PM Entry 6/12/07

As we are getting closer to the deadline my post's to this blog will become more brief as my time will be focused on making sure we have the site complete along with the rest of the assignment. We plan to have the site finished this coming Thursday to hand over to Dean so he can add the updateable functionality and then he can upload it to the college server.

Chris has said in his entry the last of the content needs to be supplied to us by Tuesday which will give us time to have the site finished, I have emailed Harriet to ask her opinion on where and how we should add a copyline for the images that she and the rest of the photography students supplied for the site.

As we near completion of the site there is still a lot of written work to complete before deadline day which I know I will struggle to do, these include an overall evaluation of the site a review of the goals, an evaluation of the team and of my own performance.

Developer Update (07/12/07)

First point, minus some content the website is almost finished.

All that needs to be done now is add the news page and the article that Mark is writing to it and a few small changes. For next week the site map has to be fully completed and for Dean the files all need to be converted to the .asp extension and a breakdown of the site with the necessary editable sections. We also have a few profiles that need to be added but as we do not have them I am just going to add the optimised images into the profile folder in the images folder.

On Tuesday night I will stop all additions to the website and set up the files ready for Dean to add his CMS to. He has requested a short document telling him which pages need updating and where but he has been advised to liase with Mark regarding how and when it will be updated.

I also need to make a small banner for the Ossett Albion FC football website and add Julians and Scotts Banners as well.

Designer’s Entry for 29/11/07

This week I have been creating the user testing video, as well as completing the user testing report.

For the video, I needed to show the screen recording, as well as the user’s facial reactions to what was happening on screen. As we had recorded both, I thought this would be a relatively simple task to complete. However, the .avi files from the screen recording would not open correctly in my video editing software.

To get around this, I had to open the files in Quicktime, and then save them as .mov files. This then allowed me to import them into Premiere Elements 3.0 which I was going to use for editing the video.

Design wise, I chose to make the larger background image the screen recording, so that the viewer would be able to see where the cursor was going. In the bottom right corner, I would show the tester’s facial reactions. I chose this corner because this is the least used part of the screen, and I could afford to make the screen recording larger with the user video covering the corner. Although slightly intrusive, it would allow greater clarity for the screen recording.

At the end of each video clip I created a slide in Photoshop which would display the key points of each test. This summary would inform the viewer of any issues raised during each test. At the end of the video I created some credits for the team members, and also summarised the changes which would need to be made to the site.

I checked the video for errors and consistency before exporting it as MPEG 2 format. This took a large amount of time to compress, as the source files were rather large. The total length of the video is around 14 minutes, and gave a comprehensive overview of the usability test.

I have now been able to finish the usability testing report, and have uploaded the files to our online production scheduler. These all have our individual names on, and can just be printed and inserted into our submission folder which we will be doing over the next week.

The project is finally coming to a close, and now we are just making small amendments to our site. Putting the folder together will take a lot of time, and we are planning to look through each others to make sure that there is evidence for all of the learning outcomes.

Now that we have the majority of the content, I can start to put together the assets list for the site over this week. This will be a rather long task, as we have many photographs and other elements which have been given to us by both the college website administrator and by the photography students.

Developer Update

***** FLASH UDPATE ******
The biggest news this week is that I have finally got Flash to validate! I had it validating last Thursday but I was unaware that it did not play the movie in FireFox. From the original code I had stripped out the <embed></embed> Tags as these were the ones stopping it from validating.

I tried using the 'Satay' method but had problems with it and couldn't get it to even display in any browser, more an error on my behalf. I eventually tried the UFO (Unobtrusive Flash Object) technique. This loads the video in through JavaScript and I found that this did not display it in IE but gave me the option to load in alternative objects in it's place. Instead of an image I have added the <object> and stripped out the embed code and it validates and displays in both Firefox and IE.

More profiles have been added to the site and the nav bar adjusted accordingly. I have also added some links into the links page for applying for courses and links to Wakefield Wildcats and Ossett Town FC.

Have looked into accessibility, Scott is currently dealing with the Flash video and when I get that back I am going to add code to this so that it will start at a different image.

At the moment I am currently doing thumbnails for a small banner ad for Ossett Town FC for the sponsors div.

P.M. Entry 29/11/07

After last week's reasonably successful user testing, there were a few amendments for Chris to complete on the site, the full details can be seen in his post.

I invited our client to a meeting to see the site nearing completion, this was beneficial to all of us as it gave us a clear understanding of what was left to be done, hopefully we haven't missed out anything obvious at this late stage.

