Trade show / Course Reflection (Week 13)

For my full thoughts on the course please read my Course Reflection as part of my portfolio found at: http://folio.uqcloud.net/s4175953/courseReflection.html

In terms of my thoughts about the Tradeshow. They are very mixed, it was a wild day as I was babysitting my nephew. So I probably did not get the full experience (or the drinks afterwards) but the feedback on the project was really great to hear.

It was really nice to hear from Ben that our project was Ambitious, which I guess means that all the work and pain and hard work learning PHP means that we created something actually difficult and to be proud of. I feel that the level of functionality that we delivered was great, everything that we really wanted to do get done we did. There were no major catastrophes, apart from some websites not working saving correctly, shout out to Felix for manually editing the Database to pull out all the script tags and additional single quotations which were killing those modules.

We did not have to compromise our vision, everything we considered core got done and while there could have been some extra design work on the visuals or the interactions. Positive feedback aside it was really nice to see all the teams enjoying themselves and happy of what they had produced. Everyone had a solid display as well as candy the shipwreck crew even had goodies to play with.

Extra Migrations From Team Blog

Some extra content I put on the team blog earlier in the Semester: Our blog address is http://restoringtheweb.blogspot.com.au/

Original link: http://restoringtheweb.blogspot.com.au/2015/08/validator-api-research.html

VALIDATOR API RESEARCH

Posting a document as the HTTP request. Looks like it can be done through JavaScript in the form of an AJAX call.

This method—POSTing a document as the HTTP entity body of a request—is the recommended way to use the checker as a Web service.

To use this method to check a document:

• Issue an HTTP request with a URL for an existing checker instance such ashttps://validator.w3.org/nu/ or https://validator.nu/.
• Use the POST method for the request.
• Include the document to check as as the entity body of the request.
• Include the Content-Type request header to communicate the MIME type of the entity body; e.g., Content-type: text/html; charset=utf-8.
• Encode common parameters as query-string parameters; that is, just as you would with a GET request.

https://github.com/validator/validator/wiki/Service:-Input:-POST-body

The link below shows examples of POST requests using AJAX.

http://www.w3schools.com/ajax/ajax_xmlhttprequest_send.asp

Can get the Nu Validator to Output JSON objects.

Format is:

Type (The type of message / INFO / WARNING ect, Also where it occurs lines columns)

Subtype (Warning)

Message (The actual warning message to display / The semantics needed to fix the error)

Extract (Code snippet)

ORIGINAL LINK: http://restoringtheweb.blogspot.com.au/2015/09/week-9-demo-code-feedback.html

WEEK 9 DEMO CODE FEEDBACK

For specific feedback we asked how everyone felt about the publish button. What if you publish something unfinished?

• There was no solid opinion on yes or no. But an interesting point was made about removing the publish button and instead having some sort of WIN! or achievement type system pop up when the user gets to 0 errors (ie. has completed the task).
• This could have an option to share the success to social media or publish to private or public gallery.

Multiple points of Feedback on the HTML editor or Working Panel.

• Users agree that the windows for editing the code should be larger, so that there is less scrolling to do (breaking up the errors into segments would also help with smaller code blocks).
• Artuo suggested toggle box to make windows larger or smaller and continue to work in them. While Fatimah suggested a similar idea of a pop-out system. 
• We will need to look into the current capabilities for adjusting the editors size as well as users ability to resize windows. (Changes to overall page width will need to be represented across the site).

This lead into a discussion about the Number of Errors.

• Currently there are a large amount of errors which load into the working panel. Users were concerned with the amount of errors and how they would be managed.
• Artuo suggested ordering the errors by importance (Must be fixed, not webstandard but wont break HTML, minor)
• The whole validator section will need to be styled and themed appropriately into the future.
• In terms of number of errors there was a suggestion to break the rebuild into sections. This could be a good way to tie in some gamification aspects as we are finishing up the build. 
• Components would be a good way to work, encouraging users to encapsulate their code for each segment of a page.

From this we touched again on the Target Audience.

• This is the second time target audience has been raised. This is probably out of fear that the task of validating a whole site with no help is too difficult for students mid-highschool. Perhaps we should look to pitch it at senior years (validate and redesign could be a good final project) and entry level for university.
• Looking at the volume of errors it is clear that re-validating is not a simple process, and saving progress will be important along the way.

Where to?

