Cody Moncrief

Reflection VI: Final Thoughts

I must say that I really like how the coursework for the class is laid out. It’s nice knowing what is due and when; it also helps that I have an up-to-date grade, which is better than another class I am taking this semester. It’s been a month since I turned in an assignment for that class and I’m still waiting for a grade; not forgetting to mention I don’t know my current standing in that particular class. In other words, I have seen no grades for that class. So, having up-to-date grades is a huge plus, with the side bonus of knowing what is due when.

In terms of workload, it seems really heavy at the beginning of the semester. After I got into the groove of “oh shit, it’s almost midnight, I have stuff to do!” it got a lot easier. Also, I liked the weekly bonus assignments. I felt as if I had control over which assignments I could complete and which I could skimp out on and still get a good grade in the class.

I liked the end-result I had for my website, it’s definitely something I want to use. The process was simple enough for someone with little web design experience to accomplish, but challenging enough to keep it engaging. My only trouble now is finding new content to keep my website engaging and current.

The problem I have with web development languages, especially CSS, PHP, and javascript, is I can’t understand code which isn’t commented. I will write the code, understand it while I’m writing it and then forget everything a few days later. If I start poking through somebody else’s code, I’ll never understand what is going on. I especially had this problem when looking through the PHP in the theme I selected for WordPress. This is a personal problem that I have, but with practice I overcome it. However, I sometimes wish that people would comment their code more, or at least organize it so it is readable.

Task #6

Create a Custom Logo

I created a custom header for my website. It’s not flashy, it’s just plain text with a layout I like.

Reflection V: Communities

The difference between broadcast tools and community tools is the difference between a billboard and a focus group.

Broadcast tools tend to only send, send, send, and ultimately send. They generally don’t leave room for users to respond or interact with the company or each other.Community tools, on the other hand, allow for feedback and interaction between companies, their users, and other users.

However, just because it allows for a community, doesn’t mean there will be one. Without proper conception and care, a community will not form. I’ll leave it at that note especially since I don’t know any details on making a successful community.

Blogs are a gray space between broadcast and community, falling more towards the former in most cases. Blogs are most often treated as a broadcast tool, but can offer a place to spawn a community. They are definitely a broadcast tool, blogs allow the writer to convey thoughts and ideas to an audience, which would meet my criteria for a broadcast tool.

Also, there is an allowance for users to respond to the writer’s thoughts and share their own ideas, this kinda meets the criteria for starting a community. It all depends on how the writer wishes to utilize their tools.

Next on the agenda is Facebook and Twitter. The websites by their selves shouldn’t be considered communities. However the space they created online for communities can be recognized.

Facebook, for example, is a space where people can make their own communities withing the lager entity we know as Facebook. I would consider Facebook more of a community tool than a broadcast tool. Twitter on the other hand does have a sense of created space within the network, but it feels more like broadcasting than a community.

Twitter falls along the same gray area that blogs do. There is the potential for an active communicating interactive community, but it is mostly used for broadcasting.

Pre-Presentation Post

My initial site objectives were to create a space to call my own; a place where I could have my portfolio and a blog to express my passion for my work. Well, I haven’t done much with the latter yet, but I’ll get there.

My domain name is my name. I wanted to be creative with it, but realized it would be much simpler to have it just as my name. I also decided to give my site a somewhat absurd catchy name, to make my site just a bit more memorable.

My main target audiences are people who enjoy gaming and want to get into 3D modeling, people who have a passion for 3d modeling, or people looking through my portfolio to make a hiring decision. The way I chose to appeal to this audience is to have a simple design that isn’t bright or flashy.

The site offers to get straight to the point, by including the slider which contains my recent postings to my portfolio gallery, but still allows my most recent postings to be on the home page.

My content appeals to my audience because I’m writing for my audience. I plan to blog about 3D modeling and gaming in general, with my portfolio there as a small accreditation.

The one thing that did change the way I look at the web was definitely writing for the web. I had always realized that writing on the web was completely different than writing for print, but I didn’t realize how different it was. For me, writing on the web was a difficult task, mainly because if I wouldn’t even read what I wrote, why would anyone else. To summarize what I learned: keep it short, simple, and to the point.

