Week 13 - Final Demonstration and Course Reflection

Week 13 consisted of a final demonstration of the website to our peers and a final report outlining everything regarding the website. The tutors asked us several questions and the team answered them to the best of our ability. We were then tasked to go test the other teams' websites while they tested ours.

Overall, My initial expectations of DECO1800 were quite large - I expected that my knowledge of web design was going to be further developed and that my skills with implementing them would also reach a higher standard. Furthermore, I expected that I would gain some skills with programs such as PhotoShop - which, in turn, would assist in the development of the aforementioned web design. Another expectation that I wished to see fulfilled was my teamwork capabilities - I have had trouble in the past with teams that don't necessarily 

pull their weight - often due to a lack of communication. As a large part of the assessment in DECO1800 was group orientated, I wanted my group skills to reach a level I had considered satisfactory.

My expectations in regards to my skills in web design increasing were indeed met - I learnt several new aspects of web design (such as APIs and JSON) and further developed with skills with JavaScript and HTML. Unfortunately I was not able to say the same of my skills with PhotoShop. While my skill with the program definitely did improve, it didn’t reach the standard I was hoping for - in fact, most of the visual editing I did was outside PhotoShop. In regards to my team skills, I was delighted to see my group become good friends over the course - which was a major asset to the assignment as we could readily rely on each other to have our respective parts finished within the deadlines. By using multi-user platforms such as Google Docs, we were also enabled to easily work on group projects together and this allowed for a higher level of work to be done much quicker than if separate documents were used.

Overall, the aspects which did meet my expectations (developing web design skills and teamwork) did so due to the fact that I was consistently trying to develop those as much as I could. However, I can't say the same about the other aspects (learning PhotoShop) - this is due to the fact that I didn’t necessarily need the skills - I had alternatives to it and even then it was rarely needed. This led to a revision of my expectations of the course -
while the first two expectations were kept, the last expectation was abandoned due a lack of need.

Throughout DECO1800, I was taught a variety of things which assisted in the development of the skills needed for the major project. The most important thing, by far, was what APIs were and how to implement them. As our website was heavily based around APIs this became an essential skill. Furthermore my team skills improved significantly over the duration of the course. In regards to what I would change in DECO1800, the only major changes I would make is how I approached the course (as the tutors and the classes themselves were more than satisfactory in my eyes). I noticed this while I was learning PhotoShop - the way I approached things that I didn’t really want to learn that much was less than satisfactory; in fact, had I kept a more enthusiastic approach, I wouldn’t have had to alter my expectations for the course.

Week 12 - Final Report

My part in the last moments of the final report was quite small in comparison to the other reports that we made - I had to write about the challenges that we encountered in the process of making our website, the successful and unsuccessful aspects of the website and any implementations that we couldn’t actually input to the final website.

 For the challenges portion of our report, I wrote about the difficulty the group faced when we were trying to align the dates from Trove to dates that the user had entered. This was an issue that was resolved in the final moments of the semester; showing it was quite an adversary in comparison to the other parts of the website.

 For the successful portions of the website, I wrote about the aforementioned date alignment, the location filter and the mapping on Google Maps - all of which were successful aspects of our website. However, I also had to write about the unsuccessful aspects as well - in which I discussed the major issues with NearMe. One of these was the fact that Trove would grab events from outside of Australia if the location was outside as well. This became a problem; for example, there are two cities named Ipswich - One in Europe, the other in Australia.

 In regards to the unsuccessful implementations, there were quite a few that we couldn't implement successfully - this was due to complexity and/or time constraints. One of these was the fact that we didn't use a timeline to alter the date filter, like originally planned - instead we had to use the text boxes to allow user input for this filter. Another implementation that couldn't be successfully finished was the fact that Trove could not separate actual major events from minor happenings. This resulted in Trove displaying things like 'Local Shop has had a break-in' and this is something that unfortunately could not be fixed for the final website.

Week 11 - Digital Prototype and Test

The Digital Prototyping Session was one that allowed us to see what our peers thought of our website, NearMe. Overall, the results were positive than negative - and even then, the 'negative' results are based around problems that are extremely easy to fix. The results of the survey (with the questions asked in it) can be found at this link:

 https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1Nlep2HlCf6Vk0CeUqZKXetoC0yKpnbq2ZI-pZ53NO6o/edit?usp=sharing

Overall, it was fairly nerve-wracking, seeing my peers review our website, as from what I had seen, several groups had produced work of an immensely high quality - and appeared much more professional than ours. However these worries were essentially removed after talking to some of our peers in the discussion. There was a large amount of people who agreed with our choice of making the website work, before making it look aesthetically pleasing.

Next week will have the conclusion of the final report, in which I will be covering what my part was in the report.

