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.