Scott Mise's Archive

My biggest issue on this project was time. I only really played around with one layout. I think I should have taken more time to sketch out general layouts, like thumbnails of the entire page. Everything on my site seems very crammed in, not to mention too big. I always design things too large for web. I think if i designed on a bigger screen where 100% in photoshop took up less that the whole screen I would have a better end result. For example my footer is an eyesore and I didn’t notice until we put them on screen to turn them in. I think I also put a lot of effort into the group activities, so I was happy with all of the interactive elements that we decided on, but I didn’t have enough time or energy for the design portion. Like I said earlier, for some reason the layout I used was stuck in my head from the beginning and I even notice until I walked around and realized how different, yet functional everyones projects were.

As for positive things I did, my proficiency with photoshop are much better. I had a lot of fun building all of the details up in my design. It got pretty technical, and that is something you don’t realize until you start making some of those details for yourself. I feel like I only really just got started on this project, kind of like a first draft, so it is good that I see areas to improve in and if I had more time you know what I needed to do. I believe my project had a lot of potential, but designing always takes longer than you initially think it will. This gets me a little worried about my freelance work, because clients won’t always understand all that goes in to the process. I will be outlining everything I do to calculate how much work time I will need, I think it might be good to share that with clients too.

FOOD BANKS can:

go to homepage

• login

complete inventory list

• enter low item and automatically be alerted if another food band has entered a surplus of that item
• link these needs to social networks

enter quantities of goods in certain categories

add an event

update contact info and hours

VOLUNTEERS/NEEDY can:

go to homepage

see full list of food banks and status of inventory for foodbanks

click on individual banks to see detailed inventory

find bank locations of maps

go to events tab and see opportunities

search (for pantries and events)

Food Bank of Abilene

5505 N 1st St

(325) 695-6316

Enjoy!

The User will:

Sign in with their Facebook account

Search for trails

by name

or by location (city, zip code)

Filter search results

by trail difficulty

or by trail closures

Map a route to trailhead

Find helpful information

like a trail rating out of 5 stars

or user reviews

or trail difficulty

or trail ride events

Upload or view photos or videos

and comment on the media, or other’s uploaded media

Can rate a trail on a 5 star scale

or leave a more detailed user review

While on the trail map the User will:

find current their location on the trail

or find the trailhead

or look at the different trail section difficulty levels

or locate substantial hills

or locate rest areas

Call 911

Route quickest back to trailhead

while avoiding difficult trail sections or hills if desired

The best suggestions I got are:

Option to route around difficult sections while using “find fastest route back to parking lot”

Interactivity with ride tracking apps

List how fast trails generally fry out after rain

List how busy trails typically are

Johnny is a 55 year old high school principal. His age doesn’t slow him down, he still rides all the technical bike trails that the young guns do. Riding alone one saturday morning he gets in a little crash and thinks he broke his elbow. It is Johnny’s first time on this particular trail (which he found via the Trail Tracker app) and he needs to know the quickest way to get back to the parking lot so he can get some medical attention. Walking a mountain bike back to the parking lot will be painful in itself but it would be even harder if he had to walk through black diamond rated sections of the trail. He uses to app to calculate the quickest route back to the parking lot and uses the filter to weed out any black sections. After a tough morning on the trails Johnny recovers and in a few weeks he is back to finding new trails with the app.

Beth is a college student who is planning a biking trip for her and her boyfriend over spring break. She is a schedule freak and wants to hit all the good trails in Utah on the trip. She gets on the app and search’s for Moab, Utah and plenty of trails pop up. She looks through their ratings and reads some user comments. She can even view pictures and videos of the trails to help educate her decision. She picks out a few trails based of difficulty and user reviews and the app helps her trip go great. The app helps her locate the trailheads when she is in Utah and helps her navigate the trails as well.

Starting off with my strengths I think i have come pretty far in my treatment of heiarchy. I think that a user can easier determine what is more important in terms of information by quickly looking at the page. The use of different colors, weights. and even different fonts is coming more naturally to me. Another strength i think I have in interactive design is an overall clean feeling that when someone experiences they won’t mind poking around the site for awhile. Personally if a site is too busy a lot of times I will just leave and seek the information elsewhere.

As far as weaknesses I think the main thing I need to focus on is basic functionality. For example small things I might leave out of my designs that I take for granted that are easy to find and use on other people’s websites. This is troubling because we have focused in class about how to design from a user’s (future user that isn’t you) standpoint. It is so easy to just work from myself instead of focusing on what will be most important for the end user. I seem to just get excited about aspects of the site I enjoy designing and give less thought to things that might be more important than they seem to me at the time. This leads to errors like forgetting simple things like page progression at the bottom of a page, which adds needed functionality but also can dramatically change the look and feel of a blog, especially with a footer added as well because the bottom of a page as a whole is a big aspect that I overlooked.

From previous assignments I’m not sure if I have improved on anything or done anything worse. The varying content of the different projects makes me focus on such different things. One this that I am optimistic about is I feel like I have good range to design different types of sites. All of my designs have been so different and I enjoy this variety and I think it reflects well on me in my portfolio.