Coursework Blog - 07020732

Video

2008-03-13T10:08:00.001Z

Lecture

This week’s lecture was taken by Daniel again and the main topic was video. Video is a dynamic media and we started by saying that it is media that is captured from the real world. We started talking about using video and how its and impressive feature to use and how some information can only be conveyed by using videos. We then went on to talk about some problems that arise when using video, such problems are that it’s a big production effort and that compromises are often needed, the production effort is problem because you have to take scripting and directing into consideration when producing video.

Tutorial

This week we were asked to create a splash page such as the one we have been asked to create for our coursework. We were again given a hand out outlining what was expected in the splash page, such as motion and shape tweens and including images in the flash file as well as audio. We then opened up flash and commenced making the flash file that would then act as the splash page. Once we had created the flash file we had to shock it to make it a .swf file. Once this had been done we had to open up Dreamweaver and insert it onto a page with a simple “skip intro” link linking away from this page.

Reflection

I enjoyed this week’s lecture and thought it would be helpful when editing the video that is required for the coursework. I enjoy the multimedia topic and I like getting into more complex parts of it. I thought this week’s tutorial was really interesting and helpful, I thought that giving us an outline for a splash page would be really useful for the coursework. I also enjoyed it because I like working with Flash and Dreamweaver and I have experience using both so I found it fairly easy to carry out, I am looking forward to designing a splash page for my website following this tutorial.

External Reading
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Video
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Splash_screen

Sound

2008-03-06T10:05:00.007Z

Lecture

This week’s lecture was again taken by Daniel Cunliffe and covered the topic of sound. We started off by covering how sound works, after we had covered this we moved on to covering frequency and amplitude and stated the point that 2 waves at the same frequency but with different amplitudes still gives out the same note, but if you were to have a different frequency with the same amplitude would give out a different note. After we had covered this we were talking about digital audio and the conversion of analogue to digital. To end the lecture we touched on mono/stereo and the sampling information.

Tutorial

This week Rafal handed out a sheet just telling us to follow some tutorials in the program Adobe Premier Elements, we were going to be using windows movie maker but the program would not work on the machines we were using. We were given brief instructions of which of the given tutorials we were suppose to do, we were instructed not to carry out the 2^nd or the 6^th tutorials. The tutorials we were given to go through covered such things as adding effects and just learning the basics of the program, we also covered translation and most of the common techniques used in video editing.

External Reading

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

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

Reflection

I thought that this week's lecture was quite interesting and helpful as I have not done much work on sound editing before and was quite relieved that we were going to be covering it. This topic has been a nice change from the previous topic talking about text which I found really boring. This week's tutorial was different and seemed disorganised but i enjoyed working with Adobe Premium Elements as I have not ever used this program before or really ever carried out any video editing. I'm glad that we are moving onto more complex topics to allow us to create a better website for our coursework.

Multimedia 'Palette'

2008-02-28T09:59:00.003Z

Lecture
This week's lecture was taken by Daniel Cunliffe again, at the start of this lecture we were told we would be receiving marks for our blogs up until January. The main topic of this lecture was covering another part of the multimedia palette, the new topic that we were starting was audio. The aim of the lecture was to compare digitally created sound with recorded sound. To do this we started discussing using audio:
-Only way to convey certain information.
-Can be a large production effort.
-Compromises are usually needed.

We then moved on to design factors that have to be taken into consideration such as where the sound is going to be used, what kind of sound is going to be used and where the sound is acquired from.

Tutorial
This weeks tutorial we were given a hand out on how to use Audacity, to start this tutorial we had to download sound files from blackboard and open them with Audacity. The first file we opened was an interview with 2 speakers and we were required to split the two. Once we had split this we were given instructions on how to add effects to the audio file, examples of effects added are:-
-Bass boost.
-Amplify.
-Fade in/out.
Following this we were instructed to try mixing audio, playing tracks over other tracks. To do this we were instructed to download 2 other files from blackboard of which we could play over each other to combine them making it sound like one file.

