Project Management

Lecture

This weeks lecture started with Geenen showing the video we had watched at the end of the last one, but this time with sound. This then lead on to some different interfaces you can come accross, to show this Geenen showed us her iPod touch and some of the different navigations on it. Following this Geenen explained what the plan was for the blog over christmas, that the lecture on friday the 14th will coinside with the tutorial on the first week back. To help some people with the blog we were told how to refrence properly. This was then followed by a discussion about project management and what and rolls needs while we were looking at jobs online.

External Reading

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_management

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interface_%28computer_science%29

Tutorial

This weeks tutorial was pretty unorganised as Rafal didnt really know what we were suppose to do. As the tutorial went on we slowly progressed with out set task, the task we were set was the package a flash document. We started by having to open a video file in flash and getting it to work as a .flv file. Following this we had to convert it to a .swf file so we could imbedded it into a webpage, to do this we had to publish the document. To imbedd this in a webpage we would of needed to host the file online.

Reflection

I enjoyed this weeks lecture and found it interesting looking at the jobs that are out there and seeing an iPod touch, which i think i might invest in soon. This weeks tutorial was a bit unorganised as Rafal didnt really know what we were suppose to be doing, but once he figured it out and we started trying to get the video to import into flash i found it interesting. I liked this because i have an interest in make webpages but before now any attempt has been a really boring design but now i hope to be able to use the flash that i've learned to make thm more interesting.

Design

Lecture
This weeks lecture was taken by Geenen Stubbs and we were talking about design techniques for multimedia. We started the lecture by covering what types of designing there were in use, such as structure charts, wireframes, flowcharts and storyboards. As the lecture carried on we started to cover these types of design in some detail, starting with structure charts, these are diagrams that describe the way the content is organised within an application. We then went on to flowcharts, these are also diagrams and describe the way which the user interacts with the system. For flowcharts you can use specific software to allow the creation of correct flowcharts. Wireframes were next and these describe the way the content is layed out. The last thing that we covered were storyboards, this is the most popular way of designing and it represents a visual design of the project. To end the lecture we watched a youtube video on Bill Clinton being controlled by a voodoo doll.

External Reading
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flowcharts
http://webstyleguide.com/multimedia/design.html

Tutorial
This weeks tutorial was another flash problem to solve, we were set the task of creating target paths. This involved using what we had learnt in the previous week, which was how to create a tween in tween and implementing buttons on it to allow control of separate parts of the animation. This week we were introduced to the term nesting, this is the technical term for placing a symbol inside another symbol. Once we had nested the desired parts we were then given instructions on how to create different types of web movies. The first of which was a static image, the second was the nesting symbols working together and causing one animation and the third was creating a tween in a tween using the nested symbols.

Reflection
This weeks lecture was really informative and i found it interesting, I think this is all leading on well for the production of a website for the second piece of cousework for this module. I think that the methods of design are all good in their own way but you need to use more than one type to get a really accurate design, such as a combination of a storyboard and a flowchart, to allow the visual appearance and how the site will navigate to be described. I enjoyed the flash work set for the tutorial this week, it is getting slightly hard and I'm looking forward to having to figure out how to do parts of the flash animation on my own in the near future.

Accessibility

Lecture

This weeks lecture was taken by Geenen Stubbs. We started the lecture by covering problems that were encountered in the previous weeks tutorial, where people were using actionscript 3.0 instead of 2.0 and therefore the instructions that were given on blackboard wouldn't work. We then went on to the main topic of the lecture which was accessibility, we looked at slides showing us all different types of accessibility, which covered such things as blindness, difficulty hearing and colour blindness just to cover a few. This was then followed by a video showing us how people with certain special needs use computers. One example of accessibility tool is voice recognition software for people who have difficulty using a keyboard and mouse, another example was a screen reader for blind people. The lecture finished with 2 more videos, one was a video advertising some voice recognition software and showing us how it worked, the other was a flash animation. The flash animation was the sequel to the animator vs animation of which i hosted on my blog a few weeks ago.

External Reading
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accessibility
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speech_recognition

Tutorial
This weeks tutorial was another flash lesson, we were set the task of creating a tween inside a tween. To do this we had to follow the steps of making a tween, which are draw or write some text and convert it into a symbol, then insert keyframes and design the motion of the animation. To create the tween inside the tween we had to create a new symbol then select both of the symbols and create a symbol out of that selection, we could then create the tween for the individual symbol and the grouped symbol. To end this we inserted a button by following the previous weeks tutorials instructions.

Reflection
This weeks lecture was interesting and really informative. The lecture really made me realise that you have to consider so much more when designing a website, when you are designing a website you usually just think well i can read it and navigate the site so its usable, but you have to consider so much more. I was really impressed with some of the software designed to help people, such as the speech recognition software. This weeks tutorial was good fun but really easy and I'm looking forward to doing some more difficult flash work, i like experimenting with flash and trying to make flash bases for websites to i am looking forward to progressing with the flash work.