Week 10 - The Date Filter and the Splash Screen

Team Hermes finally made the breakthrough that resulted in the resolving of a persistent and difficult error that had been a thorn in our side for a very long time. The date filter that the team wanted to implement was for a long time unsuccessful as any attempt to make the filter work would result in search results being completely different from what was searched or the filter not running at all.

However, a solution was finally found by researching and looking at past examples. By re-working old code that was essentially designed to do what we needed to do, the search function finally became fully operational with both location and date being used as filters to narrow down events. While there still are a number of bugs in the system (for example, Trove grabbing international events), this was still a huge step forward.

Furthermore, NearMe has had a visual update added on: the Splash Screen. Team Hermes felt that simply presenting the user with the main screen would be quite disorienting. Thus, they will be presented with this:

This screen will hopefully provide them with some clarity about NearMe and not confuse them immediately.

Week 9 - Work Report for NearMe and the Progress Demonstration

This week was filled with deadlines for NearMe - firstly, the team needed to make sure the website had reached a standard fit for presentation. Secondly, the group needed to finish the progress report - one which would outline everything the website was capable of, what we were planning to add/remove and any major changes made to our website. Thirdly, the group needed to prepare a presentation which would essentially put our report into our progress report into a demonstration.

There wasn't really anything major we needed to do for the website; the core website had been done - however, there were still gimmicks with the date filter. Despite this, we reasoned that the website could still perform a standard search which, after all, was all the presentation needed to do. We added the basic CSS which would become the skeleton of our final product and continued to work on the report as that was a higher priority at the time.

Unlike the previous documentation, the whole group was unable to collaborate on the progress report, due to the presentation and the website itself needing attention. Thus, the team split up and left two members to complete the progress report while the other two attended the website and the presentation respectively. Overall, the report was well structured and answered all the questions the rubric had outlined - which left the team satisfied at its quality.

In regards to the presentation, the team actually prepared an adequate speech for the presentation - which allowed for a more structured demonstration to be presented. While there were a few small issues regarding the presentation appearing on the monitors, the overall presentation ran smoothly, with the team successfully showing what NearMe was capable of.

Next week should hopefully bring a solution to the date filer issue!

Week 8 - Work on Progress Report Commences

The team put work on NearMe to a pause to commence work on the planning of the Progress Report. Overall the structure of the of the planning is quite straighforward: While the actual writing will be done by only one or two members (to allow for work on NearMe to re-commence), each team member will add their information about the respective parts of the report in a dot-point list to allow for the writers to have a clear list of things to add to the report.

Furthermore along with the report, there will be a demonstration of NearMe and thus the tutors have requested that we ask three questions of them in regards to our website. After careful consideration, Team Hermes will be asking the following:

1. What are your general thoughts on the aesthetics of the website?

2. How efficient do you think the filter options of using location and date are?

3. In regards to the demonstration of the events, are they well placed? If not, how might you suggest we change that?

Experience with Paper Prototyping

Overall, the paper prototype of NearMe that Team Hermes produced was a success - the prototype was (according to the testers) clear and easy to understand - and this was essentially proven by the large amount of feedback we received.

The paper prototype is shown below:

After letting the testers play around with the prototype, we asked them 3 questions:

1. What did you think of the general interface?

The general consensus was that there should be a page leading to the map to allow users to have a bit more clarity in understanding what was going on. Furthermore, a large amount of users insisted that we add a help button to ensure that even if the user had no idea what was going on, there was a source of information that would help them.

2. What are your thoughts on the concept of NearMe? Can it be refined in anyway?

While the majority of testers agreed that the concept was interesting, a very small fraction of people suggested that we try and make the results that appear vary in size, in accordance to how important they were. However, this would essentially be impossible as Trove had no way of outlining events let alone their importance.

3. Can you think of any potential bugs that we may have to deal with?

There were two main answers to this question - the first answer was that Trove was an international database - as we had no way of restricting the results to Australia, Trove would be grabbing results from across the globe. A secondary problem that was pointed out was that we had no way of removing results that weren't 'events' because, as mentioned previously, Trove does not outline events in any way.

Overall, the results gathered from this prototyping session went a long way in helping Team Hermes refine NearMe and will prove to be a a major step in removing issues that will hinder the user experience.

NearMe Continuation Report!

NearMe is coming along nicely, with the map and Trove being successfully implemented into the core program. The website is now capable of extracting small amounts of information from Trove and putting in the dialogue boxes provided by Google Maps. However, at the moment, these capabilities only work properly with the 'Location' filter - if the user attempts to input a date, the website will simply state that 'There are no events with these conditions'.

The progress report is also underway, with the team hard at work at completing each section. The work has been divided equally to remove any chance of negative feelings within the team and hopefully the pieces of the report will come together and fit perfectly.