External Reading
http://audacity.sourceforge.net/help/tutorials
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sound_recording_and_reproduction

Reflection
I thought this weeks lecture was really good, I was surprised we were given a mark for our blogs but was really happy when i discovered I had achieved 100% so far on the assignment. I enjoy the topic of audio and audio editing is going to be a helpful procedure for the coursework that has been set, I am looking forward to getting into this website coursework. This weeks tutorial was interesting, I had never really done any sound editing before, doing something new is always good fun, and I found the instructions we were given really helpful to introduce me to the use of Audacity.

Coursework

2008-02-21T09:16:00.004Z

Lecture
I was unable to attend this week’s lecture but from talking to my colleagues I was able to find out that the coursework was given out. So i have decided to write some information about the PowerPoint presentation that has been put up on blackboard, I will give a brief outline of the first few slides. The presentation gives information on the aspects of text in multimedia that has to be taken into consideration when designing the media, these are things like layout, font and colour. The presentation also went onto talk about publishing such as a webpage or dialogue like a blog which is much more interactive.

External Reading
http://www.w3schools.com/html/default.asp
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Writing

Tutorial
This week’s tutorial Rafal gave out sheets giving us instructions on how to insert images and videos into Dreamweaver files. To start off I had to remap my drive to allow me to host the website. The first step was to open the htm file which was a simple webpage with some buttons and text. Following this we had to insert the new button for Dogs. The notes then went onto describe how to insert a video which involved typing some code into the design view in Dreamweaver, we were then given examples of how to control the video file, such as autoplay.

Reflection
As I had said above I was unable to attend the lecture this week but the information I was looking through up on blackboard was interesting and it showed that we were finally going to be moving off just doing text, I’m looking forward to moving onto something else. This week’s tutorial was good, I had done most of the stuff we were told to do before but I still found it helpful as a refresh on how to do these tasks, I really enjoy doing work with Dreamweaver. I am looking forward to starting my coursework and applying these ideas to my own website.

Text

2008-02-14T08:51:00.003Z

Lecture
This week's lecture was taken by Daniel Cunliffe again, we were looking into text in further details this week. We started by discussing the different weights we can use in the design of text, examples of these are:
-Light
-Regular
-Bold
-Extra Bold
Following this we went on to width of characters, condensed, normal and expanded are the 3 different types that can be used, following this we went on to styles of characters such as Roman and Italic. We then went on to families of fonts and how these styles can be applied to fonts to create other styles.

Tutorial
This week's tutorial we were working with active server pages and using databases online. To start the tutorial we were required to remap our drives again to allow us to host the active server page we had been given. The file we were give was initially a .txt so we had to rename it to allow us to use it as an active server page. Once we had been able to view the initial page we were set the task of going into the database and adding a record. Following this we were asked to add another field to the database to show the price of the pets, to do this we were required to edit information in the active server page file.

Reflection
I found this week's lecture really boring and I am quite shocked that we are covering such simple topics at this level of the course, I was really hoping to be covering harder and more interesting topics. I am looking forward to moving on and getting our coursework set and moving on to more interesting multimedia topics. This week's tutorial was really good, working with active server pages was something I had never done before and i was interested to see how to link a database to a website, and applying CSS styles to an active server page was new to me, so this tutorial was really helpful and interesting.

External Reading
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Typeface
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Active_Server_Pages

Text

2008-02-07T08:38:00.000Z

Lecture
This week’s lecture was again taken by Daniel and we covered text this week. The lecture started with us covering some basic points to do with text, such as where and why it is used. Some uses that were mentioned were for web page content and links. The lecture then went on to what we have to consider when designing in consideration to text. Things discussed during this part of the lecture were the purpose of the text, the audience that will be reading the text and how it will be presented. The end of the lecture we discussed character codes and how text can also represent an image.