Evaluation

Lecture

This was the last lesson this term that Daniel Cunliffe would be taking us for, we started by discussing technical systems and how certain new technology has made other technology almost obsolete, for example mobile phones reducing the number of people who wear wrist watches. Then following this there were examples such as shoe laces that will always be around. This discussion lead on to the topic of evaluation which is concerned with the gathering of data about the usability of a design. After an introduction we started to discuss why people evaluate, such reasons as to check that is conforms to a standard. We then discussed the "Real World", this is what the user wants from the product. Near the end of the lecture we discussed formative and summative evaluation which are evaluation types which are applied at different times during the implementation. The lecture ended with the topic of qualitative and qualitive evaluation.

External Reading
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evaluation
http://www.socialresearchmethods.net/kb/intreval.php

Tutorial
This weeks tutorial we were back to playing around with flash (Yay). We were set the task of creating a simple 3 page slide that was controlled by buttons. Each page was labled with some simple text and had a next or a previous buttons or both. The buttons the first keyframe required that we used a stop action so that the animation wouldn't play and would wait for the release of the button to advance. The buttons were set actions using an on command and a gotostop command. After completing the set work for the tutorial i carried on playing around with different buttons. The class seemed to have problems getting the buttons to work because of using Actionscript 3.0 files.

Reflection
This weeks lecture was really interesting and informative, i found the topic we were doing easy to understand. The beginning of the lecture was quite funny, Daniel was annoyed about someone not returning the baton to allow the class to register, we were then talking about technology making older things obsolete such as a mobile phone with a clock replacing the wristwatch. We also got to look at Daniel's shoe and this emphasized a type of technology that hasn't been replaced, shoe laces. This weeks tutorial was great, i had tried to experiment with getting buttons to work before in previous flash lessons but was unsuccessful so it was interesting to finally find out how to do them.

More Usability

Lecture

The lecture this week was taken by Daniel Cunliffe again and we continued to look at usability. We started this by talking about the key points, such as the design must be people facing and that we must understand usability, designing and testing to be able to create a usable system. Following this we discussed what makes things usable, or not, this was answered with a usability triangle. The triangle covered 3 parts of the usability, effectiveness, efficiency and satisfaction. The effectiveness is used to assess that the user achieves desired goals, efficiency is how accurately and how complete their goals are and finally satisfaction is the comfort and the acceptability of the system. We were then shown a diagram of "System Acceptability" which was designed by Nielsen. After this we left the usability of the system and started talking about the experience of the user as a factor. There are 3 groups of experience level, theses are novice, intermediate and expert. These groups all require different types of system such as a novice user would require tutorials where as an expert user wouldn't and a novice user would have a limited number of commands and an expert user would have lots of powerful commands.

External Reading
http://www.euser-eu.org/Document.asp?MenuID=168
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usability_testing

Tutorial

This weeks tutorial was similar to last weeks it was yet another sheet based on usability. This time it was given to us to asses the design of the universities website. This week we were more focused on how useable the site is using such ideas as the usability triangle mentioned above. This meant we had to apply the 3 parts effectiveness, efficiency and satisfaction to the university website, these parts were applied by asking ourselves questions about the website. We had to do this in steps, the first step was to set an example of a simple task to carry out on the website and see how easy it was to carry out. The 2nd step was to apply the guidelines we used last week and finally we swaped our information with a partner to act as a test subjects.

Reflection

This weeks lecture was interesting covering the different levels of user ability and describing what they require, i thought this was helpful because when you make something you seem to assume that they will be able to use things like you do and having these points opens your eyes to how much you need to consider for novice users. The system acceptability diagram by Nielsen was good too it simplified the needs to design anything to make sure its usable. I like the way that Daniel Cunliffe teaches the tutorials but the topic usability is pretty boring. I didn't find the tutorial very helpful at all i just thought it was boring - I much preferred the flash tutorials!

Usability

Lecture

This weeks lecture was totaly different in a few ways. The reason for these differences were because of a change in lecturer, this was our first lecture with Daniel Cunliffe. The lecture started with a disscusion about technology, such as the baton we use to sign into lectures and how it could be improved. We then went on to disscuss other types of technology such as the computer systems in cars and the front desk of the lecture theatre. The lectures main topic was usability, "Usability is a term used to denote the ease with which people can employ a particular tool or other human-made object in order to achieve a particular goal." (Wikipedia, 2007). We started covering this topic by being shown an old pannel of a television, the pannel had 4 buttons to change channels labled BBC1, BBC2, ITA1 and ITA2 it also had 4 control knobs 1 to turn on the TV and control volume, 1 for contrast, 1 for brightness and 1 for colour. We went on to talk about the design of multimedia and what has to be considered when designing it, such factors that we discussed were if its a single user, the level of user skill and what the environment of use would be like. To sum up this process we were shown a diagram which is known as CUTS.

