Week 9B- March 26

Today in class, we learned some more fundamentals of HTML and CSS, this time in more depth. This includes wrappers, centering, boxes, and div's. Although I understand it for the most part, some practice will really help in fully understanding the concepts, such as applying these skills to the homework assignment. The rest of class was given to us to start working on homework.


Homework:
-create a single webpage with something that represents your spirit animal and center it on the page
   - must have a background color or texture
   - animal element cannot be in a square cannot be just a photo
   - it must be uploaded to your student server space
   - make sure to give it a title page

- Read:
   - Above the Fold: Ch. 1-2
   - IID pages:
      - display factors, grid systems, page fold, Scanning vs. Reading

Week 9A- March 24

Today in class, we looked at other students' app presentations from St. Louis, Missouri whose were similar to ours. I have to say it was interesting to know that other schools are learning the same things we are and the fact that we are up to date with the technology used in the professional world, which is very beneficial. Afterwards, we were given a quick overview of HTML and CSS as an introduction to our next project. Since I have already taken an internet programming course last semester, this was sort of a review for me. 

Homework:

- watch videos 1-5 on dontfeartheinternet.com

- Readings: 

    - sitepoint.com (Should Web Designers Have Coding Skills)

    - www.csswizardry.com (Do Designers Need to Code)

    - speckyboy.com (How Much Code Should Web Designers Need to Know?)

(review of readings next class!)

Week 8B

Today in class, we watched everybody's final presentations and checked out their finalized app designs. I was overall impressed with how everybody's apps progressed and turned out in the end. Jenna and I presented last, and everybody seemed to like our presentation and had some suggestions to make our app better. Overall I am fairly pleased with how our app turned out, and am excited to move on to the next project!

Week 8A

Today in class, we mainly finished up our presentation and app design before applying it to Axure. Below you will see a finalized version of the app presentation and Jenna's app designs. All we have to do is rehearse our presentation in preparation for next class.

Week 7B- March 5

Today was mostly a work day once again, basically to work on our app screens and begin to put interaction and usability onto them using the program Axure. I also tested the improved app icon on the lab's icon with the improved white outline, but afterwards decided that it is too detailed and instead took it off. It was agreed that the CL is enough for the icon to be recognizable. Below you will see the icon with an without the hat. I feel that eliminating it was a great executive decision. Though I enjoyed how it looked on the logo while it was blown up on my computer screen, it was simply too small to see in the icon menu on the iPod, and thus seemed useless to have. I also re-did the iOS icon sizes with the new icon, which I will post below.

Jenna is still working on the app screens....here is what she has so far:

Homework:

- Finish final screen designs and begin to test in Axure (show others outside of class to get users' opinions)

- Finish 25% of the presentation in InDesign

Week 7A- March 3

Today in class, we mainly further refined our ideas and discussed our app screens and style tiles. There are still some adjustments that need to be made to our app screens until they are complete, but I feel that we are on a good route at the moment. We also learned about what UI kits are and our option to use them for this project. We were then given the guidelines for our final app presentation which each team will present next Wednesday in class showing all the ideation that we did along the way while creating this app.

Homework:
- have 2 more screens finished for next class
- have a game plan for presentation formed
     **Project is due March 12, each team will give a professional presentation**

Week 6- Outside of Class

This week outside of class, I worked on the three full color app screens, and based the typeface, color, and button types off of the style tile that Jenna made, both of which you will see below. We have switched responsibilities and she is now working on the icon while, as mentioned above, I am now working on the actual app screens and building off of her wireframes. By switching responsibilities, we are adding our own ideas to each aspect of the application. I feel that my screens could use a bit of work in terms of adding depth and organizing space a bit better, but I will find out in class what improvements I could make.

Jenna's Style Tile:

My full color screens:

Week 6B- Feb. 26

Today in class, we mainly had the Skype session with Jennifer Aldrich, which you will see in a separate post. After that, we went over some notes, such as knowing what a signal, cue, viewport, nav springboard, and hub and spoke function is. We were then given the rest of the class to work on our homework, which is to create at least 3 full color app screens in Photoshop using an iPhone template, a style tile showing the colors and typefaces we wish to use in our app, as well as further refining our icon and applying it to our app screens. Jenna will work on the style tile and refining the icon, while I will do the three full color app screens.