«
Projects - options
There are five possible semester long projects from which you can choose one to focus on this semester. Spend some time reading through the descriptions below, and, on the individual project pages. Think about your professional goals - where do you want to be 5 years from now? Which project will best help you to move toward your goals?
Each of these projects is best suited to a specific set of individual professional goals and entails developing conceptual and skill sets to help you reach your personal professional goals.
The first two projects will follow the class calendar. The other three projects require a short project brief and a project calendar, see the project specific page for more details.
All projects are due by midnight Tuesday December 8th
»
First assignment - your professional goals statement
As you write your professional goals statement address the following:
You - Start with your name, major, class level and year of expected graduation
Project Selection - List the reason for your particular choice of project.
Motivation – Why are you planning on getting a degree in your current major? What are your expectations for your professional career?
Relevant Personal Experience – Sometimes a personal story can highlight why you’re passionate about your major; sometimes it can distract the reader. Saving a life might have convinced you to become a nurse or working on an exciting campaign might have pushed you into political science. If you have a personal story which can provide key insight into your decision to enter your chosen field you may want to include it as part of your statement, but if it has little to do with the evolution of your professional goals, you may want to think about leaving it out.
Prior Knowledge – List your prior experience with the applications and technologies associated with the specific project you have chosen.
What Else? – Your personal statement is your opportunity to tell me about yourself, so I can help you toward your professional goal. Add anything you think will be helpful.
Class Projects - choose one, or one of the optional class projects
Hand code a website
If you are a beginner or an intermediate web designer who is interested in becoming a professional web and/or interaction designer, or simply want to more fully understand the basic techniques and processes used to design and develop websites, this is the place to start. You will use a simple text editor to write web pages and sites that follow Web Standards. more...
Learn Dreamweaver CS3
Dreamweaver is a widely used Integrated Development Environment (IDE) for the Web.
"IDEs are designed to maximize programmer productivity by providing tightly-knit components with similar user interfaces. This should mean that the programmer has much less mode switching to do than when using discrete development programs. However, because an IDE is by its very nature a complicated piece of software, this high productivity only occurs after a lengthy learning curve." - wikipedia
This is a good project if your professional goals are oriented toward other design fields such as Graphic Design, Advertising, etc. Most significant contemporary design projects are team efforts where the "design" phase is primarily a process of ideation and rapid sketches. Additionally, more and more clients expect an integrated design service/solution. In this environment an understanding of designing for the Web and the ability to rapidly develop sketches and comps of websites, and other interactive deliverables, is strong plus.more...
Optional Class Projects:
Develop your own blog
This project is really about understanding, designing for, and publishing your single point of view and professional presence on the Web. Integral to this project is to understand and carefully use the array of web services to build your professional presence on the Social Web.
This is a good project for those interested in using the Web in their profession but are not especially interested in technical development of sites and services. For example, you may be focused on Political Science, Sociology, Economics, etc., and simply want to understand how to use the numerous tools and services available on the Web to build your personal "mashups" to advance yourself in your profession. more...
Build a website in JQuery
JQuery is a Javascript framework widely used by professional web designers and producers. If you are experienced in the basics of web production and feel comfortable hand-writing XHTML code, using Cascading Stylesheets, and perhaps a little Javascript, this is a good project for you.
There are of course other Javascript frameworks and all are well supported with hundreds of functions and features so you can choose a different js framework or mix frameworks. Mixing frameworks is a common practice and there are many examples on the Web.more...
note: A variation of this project is to use a js framework in conjunction with a a back-end database, or use an Open Source Web Content Management development environment such as Drupal or Joomla as well as CMS services such as WordPress or the Open Source Textpattern.
A self-defined project
If you an experienced web designer/developer and/or simply want to focus on developing your skills on a particular application or technology this is your chance to define your own way forward.more...
