Group meeting

Date: 18th November 2010

We're still working on finishing the remaining wireframes. For each page we worked on, we had a simple discussion about it, as we left the pages that requires a lot of user interaction and results for the last because it's a big task, and probably the most important for the website.

For the event calendar page, we had a discussion of how to show the events, by calendar or by a simple search by the postcode. In this, we wanted it to be as easy as possible for the user to find events that might interest them. We've all agreed on having the user to search by postcode or location, and show results of events in that area.

Another thing we've argued about was should events be added by the library, and whether we have to also design a page for that or not. Each event is going to be clickable, if the user is interested in one, a new page will open containing the name of the event, location, time, contact details, and a brief description about that event. And underneath that on the bottom right, there will be a link which will lead to "find a library" page.

Next page was the reading groups, and we've all agreed that its going to be similar to the find a library, a user can search for reading groups using the post code or area. I've also suggested that on the right side of the search, we can should have "add a reading group" option, this way, if a user was more interested in adding their own group instead of searching for one, they have the option to do without going through the search. Depending on the hierarchy of importance for the items on the page, the search is going to be the center attention then having the add option next to it.

Results will be simple, since there isn’t too much information to show, it's going to show the group name, what is it about, and contact details, for example:

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Group name | About | Contact

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group1 | book1 | mobile and email

And so on. Another option we're going to add at the bottom of the page, either if the search turns out with zero results, or the user didn't find a group with their interest, is the a link to "add a reading group" page.

(Can't find a reading group in your area meeting your interests? click here to start your own).

The "add a reading group" page is going to be a simple form:

Group name:

About/details:

Contacts: phone and email

Next, is find / browse reviews, browse and search should be in the same page, giving the user the browse option (list of categories) and also, the search. Each category will be a drop down list. As for the search, the user can either search by title, author, or keywords.

When we started the add a review page, we had an argument about if we should have the user put their name as the first field or not, I preferred that the username field should be the first one, this way he won't be confused between his personal details and the details of the review, but the argument ended by all agreeing to have the field right before the review textarea, and the user have the option to either fill it or not.

The form:

Book title:

Author:

Genre: (dropdown menu)

Tagline/review name: (This will show as the title for each review in the book's page)

Star rating: (graphics)

Your name:

Review: (with a max character counter)

While working the wireframes, we have made a few changed to the sitemap that I've done. This is the list of changes:

-Change the "individual details for events" page from 4.1.1 to 4.1.n

-Add a book page 6.2.n.1 under book reviews.

-Add a confirm page 6.1.1 under book reviews > add form

TO DO FOR NEXT WEEK:

-Amend the sitemap

-Read more about CSS

Individual work

Date: 17th November 2010

This is the first time for me to do a sitemap, and to be honest I was sure on how or what I'm going to use to do it, that’s why I took this task, to learn. In the beginning I thought about using ConceptDRAW pro, but it didn't do what I was expecting, as it wasn't suitable for sitemaps.

While working on the sitemap, I've realized that there are some pages that we forgot to include in the sketch we've done before together, and while going through the scenarios again, I've noticed that these pages are required but because it's a big website, we mistakenly forgot it.

This is a snapshot of the sitemap.

I've also finished re-doing the scenarios using the template we've decided on.

TO DO FOR THIS WEEK:

-Go through the sitemap and the wireframes with the group for the last time before we start coding.

Week6

Date: 12th November 2010

Today's group work was more focused on finished the wireframes of the website, since we're almost behind in that, we had to finish all the remaining pages in order to start designing the website. We started doing the wireframe for the pages before having the new sitemap ready, that's what caused us a bit of delay in finishing, because we were thinking of the pages from the top of our heads without knowing the architecture of the website how it's going to be.

We started sketching the sitemap, depending on the wireframes of what we've already done, and on the scenarios for each of our personas.

We faced some problems in deciding whether we're going to have events in the website added by users or the librarians. We've also couldn't decide how the book reviews going to appear in the page when a user search for a certain book, I've suggested that each book should have it's own page showing the book cover, title, author, brief description, and under it the reviews should appear depending on the viewer's choice, either by date, or by rate.

The browse for book reviews was a bit tricky, as we couldn't decide on how are we going to categorize the books, so we had a look at different websites such as Amazon, Barnes and Noble ... etc, to find out how they categorize books.

