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.