Setting up the back end database management system. Filling the database with content of archived websites, finding applicable images from trove and thumbnails to represent websites.

Experience with Digital Prototype and User Test (Week 11)

For this testing session the groups swapped members, so Lilly and I conducted the testing session. Well, I mostly observed and provided technical support. Lilly created a great document to run the testing session to make sure we got consistent feedback which can be found at this link 

While the prototype performed ok, I would have really liked if we had the CSS panel functional so we could have tested it also. But it remains a thorn in our side much like the dynamic saving and loading. There are still a few weeks left to go so hopefully we can get it all finish in time to add some polish before the final trade show.

I am confident though after this testing session that I have correctly implemented the log-in system and it will be usable for the final prototype. I just need to un-hardcode the data loading as the next step in the PHP chain the get us closer to final functionality.

I was hoping that testers would interact and play with the code a lot more during the testing session, but I guess they were excited to see what other teams were doing as well. Our project is not exactly the sexiest when compared to the Findamals game. Never the less peeking at other teams prototypes I think we are well on our way.

I was actually surprised by how little seemed to have changed in the Pinboards prototype there were a few more pages but the core functionality and using HTML5 canvas was not completed. The Truth Detective game was looking really good though, I really liked to cartoonish art style they were going with. 

Enough jabber, here are the results from the test again migrated from the team blog.

Here are the result of the Digital Protoype test session we ran in our contact session this week.  We aim to conduct the same test with real users in the next week.

Number of users: 5

Task 1: Login stress test and workflow test

• Would like log in to autofill after sign-up
• align font awesome icons

Task 2: Working panel and accessing help

Did you read the instructions on the home page?

• no but prior knowledge of product x2
• yes x2

Would you expect further instructions at this point?

• as a dev, would rather play first
• small tutorial maybe?
• no
• instructions didn’t cover working panel windows, this is what each bit is, need to understand layout

Do you know what to do on this page?

• yes
• where can i type?  looks a bit scary?

What would make the errors easier to read?

• grouped together, space between each error, numbering would be good, bullet points, checkmarks
• they are fine to read
• multi-line erros, where does one error end and another start, gaps between each error, alternting line colours, wrap in container

If you didn't understand an error, where would you look for help?

• google problem, not go to internal help
• help should not be at the bottom
• help should be modal or pop-out
• difficult to see help button, add '?' help to error panel
• put help with errors
• google, stack overflow is industry standard on how to look for help

For each web page, there are multiple modules (e.g. Cricket Australia has 8 modules) that all pertain to the one page.  When you add CSS to the CSS editor and save, would you expect to see your saved CSS when you progress to the next module (i.e. Module 1 to Module 2)?

• blank, prefer to start fresh each module
• carry over if part of same website
• frustrating to start over
• would copy and paste if not automatic
• yes, definetly

Task 3: Use the working panel

• would like ability to upload own images 
• html editor text small x 2
• html editor wrap text rather than scroll x2
• rather than make panels movable, put content in tabs, either
• errors thin at top, 2 tabs: html editor and css side by side; viewer, OR
• separate html/css/viewer separate tabs and errors visible all the time

Dont stop the PHP Train

Another update on my PHP Progress. The Index.php file is now working completely, and has been restyled to fit in with the current style guide. The database is correctly storing usernames, passwords and emails, without a hitch. It is also redirecting users on log in to the home page.

While that sounds like not a lot given that is was 'ready to go', '90% complete', 'pretty much done' a few weeks ago. In reality it took a lot more blood, sweat, and tears over the Midsemester break to figure out what was going on. Why the redirect was not working correctly, why the sessions were not connecting. Why I was being locked out of the database.

In short the struggle was real friends. But we got there in the end.

current Index.php page

The good news now is after this weeks team meeting and the news that there will be a digital prototyping session next week. The PHP train is going to keep on rolling. The plan is to get the database completely set up so that each registered user has their own website code which they can work on which is they are able to save.

If the progress so far is anything to go by this is going to be a big effort. But once its done the back of the project will be broken and it will be on to bigger and better things.

PHProgress

Just a quick recap of the work done in the final workshop for last week. There were not a lot of people around with groups climbing into holiday mode and illness going around. Which was good as I was able to really did into the PHP and hog Artuo's time in this session to get our Login system set up and working. 

