Assignment 7

Can be found here. It's not late, I just forgot to post it to my blog. You can check the date created on either the files or the archive.

http://www.biteme.webfreehosting.net/Projects.html

Assignment 6

Can be found here. It's not late, I just forgot to post it to my blog. You can check the date created on either the files or the archive.

http://www.biteme.webfreehosting.net/Projects.html

Podcast 4- Calling BS on Perfectionism.

Found here: http://boagworld.com/design/perfectionism

This is a short blog post about perfection and web design. The writer in this post is angry about the idea of perfectionism when is comes to websites. He thinks that there people who are going for perfection are arrogant, since their idea of perfection is different than the next guy or the owner/ consumer of the website. The author uses and follows the pragmatic approach and tries to make sense of their resources and a more down to earth approach.

What I got out of this was just to highly consider your budget, audience, and other specifics. Thinking about perfectionism will just make thinks complicated or blow them out of proportion.

Assignment 5- CCS Block | Inline

Inline CSS code is when lines only take up as much space as they actually need. There is no wasted space.

Block CSS cod is when new lines appear before and after an element, consuming the full width available.

I'm not too sure if I understand this concept too much.

You would use block coding when doing paragraphs with pictures and what not and you would use inline coding. I can't really give other examples since I don't really understand it too much... I feel as though you should teach us a little more instead of throwing new concepts at us.

Heres what I came up with with :

The end.

BITEme is back up ^_^

I don't know what happened but BITEme.webfreehosting.net was down for a few hours. Whatever the issue was, it's be resolved and everything's back to normal. Don't be afraid to show your joy haha.

BITEme

Temporary Website Up

For whatever reason, WebFreeHosting.net is down and not giving letting me know when it might be back up. Just my luck =_='' But whatever the new site is http://www.saywhat.zxq.net/

I'll be using that until my issue with BITEme is resolved.

Assignment 4- Design Sponge

I like this blog because it looks really warm and inviting. I like the font choice and colors because they all seem to fit together. I like that the design of the blog itself looks like it was a D.I.Y. project with the doilies and ribbons and stuff. I think that fits really well. I like the way the pictures are in the blog post and how the author uses thumbnail to show the step by step instructions on how to make certain things. I like the mesh pattern that's used as the background. I like the brightness of the colors and the sections for the archives and the side menu. FOr its category I the the blog is very well constructed and everything fits and works well together with out making it look too plain.

Podcast 2- Playful Design

http://boagworld.com/design/playful

This podcast was about playful design and creative ways to design the user interface to make a better user experience and so that one interface can fit many different people and how to make the user experience less frustrating and more enjoyable. A quote that I found to be interesting was "We’re actually designing experiences that affect how happy people are on a daily basis ..." I thought that was interesting. I didn't think designers and engineers took things so seriously. The thing is when I think about it, it makes a lot of sense because that is true. People visit various websites on the daily for different reason, and the interesting between the user and the interface can indeed affect the users mood. Last thing a designer wants is to make something that pisses people off when they use it. This was switching back and forth between the idea of a playful/ enjoyable design and the idea of emotional design. There was this one part were they were talking about a test run for this pet charity thingy and the design they used was supposed to make people feel sorry for the animals or something I guess, anyway they used like a sad looking puppy or something and the first person to look at it started crying because it made her think of her dead pet. I thought that was kinda interesting. I mean, that's a lot of emotion O_O. One of the guest compares the interface design to learning a musical instrument. I didn't really get that too much, but the way they explained it was they want the interface to be something that the user "co-creates" so that they have their fair share in expressing themselves and catering it to themselves BUT also have game like element so that they don't go overboard and turn the experience into something the designer didn't want or something like that.

All in all I thought this one was okay. A little over my head but I understood some parts and the general idea. I really thought that quote was interesting because like I said, I never thought that way before.

Podcast 1- Stephen Anderson On Emotional Design

http://boagworld.com/design/emotional-design

I liked this podcast because it discussed the role of psychology in the design process. Stephen Anderson uses is basic psychology to aid the design process. He uses different types of user interactions. He uses a few examples of how companies are using a more interactive interface to draw in interest. He used cellphones as an example. He compared the Motorola and iPhone interface. Anderson was talking about how Motorola use to be top of the line then when the original iPhone came out it how it sorta like revolutionized the user interface. He also talking about how websites are trying to become more like games, by like giving perks like badges or points. Those kind of things appeal to people for some reason. He used farmville and iLike as examples on how they use psychological principles like possession in the design of websites. I thought that was really cool.

Project 1- Phase 1

I'm gonna redo this website: http://www.georgiew.de/.

This "client" wants a more minimal index page that showcases their work a little better.

I will be basing it off of the common elements that I found on these websites.

http://leahmacdonald.com/

http://www.fashionphotographer.it/

http://www.waltersandwalters.com/

I noticed on theses websites that the index page had a HUGE piece of the authors work. There was a nav bar at the top or the bottom. The text was pretty small and minimal use of text. I saw common links to a blog and different categories of photos. The background image was a slide show and EXTREMELY high quality. So yeah... that's my research.

BITEme IS LIVE! Sorta...

Firstly... My thoughts on Google Docs:

I like it. I love it. I've been using it since high school. To me (since I'm logged it) the interface looks like an Email inbox. When not logged in and with a clean cache it looks like microsoft word to me. It has the visual cues of the little speech box that's basically saying "Hey! Test out google docs and tell your friends!" also in the work space, the way the text it is hinting that you can edit it and add what you want. The blinking cursor in the work area is telling you that you can type here so that's another visual cue. I think I'm up to three or four now? I think that the fact that it has a formatting bar is also a dead give away that's its interactive. OH and another thing that caught my eye was how it gives you the option of making this demo doc a text doc, drawing, or a spread sheet. That was definitely one of the things that caught my eye. So yeah... I think that's all I can really say about that.

In other news... my new website BITEme is live. It's still under construction but I needed it up ASAP so I had to rush. At the moment I'm working on some graphics for it. Right now I'm trying to figure out what I want to do for the header.... I saw a few good renders at www.planetrenders.net but I don't know if I want to use them or draw something. Eh... I'll figure it out at some point. All I really need to do is come up with a header and a nav bar. I don't think I'll have too much else going on for this site. So here's the long awaited link to BITEme. Feel free to leave a comment on this post and tell me what you think I should do to spruce it up :) In my next post I'll be ranting about a web design pod cast like I'm supposed to... So yeah... Stay tuned!

www.BITEme.webfreehosting.com