Currently, the team is also preparing to make a paper prototype of 'NearMe' which will show the other teams what our project is designed to do and to gather feedback. Team Hermes has decided to use the software Balsamiq to create the prototype and hopefully it will represent NearMe well enough for the users to gain a basic understanding of the website.

Poster and Pitch Reflection

Our group has been working hard and with the concept of 'NearMe' firmly underway, Team Hermes has finally begun to work on our end goals. Recently, Team Hermes had to present a pitch in which the team had to outline what our website was designed to do.

Essentially, from what our pitch outlined, 'NearMe' is a mapping website which, using both the Google Maps API and the Trove database, would create a map of Australia which would take the dates and location the user implemented and print out a list of events corresponding to what the user inputted. A simple example of this would be :

User Input: Location = Brisbane, Date = 2011

The 2011 floods were a major event at this point in time and thus would appear on the map.

Overall the pitch was a satisfactory one - Team Hermes managed to get the general concept of 'NearMe' across fairly well, but there was still a lot of room for improvement. For example, actually making a planned script would have helped majorly as there were quite a lot of awkward silences - furthermore, there was no time for the tutors to ask questions about NearMe because the team almost went overtime.

In regards to the poster, it was well thought-out and reflected the idea fairly well:

The only complaint that the team had in regards to the poster was that there was a chance that wasn't aesthetically appealing enough. Surprisingly, the tutors appeared to like the poster so our only major qualm was averted. 

Trove & API

Our first workshop of the semester had us exploring the functionalities of Trove and API. Initially we were tasked to use the multiple Trove search engines on the DECO1800 cloud site to demonstrate what Trove could do. The three search engines used were:

Trove Ultra Basic:

Trove Basic:

Images from Trove:

and finally, Date searching from Trove:

These engines were used to assist us in showing the results of Trove.

Teamwork Module and Reflection

The teamwork module highlighted some key points for me and showed me several ways to improve on my skills in working with a group. I have had several bad experiences with groups in the past, but after identifying the issues using this module, I feel like i can ensure that i do not make the same mistakes twice.

Overall the survey provided useful insights that would allow my group to function more effectively - by making sure that all group members were included and that work was distributed fairly. However, I (and my group) already are functioning well, so this advice is mostly redundant.

However, I still have some concerns about the group itself. We have already chosen a topic ('Rick Rolling') but with this topic comes the ridiculous ease to get off track. Furthermore, the group tends to 'split' in group meetings with half the group in a conversation and the other half in another. However, both these issues can be avoided; by staying focused on the goals of the assignment and by ensuring that all group members partake in a large-scale group discussion.

I also wish to ensure that I am a group member who can be relied upon and does his part for the team. I wish to be a group member who doesn't get 'carried' and ensures that everyone in the group feels included and feels happy to be part of my group. If I can ensure this, then I feel like I will be a good group member.

Week 2 - The first signs of Contact!

In our first contact of the semester, our main objective was to mingle and socialize with each other. Initially, we were to split into groups based upon our month of birth to try and meet new people, however this was still fairly unsuccessful - the introductions felt forced and awkward. After this, it was decided that the best way to break the ice would be to try and establish what people liked. To do this, the tutors decided to pick a topic (for example, who do you prefer: Kanye West or Taylor Swift?) and told the class to separate based on our preferences. There was also an opportunity to select a middle ground for those who were on both sides of the argument. After several of these, the class was tasked to start researching past assignments and to use the research tool Trove to try and brainstorm some ideas about the main piece of assessment.

Making the most of DECO1800

Based on what I have learnt from the prerequisites to this course, i expect to be learning the elements of computing design on websites and other online platforms to a higher degree. My expectations are of the more advanced design studios such as Photo Shop becoming highly relevant as they will allow me to further develop my skills for the course.

The experiences and knowledge I wish to gain is quite extensive. I understand that this course will be providing me with quite a large amount of knowledge, but I want to be able to understand all of it and make as much use of it as I can. I wish to be to be able to use the design studios to a high level of skill and use them to their full potential. I also want to be able to improve my skills with design that I have already learnt to a higher degree and cement the knowledge I gained last semester.

I'm worried about working in a team, as my level of production in a team has generally always been lower than working by myself. This is more due to the fact that I don't really communicate properly with my teammates than anything else, but this is something that I can hopefully fix up soon so it doesn't impediment my production for the project. Furthermore, I'm worried about the regularity of journal entries. I have been known to be a little forgetful, so there have been times where I haven't fulfilled the entry by the required time. Hopefully, I can practice this enough to change this.

My expectations for this course are that I will be able to learn about the design element of computing studios to a high enough level that I will be able to make use of the skills learnt in other courses.