Unstyled Log In Fun

While it looks terrible at the moment all the elements from our original site are ready to be put into place. I was testing this PHP experiment in a separate folder to ensure that I did not cause any issues with the gitHub repository or anyone else's work so it has no style sheet attached to it.

Please Register

A page that I had forgotten about, users will need to actually sign up. So we will have to do a bit of work styling this page as it is a new addition compared to the paper prototype. We also allocated jobs during this workshop session so I am confident that the team will be able to achieve another round of testing with a hi fidelity prototype after the break.

Database Entries

The fruits of today's labor. It is a small step in the right direction, but I am definitely starting to feel more confident not only with the PHP code syntax but how to spot errors. We looked today at the error log and how to print PHP errors to the screen to help with the debugging process and this will be invaluable as I try to load more data into the system over the break and convert more pages from straight HTML to PHP.

While there is no class next week, it definitely does not mean an end to the work and I am hopeful to have the PHP code finished by the end of mid-term break so that we can focus on additional aspects of the concept in the future weeks as well as adding polish.

Turning up the Heat

This week it was time to really get serious with the Project and kick it into high gear. Time to walk the walk and stop talking about "yeah so its all working we just need to hook it up".

That was the start of this week. What followed were some long nights, intense levels of frustration, vague JavaScript errors (along with the specific ones with no googleable solution >.<).

For my part of the project putting it all together meant that all the JS, JQuery, AJAX code that I had written I now needed to put into other peoples pages and made sure it worked in the environment that it was supposed to. Along with helping out the rest of the team with styling, and other page coding where ever they needed me.

Our end result demo code (live here) shows almost all of the functionality we want to include in our project as a core (CSS and HTML editors not playing together yet). I would have liked the styling to be a little bit more complete and consistent, but the team has identified this as an area we can work on other the break to make sure the prototype is higher fidelity and more easily able to be tested.

The other big hurdle that we are going to run into is our Back end system, which is currently non-existent. This is going to be my major role for the project so I am going to be spending a lot of time looking at this guy:

It is definitely exciting and scary at the same time, seeing as this is my first experience with PHP but it is something that I am really interested in for my later Thesis work. I am planning to make a solid dent on the back end systems over the break so that we can get into more gamification aspects of our project and improve user experience over and above the basic functionality.

Ill let you know how it goes ^.^

Feedback Presentation

For specific feedback we asked how everyone felt about the publish button. What if you publish something unfinished?

• There was no solid opinion on yes or no. But an interesting point was made about removing the publish button and instead having some sort of WIN! or achievement type system pop up when the user gets to 0 errors (ie. has completed the task).
• This could have an option to share the success to social media or publish to private or public gallery.

Multiple points of Feedback on the HTML editor or Working Panel.

• Users agree that the windows for editing the code should be larger, so that there is less scrolling to do (breaking up the errors into segments would also help with smaller code blocks).
• Artuo suggested toggle box to make windows larger or smaller and continue to work in them. While Fatimah suggested a similar idea of a pop-out system. 
• We will need to look into the current capabilities for adjusting the editors size as well as users ability to resize windows. (Changes to overall page width will need to be represented across the site).

This lead into a discussion about the Number of Errors.

• Currently there are a large amount of errors which load into the working panel. Users were concerned with the amount of errors and how they would be managed.
• Artuo suggested ordering the errors by importance (Must be fixed, not webstandard but wont break HTML, minor)
• The whole validator section will need to be styled and themed appropriately into the future.
• In terms of number of errors there was a suggestion to break the rebuild into sections. This could be a good way to tie in some gamification aspects as we are finishing up the build. 
• Components would be a good way to work, encouraging users to encapsulate their code for each segment of a page.

From this we touched again on the Target Audience.

• This is the second time target audience has been raised. This is probably out of fear that the task of validating a whole site with no help is too difficult for students mid-highschool. Perhaps we should look to pitch it at senior years (validate and redesign could be a good final project) and entry level for university.
• Looking at the volume of errors it is clear that re-validating is not a simple process, and saving progress will be important along the way.

Where to?

Setting up the back end database management system. Filling the database with content of archived websites, finding applicable images from trove and thumbnails to represent websites.

Workshop Grunt work and a Sassy Project

Big thanks to Lilly today who helped everyone in the group set up both Grunt, Ruby, RubyGems, and SASS for us to use on the project. We had already been using GitHub for version control and had decided that we wanted to use Bootstrap. With the latest Bootstrap 4 using SASS we thought it would be a good opportunity to jump in.