External Reading

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usability

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usability_testing

Tutorial

This weeks tutorial we were analyzing two guidelines for the creation of a usable website. The guidelines are by Koyanl, Balley and Nall, the other is produced by Nielsen, links are bellow. To do this we were split into groups and given a list of questions we should ask ourselves about the guidelines. Examples of the questions are:

- Are the guidelines presented in a usable way ?

- Do the guidelines seem sensible ?

There were about 10 more questions applying to this topic. At the end of the tutorial we discussed the answered in the class and most people seemed to be in agreement in opinions.

Guideline Links

http://usability.gov/pdfs/guidelines.html
http://www.useit.com/papers/heuristic/heuristic_list.html

Reflection

I thought this weeks lecture was really good, the change of teaching style to accompany the change in lecturer. The way we talked about the way we design technology for the different types of users was interesting, an example of a design was that the tape deck at the front of the lecture hall had labels on each side saying "Use this side" on one side and "Use other side" on the other, which i found funny, but this helped me realise that some users aren't used to using the system. I'm not quite old enough but I've still seen TV's with controls such as the panel we were shown and its hard to realise how much technology had changed, and how we adapt new technology to allow for expansion in the field of technology, such as extra RAM slots on motherboards.

Multimedia

Lecture

This week we were covering different types of digital media. We started by discussing what multimedia is, "Multimedia is the media that uses multiple forms of information content and information processing (e.g. Text, Audio etc...) to inform or entertain the user." (WIkipedia, 2007). This was followed by an introduction to digital media, this is a media source that is digitally stored such as a text file. We were then shown a list of different media types that are all classes as digital media, these included text, clipart, graphics, animation, sound and video files. Linking these to websites, there used to me hypertext links linking to all media but now there are a lot of links that use hypermedia links which take the user straight to the file. This was followed by a look at e-books where there was a project to try and digitize all books, this was called "Project Guttenberg", "This is a volunteer effort to digitize, archive and distribute cultural works. Founded in 1971 by Michael S. Hart, it is the oldest digital library."(Wikipedia, 2007). We then started talking about types of graphics such as bitmap and vectors, bitmaps are now converted into most commonly JPEG's to reduce pixelation when they are adjusted, vector graphics use equations so this is not a problem. Moving onto digitised sound we were told about .wav files as well as MP3's, some digital video files are .mov, .avi, .mpeg and .wmv. After we had covered the lecture notes we were show several sites that were flash based, one of which was the stereophonics website. To end the lecture we were shown a flash animation called "Animation vs Animator".

This is the Animation vs Animator flash production.

Tutorial

In this weeks tutorial we were set a task of analyzing the university website. We were working in groups for this activity and to start we decided as a group whether we liked the website. This was then followed by what we thought were the strengths and weaknesses of the site. We then had a checklist where we had to look through the university website and answer questions asked, an example of a question was "Does the website have a glossary?". These were tick box with the choices Yes, No and N/A. The following questions were about the questions and how they assessed the website. Near the end of the tutorial we went through different answers that the class had come up with in their groups.

Reflection

I really enjoyed this weeks lecture on multimedia, i thought it covered all of the different types of digital media well as a good introduction to the topic, I knew a lot of the file types before so i found it quite easy as well. I'm interested in this topic so i searched for more information about digital media also i wasn't sure what Flash Paper files were so i searched for that too, links are given in external reading bellow. Near the end of the lecture we started listening/watching different types of media. First of all we started with the stereophonics website where we listened to a clip on their flash based website. We then went on to some flash videos, of which one was called "Why robots shouldn't walk dogs." i thought that this flash production was amazing, (the flash clips we watched are on http://www.henningb.com/ ) towards the end of the lecture we watched Animation vs Animator, which i loved, it was an amazingly done flash production. While searching around the web i found a sequel to the Animation vs Animator.

Animation vs Animator II

External Reading

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_media http://theopensourcery.com/osrevFlashPaper.htm

Dancey

HCI

Lecture

To start this weeks lecture we went through what was needed for the blog, as some people had forgotten and left out parts of it. We then went on to last weeks tutorial, which we were shown how to produce a motion tween. The main aspect of the lecture was HCI, "The user interface (or HCI) is the aggregate of means by which people (users) interact with a particular machine, device, computer program or other complex tools." (Wikipedia, 2007). To start covering this topic we were show a MS - Dos command line and shown some functions such as "dir". We then went on to GUI's that are used in opperating systems such as MacOS or Vista. "A graphical user interface is used to allow users to interact with the computer and computer controlled devices which employ graphical icons" (Wikipedia, 2007). As another type of HCI we covered speech recognition. Once we had covered these types of HCI we went on to website user interface. The first website we looked at was called "..radioqualia..", this was a simple website with a simple navigation system. The next website was for the composer Michael Kamen, this was a much more advanced website with more complex. We also looked at a website called "Accept Jesus, forever, forgiven" this was a very poor example of HCI.