I've chosen to take the sitemap and produce a digital, organized version of it, and also redo my scenarios with the template of which we decided to have it all to look like. The template was done by Rosa, and it fitted the process of our project, and was reasonably understandable when we are going to design the website.

TO DO FOR THIS WEEK:

-SITEMAP

-SCENARIOS

Group meeting

Date: 11th November 2010

Today we agreed to meet so we can try finish as much as possible from the designing process for each page we are going to re-design for the website. We have also finished the rest of the user journeys we didn't get around doing before.

The pages we wireframed are the homepage, search, and find a library. For each page, we agreed to have a slight description about the service.

The homepage is going to be slightly the same as the current one, we're just going to put all the services that the website is going to provide and a little description about it. This way, the user will be given a general idea about the website and it’s purpose, instead of having them going around the website trying to understand what is it for.

For the search, we decided instead of having to search pages, we could simply have one page and giving the user the option of either a simple search or a detailed search.

Find a library is going to stay the same for the search page and the results; the only changes we are going to make are in the results page. We're going to have the name of each library as a link to the library's website, and the distance for that library next to it.

In the details section, there is going to be the address of the library, the phone number, email, and Google maps for that library.

So far, things are going great, even if we are slightly behind schedule; I still think we are doing a great job, as we are paying attention to every little details concerning the user and the usability of the website.

We still haven't finished all the pages yet, but for now we agreed to meet every Thursday, to keep track of our individual progress, as well as the group’s one.

Week5

Date: 5th November 2010

This week's lecture covered sitmapping, Navigation, labelling and categorization. The point of these, is to understand what users are expecting from the website.

Visitors of any website are expecting some content to be put in the same place as they got used to it on many major websites, it means as its just a standard design, Such as the search box, the basket for ordering online, etc.

Also, it would be a good design if the website had a description about what is it for on the main page, this way visitors don't have to go around wasting time thinking what this website is going to be just to find out that they don't need anything from this website.

We didn't have time to have a group meeting, as we had a tutorial on designing the first wepage using Dreamweaver and implementing a Cascading Style Sheets (CSS). This wasn't a hard tutorial for me, as I have experience in designing websites as it was my job before coming to UK. So I took the time in this tutorial to help my group with this, explaining everything to them and giving them solutions if they had some troubles.

So far, I'm getting along with the group very well, and as I hoped, helping them at this tutorial has already broken the barrier between us and we already started to act as teammates in one project.

Week4

Date: 29th October 2010

As I joined this module late (because of my late application to the MSc course), this was my first lecture. But I've got a general idea about this module, and it's basically talking about how to best design a website so it can be suitable for the user, covering all aspects. As I have a previous experience from one of my modules in the undergraduate, this is going to be an easy assessment for me in my opinion.

For this week, we covered user journeys and the content for each website, so the user can navigate through the website without giving the user the feeling that he is lost, and we should consider all possible barriers and problems the user might face to avoid it.

In this also I've joined the group that I'm going to work with. Our project is about redesigning the website (http://www.peoplesnetwork.gov.uk/). The group already started with their work, so I had to catch up with them. It's not easy to join late and start working on such assignments or projects instantly, and also because the group already started to work on the assignment, I guess I'm going to have some troubles catching up and understanding the purpose of it. The group was trying their best to welcome me and to explain what's already done, and what's going to be done in the future. Unfortunately I always have troubles interacting with people I don't know yet, but I'm trying to get over this as fast as possible if I want to gain experience out of this, and also to get good grades.

For this week's group work, we had a brainstorm session about personas, the expected users for the website, depending on interviews done by the group. Then we implemented the same process for the user journeys that was taught in class with these personas.

For the user journeys, we have divided the work between us, we had 3 personas, I was doing the user journey for "Sophie", the librarian, and "Mary", the teacher.

For Sophie, her goals for using the website are:

-Contribute a book review

-Finds top10 sellers or Booker prize winners

Mary:

-Finds a reading group in her area, or start a new one.

At first, and because I still don't have the exact idea of the website, or how are we going to re-design it, I struggled in doing the user journeys, so I decided to do it as I would've imagined the website is going to look like, from the brief idea I got after the group work. Then in our next meeting, I'm going to discuss it with the rest of the group and see if I'm on the right track or not.