There are always small problems that pop up when the site becomes more complete and this one is no exception, our particular problem is the amount of scrolling that the user has to do in order to see the third player profile. At the start of the project it was agreed that they were to be put on one continual page as requested by the client (even though Chris had suggested that they should be put on separate pages.)

We tried an anchor link for the different players at the top of the page, but after seeking feedback we found that the positioning of the link confused the breadcrumb trail at the top so we decided to go for the profiles on different pages, so I admit that we were wrong and Chris was right.

We have a large area down the right hand side of the site that we have left for sponsorship, at the moment it is populated by one large banner suggesting to the user to "have their add here" ,but we discussed with Mark that this should change to a number of smaller ads that would act as a "mock-up" to show potential sponsors how their add would be shown in a more realistic way.

So each of the group will do a design a banner ad for a potential sponsors which are Wakefield wildcats which I am doing, Puma which Julian is designing and Chris will design an add for Ossett Town, this will be good an enjoyable task as it will give me a chance to flex my design muscles!

I have also taken control of the Flash movie again that temporarily went back to Chris, which I have nearly completed but I need to give each one of the images a title and a description for the movie to reach the accessibility guidelines. This process seems to be taking forever as I have to name the image which has now become a Movie clip a total of 4 times, it will be worth it in the end I hope!

Designer – User testing

After researching the user testing the previous week, I then had to put together an actual user test which would be done on the day. My research had shown me that the test would be broken down into 3 sections, starting with an initial impressions section which would be used to gauge what they thought about the site at the first look.

Sections
The second section would be comprised of scenarios which the user would follow. These would be both on screen by the computer, and on camera to see the facial reactions of the test subject.

The final section would ask the user what their opinions of the site were, and would ask them what they think would need changing.

For the scenarios, I tried to write ones which would test a selection of the pages we had finished. As we were lacking rather a lot of content (due to our client not providing it) there were not a huge number of scenarios we could do without repetition. I think that the scenarios were the best we could have put together with the information we had available to us at the time.

Testing Day

On the day of the test we prepared our equipment as we had prepared the week previous. However, as with most things in this project, id did not go quite as smoothly as we liked. None of our testers showed up, which we all felt was very frustrating and inconsiderate, as we have all put a considerable amount of time into this project. <

Our backup plan was to ask fellow students from our class to do the test, and this way we would at least have some results to evaluate. This went well, and has provided us with some good information about the changes which need to be made to the site, which Chris has posted below.

Self Study

This week I have been writing up a report of our usability testing, which I will be illustrating on Thursday after I have got some feedback from the team about the written content. This will of course be done in academic format, with references to other parts of the project, screenshots and the video which I will be putting together next week. I will then assemble all of the resources together and prepare them for the folder by playing them in plastic wallets, and by amending the names at the bottom of the sheets so that is ready for submission.

All in all it was not as bad a week as I had anticipated, and now we can concentrate on finishing the site and putting the final submissions together over the remaining weeks.

Developer - User Testing

The user testing didn't exactly go as expected but from the feedback we got from our peers I think we got better results. There are a few issues about the website that arose, nothing too serious though, they can be changed quite easily.

Had we have user tested the Sports students I don't think we would have had as accurate results.

The following changes need to be made:

• Scrolling on profiles
• Incorrect link
• Some errors on Flash Slideshow
• Some links not obvious

Scrolling on Profiles
This has been sorted by adding anchors to the website to let the user click a name and be taken to that part of the site, Football section has been changed but I need to add links that let the user go back to the top.

Incorrect Link
One of the links on the Introduction page was incorrect trying to point to a file in the "rubgy" folder. This has been changed and after the site is more or less complete a thorough 'examination' will be undertaken.

Some errors in Flash
On closer inspection the Flash Slideshow had the top border missing so it looked like there was a little 'tick' or extention at the top of the file. This has been sorted but I think a keyline is needed as the static images have borders and it would lose consistency.

Another unresolved issue with the Flash is that the drop down menus hide behind the flash. I have asked John how to sort this

Some links not obvious
The links on the Match Reports page was not really that obvious it was a link so I have no received the image of a piece of paper (like other sports sites) to show it is a Match Report Link.

To Do

• Sort the rest of the website out
• Add faces to names in the profiles
• Do cross browser report
• Look at the accessibility guidelines
• Find how to make Flash accessible

Those in red are the more important ones to complete.