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Design and Development Phases Assignments Project Selection

the assignments

graded

Design is all about thinking and planning. The design (of anything) is not the thing itself. An architect's design for a building is not the building.: All design is grounded in a basic concept. Good design is grounded in a clear concept. Bad design is muddled thinking made painfully clear.

required for all projects

project report site/indexwhere you keep a log of your progress∧

Here is a sample project report site/index You are welcome to use this sample starter site and can download all of the zipped files.

You are of course free to build your own report site. Like the sample above it should start a simple index page linked to your work for this term and to your other web projects. Here's an example of Loren's report site/index On Loren's site you can see links to some of his current and on-going projects as well as links to other web services that he uses: facebook, twitter, and an email link.

The purpose of your report site is to make a webspace where I can check your weekly progress on your chosen project. Specifically how you configure the link destinations will depend on the project you chose for this semester.

More on your project report site - where you "report" your progress to your client (me) √

The basics

If you use the webspace inside your UI "shared" space to host your web site,

Download the sample site.
On your local desktop open your shared space.
Inside your shared space you should see a "webpages" directory. Open that directory.
Inside your webpages directory you should see a directory named with your UI user id. This is your UI web directory.
Drag the unstuffed reportSite that you downloaded to you web directory and drop it in.
You should then be able to open your report site web site in your browser by going to you url
Something like this: http://www.webpages.uidaho.edu/yourUserName/
Tips:
Work through the "Setup" - your basic responsibilities section. Specifically, the "Connecting to your UI Account" information. Make sure you can connect to you UI Account using SFTP and Connect to Server.

If you host your webspace outside of UI servers,

Make sure you can readily use FTP, SFTP clients. Either built-in FTP clients such as Dreamweaver, Text Wrangler, etc., or standalone clients.
Send me the url.

You can of course host your report site inside a blog environment,

If your project for this term is based on blogging, either make a new blog to use as a report site, include a new category "report", and do give me the rss info.
Of course, send me the url.

The bottom line: Whichever project you chose to develop this semester make sure I can see your weekly progress.

If your project for this term is based on blogging, either make a new blog to use as a report site, include a new category "report", and do give me the rss info.
Of course, send me the url.

There are a few suggestions inside each project description about ways you can "report" your weekly progress.

short bio and image for the class "people" page ∧

Send me a "professional" image of your self to include on the class People page. The image should be 92 x 92 pixels, in either .jpg (.jpeg) or .png format.

Write a short bio for yourself. Think of this as a brief "About Me" statement that might serve as the introduction to your professional goals statement and be included in your project - no more than two paragraphs. Save a copy for me as a pdf.

Send me both the image and bio to me, fcronk [at] gmail.com as email attachments.

your professional goal statementarticulate your professional goal∧

Your goal statement for this course should be in two parts:

First: A clear statement of where you indeed to go professionally.
Second: How you intend to use this course to help you get there.

There are many kinds of goal statements - maybe you wrote one when you applied to the University of Idaho? Many public school teachers are required to establish "professional" goal statements on a regular basis. Thus, while you can find many sites offering advice for writing a professional goal statement in all likelihood you will have to abstract from various examples of goal statements to get an outline that meets your unique situation. Focus your goal statement for this course on your professional future. Include your brief bio, your About Me.

Your goal statement is the first step toward your design coherency - yourself as an integrated designer. It should also clearly lead to your project selection. In short, you are stating where you want to go professionally then selecting a project that serves as an objective toward reaching that goal, i.e. a project that clearly helps you move toward your profesional goal. I use your goal statement as a framework for grading. So give it some thought and line-up the dots.

guidelines for your professional goal statement √

Be real,

Give yourself a reality check,

After you've written a first draft spend a little time checking your goals against the real world. Make sure you are intending to go somewhere that will in fact be there.

Pick a few places you think you'd like to work. Review what they are looking for in interns or new hires. Be honest. Are you going in the right direction?
Review professional society sites for your profession. Look through their predictions of future trends.
Look for and consume professional blogs in your field. Subscribe to their feeds and read them regularly. Get a sense of what is happening in your profession. Many have job postings. Review those postings and see if you are acquiring the skills required.
Read the news regularly. Design exists in the real world. Don't plan into a fantasy.
Review you draft goal statement and revise. Design is iterative.