The end is in sight!

Now that you’re near the end of creating your design and development process, review how your (near) finished project measures up to your initial goals and plans. What have you learned about producing such a comprehensive project on your own?

Today’s critique was very helpful, albeit stressful. Everyone had great suggestions for another new logo, design and content on the stories page. I’m going to split up the “stories” page into two pages, one for parents & educators and one for kids/teens.

New (and final!) logo:

I’m pretty pleased with my near-finished project, especially the design and aesthetics, considering I don’t have the best idea for graphic design. I’m disappointed I didn’t have time to make my own motion introductory video and that I didn’t find that gripping, emotional interview I was looking for.

Overall, though, I’m proud of myself that I built an entire, functional, interactive magazine on my own from the ground up. This has always been an issue I’ve been passionate about and I’m glad I was able to use my new skills to do something of importance and that can be resourceful.

Post-production begins!

As you enter the final phase of your capstone project’s creation, evaluate the types of editing and tweaking you have left to do. What can you do in this final phase that will push your project from a good one to a great one?

I’m really looking forward to this phase. My interviews are finished, the interactive graphs are done. Now it’s just putting it all together and making it look nice. After last week’s critique I got some good feedback from classmates on the aesthetics of the site. They suggested a gradient background to kill the dead space and to change the color of the logo. I’m still not married to the logo, but for now, here it is:

I also decided to make the header and footer bars black to make the nav buttons stand out more, and made some bubble-like graphics for the background to make it more playful, along with a blue gradient. Check it out:

 

In order to make my project great, I need to really critique my own work and figure out what I would want to see AS a viewer coming to the site for the first time. I need to make the videos good, the navigation easy and the aesthetics appealing. I’m looking forward to seeing it all come together.

End of pre-production

Now that you’re nearing the end of the production phase of your project, what have you achieved? How do the items you’ve produced line up with your goals for the project? Are you on track to wrap up the production process and move into final editing, finessing and assembly?

I am about 85% finished I would say. I’m happy to say that besides the written content, the social media guide is finished. The About and Data page are also finished; I just need to work out some coding kinks on the Data page. I need to figure out what how I want to lay out the home page. Right now I’m thinking a photo and a video.

Capstone to-do list

My next steps are to complete one or two more interviews. Originally my goal was to have interviews with a few more kids, but that’s deemed a bit difficult. After getting a critique from my class though, I feel better. They suggested I use interviews from sources that have already been done – CNN, PBS etc. Just because it’s not MY content doesn’t mean it’s not relevant. Good call, guys.

I’m definitely on track to get everything done, it’s just going to be a few weeks of long hours in Powell. Here we go!

Production Phase Updates

“Include some of the finished (or near finished) assets that you’ve created so far and talk through the process you followed to create them. What do you have left to create? How have you gone about critically examining the assets you’ve created and their quality? Have your abilities to self assess improved over the development of this project? How so?”

So I’m actually making real progress on my website. I’ve got my “About” page finished, my Social Media Guide table built, all my interactive charts completed (I may add one more) and three interviews completed. I need quite a few more interviews though, that’s my biggest hurdle right now. I need to find teen subjects that are candid and maybe even have had an experience with cyberbullying. So far, I’ve talked to teens who haven’t seen it much, kind of defeating the point of my website, no?

Right now, I’m accessing what I’ve done by looking at it aesthetically. I want to make sure the fonts are consistent, the colors match and everything looks cohesively. The next step of the production process will be to edit my audio and video interviews so as to put them together for the interactive story component.

I think my self assessment skills have definitely improved. I’m able to look at my work critically and think about what I need from all angles. I still worry that the end product will not be as exciting as I originally had hoped, but as long as it’s attention-getting and appealing to my audience, I’ll be satisfied.

Six weeks to greatness

Well…hopefully greatness. We’re in the third week of the production phase for our capstones and only have six weeks left until exhibition time. I finally started coding my website and as expected, it’s more tedious than I thought. I’ve got four interviews so far, but need more. And need to find teens to interview! My other issue: photos. The content is very visual and I’m not sure what I’m going to photograph. Basically, I’m freaking out a little.

I know everything will get done on time since it has to, but these six weeks are going to be a test to myself and my dedication to a project this big. I definitely have the dedication, I’m just worried the finished product isn’t going to be as wonderful as I envisioned it to be three months ago. Here’s the landing page so far (minus the interactivity of course since it’s a screen shot):

 

Production Begins

As you move from pre-production mode to production mode, how do you plan to make your concepts, comps, prototypes, etc. into functioning, finished assets? What new considerations do you need to make as you transition from ideas to execution? Have you successfully learned what you need to or is that process still under way?