Related Links

http://www.michaelkamen.com/
http://www.dokimos.org/ajff/
http://www.radioqualia.net/

External Reading

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human-Computer_Interface
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graphical_user_interface

Tutorial

In this weeks tutorial we were set the task of creating a shape tween. The initial steps were the same as normal, creating a new flash file. To create a motion tween we did not need to convert the text/image to a symbol. We were asked to create a shape tween of a word to another word. This involved spliting the word up using the break apart option in modify, we then had to insert a keyframe along the layer and replace the text with other text to allow it to tween. The instructions for these processes were very clear and concise. The instructions then went on showing us that you can make 1 shape tween into several and the other way around.

Reflection

This weeks lecture was interesting, covering the different types of HCI. We started with the MS Dos command line, which i don't know much about so it was helpful to see how a few commands work. We then went on comparing types of operating system GUI's, we went through MacOS, Vista and Linux. Following this we discussed Vista, and why Microsoft changed so much, In my opinion XP was perfectly fine and didn't need changing. We then went on to speech recognition which I'm quite interested in as i think its something that will become really useful and eventually come a part of everyday life. We then looked at the three websites as examples of user interfaces, the only one that impressed me was the Michael Kamen website, i thought the navigation, music and colour scheme really went well together. The radioqualia website was really boring with a plain black and white scheme throughout with simple buttons as navigation, the buttons weren't even labled so you couldn't navigate the site successfully unless you knew it already. The "Accept Jesus, forever, forgiven" was poorly designed and had very annoying music playing in the background, the background was multi-coloured and the text didn't stand out well which made it difficult to read. The work set in this weeks tutorial was fairly easy to do and the instructions were easy to follow, near the end of the tutorial i was trying to get a button working but was unsuccessful.

Dancey.

Introduction To Flash

Lecture

This weeks lecture was a simple introduction to flash and showing us what flash is capable of. We started by talking about RSS readers and we were shown examples of how they work. We were then talking about which flash version we will be using, the version we will be using is Flash CS3. We were then shown how to perform a motion tween, we were shown steps such as converting an image into a symbol and inserting key frames. The first animation we were shown was how to make a simple ball bounce across the screen. We then went on to creating a shape tween, which is making one shape transform into another. This involved inserting two key frames, drawing two different shapes in either key frame and then setting it to a shape tween. The first shape tween we saw was a rectangle transforming into a circle. We were then shown high quality examples of flash productions such as the Pixar website and a really good website by Dario Piana.

External links
http://www.pixar.com/index.html
http://www.dariopiana.com/home.html

Tutorial

The tutorial this week was a follow on from the lecture, allowing us to experiment with simple motion and shape tweens in flash. We were given step by step instructions on how to produce a symbol bouncing around the screen. The first of the steps was a detailed explanation on how to create a symbol, this involved inserting a symbol and then drawing or writing what was desired. This was then followed by the creation of key frames and setting up simple motions, to allow the symbol to move around the screen. As the instructions went on they showed us how to use the free transform tool to cause the symbol to change shape/size as it is moving around.

Reflection

I found this weeks lecture really interesting as i haven't used Flash before. The simple introduction was good, it broke down the initial steps to creating a flash production really well. The lecture also showed us complex flash productions such as the Dario Piana website, this really made me want to learn more about the software and try and get the most out of it. This weeks tutorial was great, a well explained step by step set of instructions allowed me to create a simple flash production easily. The first production i made was some text bouncing around the screen, i eventually made it change shape as it was bouncing off the sides giving the impression that it was squashing against the side of the screen. During the lecture this week we talked about ActionScript. I was interested with what it could do so i found a tutorial. I have found this week interesting, helpful with learning how to use Flash.

Actionscript Tutorial - http://www.adobe.com/support/flash/action_scripts/actionscript_tutorial/

Dancey.

Hello World - Blogging it up.

Welcome to my blog. This is the first post on my coursework blog, so far in university we have been through enrolment and our first teaching week.

The enrolment day was really busy and seemed unorganised at first, when we got split into our courses the process started to run a lot smoother and was good to start interacting with people who are on the same course.

The first teaching week was a great experience finally finding out detailed information about our courses and each module. Meeting new people was good and meeting the lecturers and finally getting into the timetable was a good experience.

Dancey.