First Foray into the Command Prompt World

I had heard a lot about SASS and the idea of having a compiled CSS where you could use variables and other added functionality sounded like a really neat idea. So I am glad that we are going to be using it on this project as I feel the experience will be invaluable (even if it all ends horrible). This project has involved a lot of jumping into the deep end but fingers crossed with a team of four we will be able to bring together a fully functional prototype for the demonstration next week.

From the feedback on our project thus far there have been a lot of great suggestions for further functionality which we could add to our concept. I feel that if we can achieve all our core functionalities by next weeks demonstration we will really be able to branch out and explore some fun aspects that we could add to improve user experience.

But back to the real world, where in another stroke of success I manged to complete the Trove API call. Credit in no small part to our Tutor and Leila (who was also having the same problem) who helped me cobble together a working request for an image.

Trove API Call

Image from Trove

All in all despite today's minor successes there is still a lot more work left to be done. It may be a long weekend ahead. But hopefully more content for the blog and more frustrations, venting and hopefully reflection from me too.

Time to Catch Up

Last time I saw this blog I was quietly confident about all the progress that I was going to make on this project. Completing the API calls getting the PHP system set up (Learning PHP). However, fast forward a week and I am still in pretty much the same position. Only this time there is a demonstration due in a week. What happened?

Collectively the group decided last week that with a number of other more pressing assessment pieces (I'm looking at you Digital Prototyping) and the demonstration deadline far enough away off we could take a breather and step back from our studio project for the week.

Step forward into this week and I was still hitting a brick wall on the Trove API call. All the other APIs had been configured correctly, or enough to know that they were sending and receiving data (without necessarily manipulating it). The never ending pain came in the form of a console error with the very uninformative, no 'Access-Control-Allow-Origin' header is present.

The Error that plagued my Existence

So after truckloads of reading on StackOverflow as well as the W3Schools I was no closer to an answer. I even found a blog from a student previous taking this course who had the same issue without a real solution. Then after reading the MDNs page on CORS and cross site access restrictions and a few subsequent links I came across JSONP. By using a JSON object with added padding. It essential tricks the server and gets around the Same Origin Policy by wrapping the response up as a script. Scripts thankfully are not subject to this same policy. This website helped to spell it all out for me.

The only problem now was that I had up until this point been writing only in vanilla JavaScript and had not really familiarized myself with the JQuery notation (Sorry DECO7140 two notations and Python syntax at the same time was not going to happen). So of course it was time to hit up the academy

Thanks Code Academy

In a round about kind of way its good that this is making me learn JQuery, because it is definitely a useful library and a skill that I will need to have in the real world. Its just a shame it took hours and hours and hours to realize that it was a necessity for this project.

Experience with Paper Prototyping (Week 7)

Last weeks contact session was really exciting. Each of the teams were conducting paper prototyping sessions and I was lucky enough to be the one testing other groups, rather than conducting tests. It was great to see how the other teams were progressing and how their ideas were coming together. But it was also a good opportunity to see where our development was at in relation to the other groups.

I feel like we are on par at the moment with most groups. We are definitely behind team Findamals in terms of Backend development, but our team also does not have a software engineer so I guess that ok ^.^

Testing the Truth detective groups prototype made me realize just how difficult a game like this would be to build. The amount of things I saw Lilly just tapping and tapping and tapping on the piece of paper to try and get a clue was funny. Finding that balance between obvious clues and inconspicuous ones will be hard. Let alone having to deal with users inputs and spelling mistakes.

On the other end of the scale the Pinboards team had an actual working digital prototype. While it was very shallow it was still quite impressive and they had a survey to follow up with after the testing session. Which in hindsight is probably something that we should have organised.

While Felix and Rena got a lot of good feedback shown below, it would be a good idea for us to place a bit more emphasis on the testing session next time.


Migrated from Team blog.

Landing Page
1. Too much text to read for the construction.  -Could consider using flow chart or combination of pictures
2. The "Sign in" and "Login" button should be more distinguishable (separated?) and more informative to users what the difference is.


Home page
1. More instructions to tell the user what they should do (e.g. What's the difference of Hand and Easy;)
2. Emphasise the category tags, letting users choose among different topics
3. Whether to show the current works if users have already signed up and made some edit
4. More pages for different topics?