I think my first step will need to be really getting the code down. I thought I would be able to knock out my whole landing page pretty quickly but having not coded for awhile proved to make it a bit more difficult. Spring break is next week so my plan is to get a lot of the coding done for at least the skeleton of the website. I also need to start playing around with Edge Animate so I can get a feel for how the interactive maps and charts will work. Finally, I need to edit the interviews I have so far (3) and schedule the rest for after spring break.

I got some good feedback from classmates yesterday including to be aware of the questions I ask the kids in my interviews and to keep working with my logo. I also discussed with them how I need to find the “angle” of the article I am writing. I want to have an emotional edge to my story, not just write a general piece about cyberbullying, so I hope I can find it in one of my interviews after spring break.

 

Conceptual Development

Last week I posted some of my mockups as proof that I actually had brainstormed a bit. I also put together some simple wireframes (check them out here on my portfolio). I think my biggest hurdle was figuring out the logo and the overall branding of the website. I knew I wanted bright, bold colors and a “cutesy” name for the site. After choosing “Socially Cyber” and deciding it sounded a leeeetle bit too adult themed if you get my drift, I used my love of alliteration to come up with “Bullying Bytes.” Notice my use of a “y” instead of an “i”. Yeah, I was kinda proud of that.

The logo I have now is below, but I will definitely be playing around with it more. I don’t love the mouse and it just looks a little blah. I think more of my aesthetic vision will surface as I continue to build the site, but for now I’ll continue to look for inspiration to incorporate.

Mockups

I wanted to design some simple mockups for my site before I start coding them, so here they are! 

What I need to learn. Ready, go!

When it comes to putting this project together, there are a few things that I’ll need to learn first. The first, is I need to get up to snuff on HTML and CSS. I feel pretty confident in building a legitimate website, but a website that’s capstone-worthy? Yeaahh that’s gonna be a little bit more of a beast. I think a lot of it is going to be practicing. I haven’t done much coding since last semester so I decided to start coding my site this weekend so I’ll have enough time to practice, get the template down and then perfect it (or attempt to). I don’t think coding my site will be too difficult that it won’t be feasible, but if it gets to be that way, I fully plan on utilizing the help of classmates and professors (heyyy, Brian Walsh).

Another thing I’m going to have to learn is about the topic itself. Sitting in on that meeting last week made me realize how much I don’t actually know about teens, how they communicate or how they use cyberbullying to pick on each other. Hearing what the members who were parents had to say opened my eyes a little bit more to what’s actually going. I plan on learning more about this topic a great deal through my media management class and the case study I write. To tie it into my capstone, I’m going to look at how young people communicate via social media and research the psychology behind it, including the narcissism that seems to be going on with the youngest generation (insert obligatory “I feel old” comment here). I think reviewing the literature and articles will give me an even greater insight to this behavior.

Pre-Production begins!

We’re a few weeks into the pre-production phase of our capstone projects (Professor Motley is giving us all the side eye for not keeping up with our blogs like we should be…priorities, Motley, priorities) and the first thing I attacked was the research. The great thing is there is a ton of information out there on bullying and why kids and teens treat each other the way they do. Cyberbullying, however is a different story and that story is always changing. A few years ago, kids were tormenting each other in chat rooms, message boards and AOL Instant Messenger. Today there are countless apps and website that students are using after school, at home, at the mall, wherever. The technology is always changing and the literature on it can’t keep up.

Besides relying in the Internet for information, I checked some books out of the library (wait, research done from a physical book? What?) and made a rule for that myself I wouldn’t check out anything more than two years old. As of now, I have a 3-page Google Doc with statistics and resources. I plan on using this research in my story as well the interactive graphs and charts I will build.

Another way I’m doing research is through the actual interviews I conduct. I sat in on a meeting with the bullying committee with the Alamance-Burlington School System last week and got a lot of contacts. The committee consists of counselors, school nurses, social workers and faculty from surrounding middle schools. I plan on interviewing several of the members as well as their children. They were all very excited about my project and they’re glad that it can be a teaching too for parents since this is a problem that most often starts at home with non-involved parents. The best part? They WANT to be interviewed.

In terms of visual conception, I’ve started sketching out how I want the site to look and am making it my goal to choose a WordPress theme or custom HTML/CSS theme this week so I can begin building it. Before I begin building, though, I need to create mockups of the site. I think this will help with the final product and will force me to adhere to guidelines I’ve set for myself. Stay tuned, I’ll post them by the end of this week! (I’m speaking this into existence…)

Forgive me…I’m not an artist. And those are computer mice, for the record.