Kristin Lou

Internet Studio — this class was great. Granted, the name reminded me of a free workshop offered by CompUSA in the late 90′s; the actual coursework was so much more substantial than the course title communicates.

While I can’t imagine what it takes to motivate a new batch of students each semester, this class used the daily assignments and broad material scope to engage and teach my class. This structure begs an individual motivation on at least one front from each student. That is, because we covered such a wide array of topics, it was more difficult to establish an authoritative  grasp on the material; however, it surrendered the student’s learning to their time and taste.

I appreciate the opportunity to delve deeper into coding in my own time, rather than satisfying an arbitrary due date. The “build your own” website project sparked the fire that fueled my learning JavaScript and getting my hands dirty with CSS and HTML. I can honestly say that I wouldn’t have put forth so much effort were a due date attached to the certain accomplishments I’d achieved in this light.

As an EMAC student, I appreciate the fact that the course wasn’t strictly focused on honing a trade — it educated and reminded us to no alienate others, on whatever grounds, through our online presence. I recall a Fall ’11 class which satisfied a required EMAC credit that’s very much delivered like a philosophy course; this class is heavy PC internet conduct/road blocks. This particular class nearly beat its students over the head with this instance, but Internet Studio broached the subject in a much more practical manner, delivering the message without screaming it.

As far as skills are concerned, I over great deal to this class as I honed my skills better than any other UTDallas course could’ve aspired to do. My competency with code and (nearly) every cog involved in websites was solidified by this class, and as an added bonus I leave with a personal motivation to nurture this knowledge on my own time.

Thanks for a great Spring!

It’s really difficult coming up with 300 words “about me” knowing they’ll be broadcast across the internet, namely for professional consideration.

For inspiration, I scoured through a few About Me’s via dribbble. Granted, everyone featured on that site is a full-fledged professional with a bountiful portfolio, so most of their About Me’s alluded to one or a handful of their prize vocational accomplishments. Some of the less prestigious descriptions added a pinch of personability to the profile with mentions of hobbies. At this juncture, I don’t have much of an option outside of including a few hobbies.

No worries — they’re just place holders until I make more of a mark for myself in the design/UI/UX/[insert field description here] field! Until then, it’s book clubs, painting, yoga, jui-jistu, and the like.

Eric: Reorientation

Eric’s site gives the impression that he’s been in the web dev game for longer than a semester. The design and implementation let a low entry threshold barrier, making it easy for any college student (current or prospective) to use it. It was also a good move on Eric’s part to go through the trouble of including media like a slideshow and video on his page — it makes the site seem cutting-edge and tuned into the latest web design innovations. The media also appeals to his target audience — college-age students — as this age group typically demonstrates a penchant for and knowledge of the latest technological/web developments.

Debi: Renewed Services Inc

Hearing Debi’s story of revamping the site gave great insight to how this process might play out in the “real world” with her accommodating the client’s wishes (dominant color scheme, graphic/photo characteristics) and offering her own input as a web design professional (encouraging them to limit the color palette). The site fulfilled it’s client’s wishes in that it was simple to navigate, clean, and family-friendly in design and appearance. Her story added an element of empathy to the design motivation — something that the rest of the class wasn’t as concerned about (comparatively) given the solitary (e.g. lacking collaboration) nature of everyone else’s projects.

Shameer: Dallas Adopt

Shameer’s presentation was polished — his humorous demonstration of how grating the original site’s music feature (playing every time you reloaded the page/went to a new page) demonstrated his understanding of the end user’s disposition and propensity for discouragement when navigating a website. Professor Hoyt mentioned that one page sites are gaining an incredible amount of popularity right now, so Shameer’s ahead of the curve in that light as well. The white background, new logo,  and simple web address verbiage (props for attention to concise denotation) made for a website anyone would readily use in lieu of the current website.

Broadcasting tools are very different from community tools. One is not better than the other; their utility all depends on how you use them and for what purposes (“Don’t be evil”).

Depending on your social niche, Facebook and Twitter are communities. They’re also broadcasting tools, since companies utilize the programs’ services too. If you’re one of the millions of Facebook users hooked on Farmville, Facebook is very much a community for you in which cultivate and nurture casual (?) relationships. My mother’s friend used to be a big fan, despite my cautious concerns, and had become Friends with many people out of state — even out of the country — in a mutual effort to keep their Farm a’growin’. I only use Facebook when it’s socially compulsory, though I’ll confess an itchy trigger finger for deactivating/deleting my account in light of looming privacy concerns.