External Reading
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plain_text
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Character_code

Tutorial
This week’s tutorial was a continuation of last week using Dreamweaver. At the start of this tutorial we were required to re-map the drive we had mapped last week’s as the computer had not saved it for us. We were initially given a link to a website that showed us different examples of some cascading style sheets, on this website we could also retrieve the code for these different types of CSS. The tutorial then went on to us having to write div tags to allow the website to be split into columns/rows allowing better functionality of the site.

Reflection
This week’s lecture was really boring and I felt that most of the information we covered was fairly obvious. I do like that the lectures are all aimed towards the creation of our website for the next piece of coursework but I would prefer to be covering something more difficult. The tutorial was really good, the website that we were given was really helpful and will come in handy in the future. I enjoy writing CSS and getting used to it because when I used to use Dreamweaver and never used CSS in any designs, so I can see it making it a lot easier to carry through designs from page to page.

HTML

2008-01-28T08:21:00.000Z

Lecture
This weeks lecture was again taken by Daniel, he started the lecture by talking a bit about the coursework we will be receiving soon and that we will be starting Dreamweaver next week. The topics in the lecture were XHTML and CSS. We started by looking at Mark-up language, giving definitions and things you need to take into consideration. Following this Daniel talked about the 4 step process, which us used to decide which time of mark up language to use. We then went on to HTML. We then went onto CSS, “In web development, Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) is a stylesheet language used to describe the presentation of a document written in a markup language.”(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CSS)

External Reading
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CSS
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTML

Tutorial
This week’s tutorial was an introduction to Adobe Dreamweaver and setting out our webspace via mapping a drive. To start we had to map a drive, to do this we went into My Computer and followed instructions given to us on a hand out. Following this we were asked to start up Dreamweaver and manage a site, this is to choose where you want your documents to be saved and what the URL of the webpage is, by doing this it will automatically upload pages to the internet once they have been saved. After doing this we started doing some work on CSS, we were set the task of creating a style called BigRed, we had been given instructions how to do it in a few ways.

Reflection
I enjoyed both the lecture and the tutorial this week. I thought it was good that we were moving onto HTML and the use of Dreamweaver. I have done a fair bit of HTML before and used Dreamweaver several times, but I had never really used CSS, so it was really interesting covering that in the lecture. The tutorial was really straight forward to begin with, carrying out basic functions in Dreamweaver, then as we moved on to using CSS it became much more interesting. There were some of the methods of how to make your own style that seemed pointless but the last method on the hand out was really precise and worked well.

Graphics

2008-01-24T09:01:00.000Z

Lecture
This week’s lecture was again taken by Daniel Cunliffe, and we were again covering topics of multimedia, this week we were going into more detail about graphics. The lecture started with covering the topics pixel depth and resolution, “Image resolution describes the detail an image holds. The term applies equally to digital images, film images, and other types of images. Higher resolution means more image detail.” Following this we went onto information about different graphic formats such as BMP and GIF. Finally we last topic we covered was colours, during this we talked about colour depth and different pallets such as the RGB pallet.

External Reading
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image_resolution
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Color_depth

Tutorial
This week’s tutorial was yet again a Photoshop one. We were again set the task of merging files to allow for the creation of a final document. To start we had to adjust the width and height a new file we had created, we then had to type some text and drag it onto our original document. Following this we had to download a file from blackboard and make the background of the new image to be exactly the same as the image we downloaded. Near the end we were set the task of creating some buttons by following instructions given in the hand out.

Reflection
I found this week’s lecture fairly interesting and what we were taught will help with the up and coming website coursework, allowing us to format images properly will be a great deal of help, also using the colour palette will allow us to match colours precisely. I found this week’s tutorial really boring, the work we are doing in the tutorials is still pretty easy, I’m looking forward to getting onto some more complex Photoshop work, or moving onto designing websites, as I enjoy working with Dreamweaver. The basic copy and paste and edit slightly tasks are getting a bit tedious.

