This week our group completed and finalized the Project Plan and Schedule.  Hunter was supposed to have interviewed Terrance McNeil on Wednesday, however after finding out that we were still doing assignments building up to the Client and Audience Analysis we may need to meet back up and re-do the questionaire.  One thing I’m not sure about is if the Client and Audience Analysis that Hunter through together meets the requirements of 8-12 pages.  We may be meeting this weekend to go over it and finish putting it together, as well as setting up another interview with Mr. McNeil.  I missed class on Thursday and have yet to hear back from anyone in the group regarding this.

In class on Tuesday (Sept.23), we had a lecture about Personas and Scenarios including doing a worksheet that was due at the end of class on Thursday (Sept. 25).  The worksheet consisted of  creating lifelike personas of each group of our intended audience.  We determined who would create which persona as well as coming up with names of each and tasks that each persona may be using the website for.

On Thursday (Sept. 25) there was no lecture.  We had an In Class Activity completing a Heuristic Evaluation of Apalachee Ridge’s current website and similar websites.  The evaluation was based on the navigational structure and usibility of the current site, as well as a screen shot and quick questionaire of a similar website from another organization.  The benchmarked site was intended to show similarities in what we would like the new site to resemble (i.e. ideas from that site to improve the current Apalachee site).  

Posted: September 25th, 2008 under Apalachee Ridge, Information Architecture.
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This week our group got together and began working on the Project Plan and Client & Audience Analysis.  We divided up different sections of the assignment as follows:

• I ran to Apalachee Ridge and had Terrance sign the Service Learning Contract, drew up the timeline for the schedule, and revised some of the content in the Plan

• Ben input much of the content for the plan during our brainstorming session

• Hunter offered to begin work on the Client & Audience Analysis, he has background in research and interviewing

• Joe and Mark are working on the Work Breakdown Structure and the Communication Plan

We are currently wrapping up work on the Project Plan for submission. 

So far, we have read about what personas and scenerios are.  From what I understand, personas define the characteristics of the possible users.  Scenerios are fictional situations in which a user or persona may be involved with when navigating through the website. 

Based on what I have learned in class this week, in relation to our group project, we have learned about creating scenerios and personas to accurately create a sucessful website for the client we are working with.  We have also picked up some ideas in learning about the users that will be using the site and what they would need for moderate navigation.  This includes interviewing tactics, surveys and usability concepts.  

Posted: September 18th, 2008 under Apalachee Ridge, Information Architecture.
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This week our group won the bid for Apalachee Ridge Technology Center.  We met with Terrance and discussed what points were requested by him to be on the website.  We determined that the site was going to include pages related to: Digital Media, Volunteer’s, Donations implementing PayPal, Student Resources possibly using RSS feeds,  a Blog type page where comments and questions can be posted, a Current Events page related to Fundraising, as well as a Neighborhood Association page.  We also determined a color scheme relating more to older teenagers and adults, possibly dark blue or an orange and brown scheme.  Since I live literally around the corner from the Center I will most likely be doing most of the running for information and face to face communication with Terrance. 

So far, we have basically been going through an introduction of what Information Architecture is.  From what I have gathered, it has nothing to do with designing the site, usability testing or software development.  Information Architecture is basically categorizing, labeling and structuring the information necessary to be implemented into the website. 

Based on what I have learned in class, in relation to our group project, is phase 1 which consists of discovering what our team will need to do to gather the necessary information, planning a schedule and how we will put everything together and determining our goals and starting the actual work on the project.  

Posted: September 9th, 2008 under Information Architecture.
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