On the other hand, I employ Twitter more for its use as a broadcasting tool than anything. That is, I treat it as a supplemental RSS feed and follow a handful of my favorite sites (no, not Pictureless Pinterest), and only occasionally use it for social purposes, in which case I’m communicating with a friend or colleague that I have a pre-Twitter, real life relationship with. The latter situation is for the sake of convenience.

While I have provided a link for any site visitors to contact me, the community experience will stop with an RSS subscription to my paintings so the visitor can be notified whenever I add a new painting or digital portfolio piece. Almost all of the other professional nameplate sites I’ve seen have links to their LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, etc., but at this juncture that’s a little daunting for me considering my previously mentioned utilization (and lack thereof) of Twitter and Facebook, and my LinkedIn has no digital job experience to boast (yet!).

Before I delve into the semantics of my site’s manifestation, cautionary tale:

I lived in Austin, TX before enrolling in UTD’s EMAC program. When I first moved to Austin, I vowed to begin conquering my fears in the name of personal growth. Topping this list was a fear of heights, which I’ve reasonably overcome by skydiving and trapeze flying, and a fear of needles, which inspired my habitual donations to the North Texas Blood Bank. I still have yet to banish my fear of public speaking in its entirety, but that should make Friday’s class all the more interesting, right?

Moving on.

When comparing my intentions for the website to the final stages, it seems I accomplished my intention (demonstrating my artistic/technical skills in a professional light — this was play out in a minimalistic template) in a more playful manner than originally intended. First and foremost, this project is to begin honing my skills, and in doing so I began to explore different utilizations of jQuery, HTML, CSS, and the like. My intended audience — potential employers — will still see my capacity for artistic/web dev jobs.

The material covered in class also facilitated the transition in my process. My self-awareness of my web presence (ranging from involvement in Google’s products to recreational Twitter use) has been taken into account and refined in light of the gravity that personal branding holds. Usability and accessibility necessitate a keen eye, from the developer’s table, as class has demonstrated the plethora of hang-ups a site can experience (e.g. blind users, or those who prefer Internet Explorer).

The usability and accessibility burden is lightened with the incorporation of WordPress — it’s an all-in-one package deal (compared to building your own code from scratch). While I’ve had very little experience with WordPress, and am less comfortable with taking on someone else’s code when facing troubleshooting dilemmas, I am having to concede to the industry’s preference for it. I am designing another website which necessitates WordPress as the content manager, which has forced my hand to explore the ins-and-outs of WP more in depth. The plugins like the three-click Maintenance Mode and the SEO option make WP very alluring for the sake of convenience and time-saved during the building and promotional phases. On the other hand, I encountered a conflict with a photo-viewing plugin and a 502 ERROR which likely ate the time I’d saved with the previously mentioned plugins. [Disclaimer: these reflections are from a sophomoric WordPress user, and I'll likely grow significantly more accustomed to it over the summer.]

In wanting to build my own code after encountering problems with WordPress, I learned JavaScript and how to love jQuery. I hand-crafted the HTML and CSS as well. It was fun, to be candid. It’s a great artistic endeavor which produces a little more substance (something that can offer more help or enjoyment than a painting or sculpture) with no clean-up (IRL, that is)! Post-learning curve, it’s great!

In light of enjoying coding so much, and having just scraped the surface of the possibilities of the code I could render, I’m going to continue shaping my site (I hope to add a few more animations, and we’ll see whether I take it in a more playful direction or a more professional/minimalistic direction). In learning code, I don’t have any ideas for building a new site for the general public per se, but I would like to continue my coding education by slowly taking my data back from Google (email, RSS service, chat client, etc.) which seems to be a hefty task in and of itself.

What?

-ish, you ask?

Yes, because I’ve basically finished my site (as far as the task list is concerned). My imaginary Magic Eight Ball says this post will focus on my Contact Form (plus, let’s be honest, the only thing that sounds more painful than writing an About Me is a Bikram yoga class after a german toast eating contest at Kuby’s). Granted the current manifestation of this idea has turned into an email address (Hey, drop me a note at kristin@kristinlo.us).

