Goals & Current Progress

GOALS

By 4 sept (two weeks):

1. Increase understanding of PHP and MYSQL: Finish upto page 296 in 'Learning PHP, MYSQL and JavaScript'.
2. Finish reading 'Undercover User Experience Design'
3. Read 10 articles on User Experience/Interaction Design
4. Work Through 3 PHP Tutorials online
5. Test dinnermate.net and siobhanmckenzie.com on five users, using different techniques from Undercover User Experience Design, and record findings
6. Extra: Develop a test PHP/MYSQL website using example code from the textbook

By 25Sept (three weeks) :

1. Increase understanding of PHP, MYSQL and JavaScript: Complete 'Learning PHP, MYSQL and JavaScript' 

Next steps: Fash Actionscript 3, HTML, CSS



CURRENT PROGRESS:

Books:

Undercover User Experience Design: Cennydd Bowles and James Box - Page 107 20 August 2011

Useful information: 

Card Sorting (a technique that allows test subjects to arrange your websites key content in a way that makes sense to them: very useful for understanding how users may expect to see information presented http://www.optimalworkshop.com/optimalsort.htm) 

Content auditing: content is very important!

HCI Theory: Some extra books need to be put on the reading list. 

Heuristic evaluation: choosing the most important user tasks & reviewing these first.

What makes a good interface: made for humans, forgiving, accessible, self-evident, predictable, efficient & trustworthy 

Understanding how a user accesses and works through a website (their pathway) and optimising this for them.

Techniques: Website analytics, observation, questionaires

User Research: Critically important at every stage-even after completion.

Note: The 2010/2011 year 2 portfolio was optimised for use for both mobile and desktop users due to my analysis of the expected paths of entry. However, this meant that it was oversimplified and not as creative and as imaginative as it could be for desktop users, yet cramped on a mobile screen. It was also text-heavy (peer review). Solution: Mobile and Desktop Versions. This would allow the use of flash for desktop users, whilst accomodating for mobile users and creating a seperate interface for them.

Note: this could also be applied to other websites that were created i.e. dinnermate.net

Learning PHP, MYSQL &  JavaScript: Page 110

Learnt so far: Mainly basic PHP-the book is essentially divided up into three sections, with overlap at critical points, which is very useful.

-Development Servers, Functions, Operators,  Conditionals, Objects, Arrays

Websites: 


http://www.interactiondesignblog.com/ interesting articles on completed interaction design projects and current information on the world of interaction design

http://www.kirupa.com/ a fantastic resource for developers and contains great tutorials


Reading list
Actionscript 3.0 for adobe flash professional-Adobe, Human Computer interaction-alan Dix, Smand Teach yourself HTML and CSS in 24 hours, Unfolding the napkin-Dan Roam, Professional Javascript for Web Developers-Nicholas C Zakas, Measurig the User Experience-Thomas Tullis

Blog Overview

This blog has created to record all self-directed work undertaken in the academic year 2011-2012 for ba/bsc Computing and Interaction Design student Siobhan McKenzie.


This blog will include:

Revisitation of previous projects: improvements and development of them

Academic work: books, articles, and websites looked at to further technical/theoretical understanding.

The development of professional projects: any outside work i recieve, and skills learned influencing university work.


The information contained within this blog will be used a resource for various projects and as evidence for year 3 university projects. This blog and the information within it will be submitted at the end of the year as evidence of the development of my process techniques and research undertaken.