated to the preexisting categories, then put ideas into them as we felt appropriate.
We've got the idea our group formed around (Major events in the 9 months leading up to your birthday), which we need to sit down and hammer out a bit more, as well as a couple of other ideas. I need to expand on an idea I kinda liked, which is tracking and comparing disasters.
I was thinking for this, an app that looks through articles for commonly occurring words (like hurricane, tsunami, earthquake), and outputting them to a map. The outputs could be color coded depending on the amount of coverage they got, and have icons based on what sort of disaster they were. I have more details written down in a word document, that I plan to put ideas in as I/my team develop them.
I hope this is enough. I'm... not entirely sure what I'm supposed to say in this blog post, so yeah, hope this is right.
Sunday 3 August 2014
Based on what I know of this course, I expect to be
doing […] this semester.
From what I have seen of this course so far, I expect to be doing a lot of thinking, teamwork and response to feedback.
I want to learn/experience/do […]
I want to experience the process of designing an application as part of a team, and create an interesting application.
I’m worried about […]
Having trouble deciding on and implementing a good application, and remembering to keep my portfolio up to date.
I hope that I can […]
Do well in this course, and deliver a good final project, portfolio and journal entries.
doing […] this semester.
From what I have seen of this course so far, I expect to be doing a lot of thinking, teamwork and response to feedback.
I want to learn/experience/do […]
I want to experience the process of designing an application as part of a team, and create an interesting application.
I’m worried about […]
Having trouble deciding on and implementing a good application, and remembering to keep my portfolio up to date.
I hope that I can […]
Do well in this course, and deliver a good final project, portfolio and journal entries.
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