That being said, in the immortal words of Professor Hoyt, the site is never done. So, let’s just say it’s passed its most awkward phases and is ready for its polite company debut!

Some things I’ve learned along the way:

• z-index is my best friend
• IE is rightfully the butt of nerdy browser jokes (it’s been giving me trouble)
• Commenting out is only slightly more work than just deleting code, but it’s worth it in the overall process scheme
• jQuery is a gift (though IE refuses accept it!) when it came to my scrolling animation and image gallery

Want to learn more? Stay tuned for the live explanation to take place in the ATEC building, this Friday, April, 27, 2012!

Stephen proselytizes for seductive interactions (in the most G-rated way possible). He thinks a digital interface should offer entertainment with the possible promise of immersion, your interaction with the digital interface should be more of an experience than a task.

As a fellow fan of human behavior, inter/trapersonal communication, psychology, and the whole kit n’ kaboodle, I dare not throw stones by calling his approach coercive or manipulative, although it ultimately does target our deepest, subconscious wants and impulses.

Stephen relates business goals, behaviors, and interactive design by utilizing psychology; all three components necessitate a mindful consideration for our human nature. Business Goals → Behavioral Goals ← Psychology  To truly contribute to the world of usability in the realm of interactive design and society as a whole, lending a substantial amount of consideration to that certain je ne sais quoi that makes our relationships, or human interaction in general, ever-preferable.

In incorporating Delighters and Humor, Visual Imagery, and Curiosity, my group envisioned a Masters of Neuropsychology web page depicting possible career paths made possible by completing this degree program, light on the text, complimented with a rotating puzzle or riddle somewhat relevant to the program’s subject matter. Other students echoed the notion that “possible jobs” would be a good element to include on the program’s page, as well as keeping the text minimalistically jargon-laden and using a lot of graphics.

My final project will demonstrate some of the knowledge gained from Stephen’s lessons on human psychology and interactive design by keeping text light on my page, utilizing the user’s preference for anticipation (to ignite curiosity among other motivations), and construct my site’s functionality with a playful execution as a predominant motivator.

*EDIT: Despite my meticulous debugging, it looks like hitting the “restart” button (aka reinstalling the theme after deleting my most recent PlugIn) the trick.

*EDIT2: My splash page (constructed from two different PlugIns, each tried individually) isn’t working… Oh WordPress, why do you push me away?!

As I’ve been mentioning all along, I’ve been wrestling with the want to build my site from scratch. I feel confident enough in my ability to exercise my newly acquired skills and resources to make a visually memorable site that satisfies my simple functional needs.

-Professional nameplate site

-Paintings display

-Contact me

-About me

I recently put my two HTML, etc pages on the back-burner as WordPress had regained my favor with the allure of it’s all-in-one SEO PlugIn. I assembles a clean and modern looking site for previewing my paintings with the help of hatch and y-slider, until my images began breaking early yesterday evening. Much to my chagrin, the problem intensified overnight and my page began exhibiting those terminal symptoms like “502 Bad Gateway” errors. With a fresh brew of yerba mate, it was time to troubleshoot with haste!

Upon further investigation, it appeared to be a problem not just with where/how my images were uploaded (I cleared the cache and reuploaded my images to no avail), but with my server — namely the permissions. The permissions of my wp_uploads were all fine and well in my server, but I scoured forums for alternatives remedies anyway. The most popular solution was to reset the permissions of my wp_uploads from 777 (really?! someone please explain why this is the best default option…) to 755 (more reasonable); while this gave me a satisfied feeling of “accomplishing something”, it didn’t remedy my problem.

My FTP client says that the wp_uploads directory does not exist. The only thing left to do is reinstall WordPress altogether.

Still toying with the idea of ditching WP on the whole…

Welp, bad news.

The theme I downloaded is poised as a bait-and-switch theme; When I alter the code — CSS or otherwise — the alterations only manifest on the Sample Page. Shopping for a new skeleton theme… check back soon!

Adding a plugin:

I added a splash page to my site.

And now you’re thinking “how anticlimactic was this read?!” I know, I know. The site took a week-long hiatus from the drawing board, as did I. Considering I even VC’d into two meetings, I was stingier with my time in a different time zone; but no more! Check back in a (business) week for some stellar updates.

Until then, check out the splash page.