Multimedia

2008-01-17T08:35:00.000Z

Lecture

This was the lecture of the first week back after the chrismas break, it was taken by Daniel Cunliffe and it was based on multimedia."Multimedia is media that utilises a combination of different content forms." as defined by Wikipedia. The lecture started with the statement "Multimedia is about communicating." and how the effectiveness of some media to communicate certain topics is better than others, and that the combination of several types of multimedia can also be more effective to communicate topics. Following this we went on to the decision making part of the design, such as what type of media is going to be used, to decide this we need to take several factors into consideration, such as technical issues, client requirements, target audience and skills required. We were then shown a "Multimedia Palette" of static vs dynamic multimedia. To end the lecture we went on to a specific type of multimedia, which was graphics.

External Reading
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multimedia

Tutorial

This weeks tutorial was another photoshop one. We were given three images one of which was a finished product and what we were expected to make from the other 2 image files we were given. To start this we had to download the files from blackboard and then open them in Photoshop, to start I moved the images on each layer of the main image that contained the background to the desired locations, i was doin this by using the magic brush tool. Following this we i created a new layer for which i was to copy an image of a clock onto, the clock image was in the other file we had been given. Once i had coppied the clock over to the new layer i had to move it to the location and rotate it via the free transform command. I also had to make the layer that the clock was present on opaque so that you could still see parts of the other layers.

Reflection

I found this weeks lecture quite interesting, the topic of multimedia is a really interesting topic and the amount of things it can apply too is huge. We covered graphics and i think that getting a good understanding of graphics and different types of graphics will help with the up and coming webpage coursework assignment. This weeks tutorial was really easy, i have not really used photoshop before as i stated on the previous weeks blog, but this week it was a fairly boring and what seemed pointless exercise, it was pretty much the same as last week but with making one of the layers opaque and adding a gradient to one aswell, apart from these too simple tasks it was a simple copy and paste exercise

Happy New Year

2008-01-10T10:49:00.001Z

Lecture
I had miss placed my notes from the lecture and since it was almost a month ago i couldnt remember much about it, so i looked on blackboard and decided to write my lecture on the project managment powerpoint that had been uploaded for the last week of term. This powerpoint covered several topics of project managment, starting with information about the team. This told us different roles of people in the team, such as Project Manager and Designers. The presentation also showed us the phases of project managment, these were analysis, design, develop, implement and evaluate. It then went on to explain differnt stages of the design procedure like pre-production and production itself.

Tutorial
This weeks tutorial was really interesting, we were set the task of creating an image out of pieces of fruit and veg that we had been supplied. To do this we were using Photoshop to copy and position images we started off by being handed out a brief introduction sheet on how to use photoshop. We were then given a booklet showing us step by step and explaining the different methods we would be using to produce the image. We were given instructions to use a few different kinds of selection and movement tools such as the lasso and magic brush.

Reflection
This weeks tutorial was really interesting and quite fun. I enjoyed working with a new program, i had never really used photoshop before the tutorial. I had used programs like Paint Shop Pro, but from what we did i can tell that Photoshop is going to be a really interesting and useful program to be able to use. It was only simple tasks that we were set but it was still quite confusing because i always seemed to end up on a different layer than the one required. As i said above i couldnt really remember the last lecture so i read through the project managment power point, i found the information that this gave really interesting, it suprised me how many different members of a team are required.

Project Management

2007-12-12T15:58:00.001Z

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

2007-12-06T08:58:00.000Z

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

2007-11-26T08:46:00.000Z

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

2007-11-19T14:23:00.000Z

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

2007-11-15T08:01:00.000Z

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

2007-11-05T09:24:00.000Z

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

2007-10-29T09:04:00.000Z

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

2007-10-25T07:43:00.000+01:00

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

2007-10-17T11:54:00.000+01:00

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.

2007-10-08T16:10:00.000+01:00

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.