Some other things I have considered putting on my site are a rating system, or a way to socially share my content. The reason being, I want to add a level of interactivity to my website. However, I’m still not sure how I want to add it to my site.

Beyond that, the theme I chose worked really well for what I wanted it. Well, except for the slider that came packaged with the website, it was a total bust. (I did get a replacement for it though, yay!)  Other than that little flaw, the theme was easy to customize, and had an overall good feel to it.

The main plug-ins that I used are the new slider on the homepage and the WordPress SEO plug-in. Some plug-ins I want to add, as I mentioned earlier, are a rating plug-in or a social sharing plug-in. I’m not sure how well the rating plug-in would work, but I think social sharing is good for most situations.

The oddest thing that happened during my whole project has to be that stupid slider page that came included with the theme I chose.

First off, when the slider’s page was active, it would completely override the home page so only the 5 images in the slider and 5 other images would be visible. I “fixed” that problem by changing the php around to display my recent blog posts instead of the extra 5 images. When I tried to add images from my gallery, the slider didn’t work! The images were blown out of proportion and didn’t work at all.

I assumed this stemmed from the fact that my images were huge, and the slider wasn’t compatible with images that large. So, I didn’t mess with the slider much, because I thought I had it figured out. When I did shrink my images to fit into the slider, it still blew them out of proportion, and wasn’t even cycling though them.

At that point, I completely disabled the thing and found a plug-in which works 200 times better. The plug-in fetches image previews from the most recent posts, but can be configured to display only certain categories.

So now, I have a slider which displays the most recent posts in my portfolio but doesn’t show the posts from my blog.

Task #5

http://www.codymoncrief.com

I expanded my “about me” page and added a working slider which features  the latest posts from my Portfolio pages. It doesn’t seem to do much now, but when I finally find a blogging groove, I think it would be helpful to display my latest portfolio pieces on the home page.

Reflection IV: Guest Speaker

What Stephen mean by “seductive interactions” was less about manipulation and coercion, but more temptation, subtlety, and human psychology.  Business goals translates into a completion behavior expected from customers, which is then “seduced” by psychology and interaction design.

All of this relates back to usability by the simple fact of human nature. Great designs and good usability doesn’t always sell the end goal of the site. What it does take though, is some encouragement. A little something that nudges users in the right direction of the task the website needs to accomplish. That relates to the psychology of the matter by the need to recognize when and where to place the cues to lead the users along.

(Suddenly I get the strange recollection of Family Guy when Peter and Brian lure and trap James Woods under the box. “Oooh, a piece of candy. Oooh, a piece of candy. Oooh, a piece of candy.” Although, I’m pretty sure this isn’t how it is suppose to work.)

The principles Stephen outlined, are great in theory and in practice. The problem I would have incorporating these ideas into my own project is my lack of a user completion task or goal. Since I am working on this as a personal website, I’m not sure what sort of completion goal I need. I’ve been thinking of something as simple as leaving a comment, sharing the post on a social network, or getting in contact with me. With a bunch of head desking, brain straining, and multiple short breaks, I could probably find a way to make it work.

Basing this whole theory on the end goals I stated earlier, I should manipulate the peak-end rule to optimize for one of the tasks to be satisfying to complete. On that same token, I could probably use curiosity, delighters, or humor to help re-enforce that sense of accomplishment or completion. Currently though, my website is rather bland when it comes to those aspects.

Task #4

I added 2 new portfolio pieces.

My Portfolio Gallery

Site Task #3

http://www.codymoncrief.com/category/gallery/

I added two posts to my portfolio gallery.

Task #2

Site: codymoncrief.com

Task: Site Setup

I changed my site name and tagline, and added the navigation bar. There are some issues with the CSS that need to be ironed out, but that can come later. I based the navigation on the categories I added and have a page for an “about me” and a link to the home page. I may have to revisit my site layout later.

PHP Exercise

http://codymoncrief.webfactional.com/atec3361/nature.php