Editing page
1. More objective-orientated that users should know what to achieve (e.g. the total number of errors,  etc)
2. Layout of the page should be changed to follow the sequence of the work (e.g. errors 1st, editor 2nd, "Save" and "Publish" 3rd)
3. Change "Publish" to "Save & Publish" or a popped up windows with confirmation
4. Consistent navigation bar, allow users to navigate to different page.
5. Layout of the editor (customisable? switchable tags?)
6. Users are allowed to add name to their works
7. Any hint to users if they have solved all the errors
8. Users are only required to edit on page (no hyperlink include)
9. Inline CSS or separated stylesheet

My Restoring
1. The way of presenting: follow the format of "Gallery" or "Homepage"
2. Process recording presents as number counter instead of percentage bar.
3. Name of the works: customised name instead of numbers


Gallery
1. The work shown in Gallery would list its author
2. Develop presenting style as light box


Others
1. Do we need to make a profile setting page and a separated instruction page ("Help")
2. Logo position, Logo consistency.
3. To import the website (index) with only one stylesheet, by restricting the year range.

Poster and Pitch Reflections (Week 5)

Everyone was hyper stressed about the pitch this week and making sure we had a whiz bang presentation that looked a million dollars. I kept having to remind the group that the majority of the marks were actually for the proposal document and we should be spending our time refining that to make the best use of our time.

Because the pitch was based on my original poster concept I was able to recycle a lot of the content from my original pitch and we even reused the poster image again as a one of our slides. Ill be the first to admit that the poster itself is pretty ugly, but I like bright colours, and hopefully with the arrows it got the message across. It was a lot easier to talk to when it was projected up on the big screen and we were able to structure our group presentation around the steps it illustrated. 

The prezi presentation that Rena built was fantastic and really helped to show our concept, and everyone pitched in to explain the area of the project that there were working on in more detail. While we got grilled a little bit on our Audience, I feel that the research Lilly conduced and the evidence we have suggests that it will be an appropriate group to aim for provided the difficulty level is not too steep.

Lilly took notes of the feedback and created a neat little table for us to put on the team blog.

Gamification

• level up
• easy: validate
• hard: no validator = more points

Tangential learning

• do you want to learn more about a topic? Go to Trove and search the rabbit hole of links.

Multi-user

• more than one person editing like Google Drive
• set-up a friends group or study group to work on a problem together
• solve collaboratively

Help

• How do they get help?
• discussion board
• chat panel
• links to stack overflow (see codeacademy)

Web design

• add in an extra level of complexity 
• validation doesn't make it look better

Audience

• is years 7 and 8 too young?
• when is validation appropriate
• what are students really learning in the classroom
• how hard are the validation problems

Gallery

• add a voting system

Last Weeks Progress + This Weeks Plan

Last week we had the presentation and the Proposal document due, with all the preparations for both of these pieces and other assessment I was unfortunately not able to even get a real look in at PHP and finalizing our API calls for the groups project.

While we were briefly exposed to some more PHP in the workshop session,it seems clear that It will take some substantial effort to actually understand what it is that I need to be doing to have the database / log-in form and HTML elements interact correctly.

There have been several instances already during workshops for this course where I have largely felt lost. There has been a lot of processes undertaken to set up the zone, enable PHP and SQL, upload files to the server use the command line (putty in my case) SSH into the server and all sorts of other things. While I was able to accomplish the tasks put before me (as they were step by step instructions) I come away almost feeling more lost than when I started. Completing a task but having no understanding of the HOW behind the methods and the WHY is irksome.

I am hopeful that by the end of the course I will be able to fully understand the processes that I am undertaking and have greater control in how I can shape their outcomes, but at the moment I feel much more like an uneducated person blindly following a list of instructions. With the pressures of the team project I am hopeful that I will still have time for some self directed learning in the areas around severs, zones, back end access and all the other related jargon.

This week is shaping up to be less intense with other subjects and I am hopeful that I will be able to deliver a completed and functional Log-in system by the end of this week. I will take the initiative and do some reading on PHP before the workshop session so that I can more aptly ask for help if I need it. I will also esquire with my information systems tutor as to how I would implement such a system. Taking INFS7900 alongside this course has actually worked out quite nicely as we are learning the PHP myAdmin interface and the concepts underpinning such a relational database system.

In other project news our paper prototypes are going to be tested in this weeks contact session. In preparation the team has organised to have a meeting on Tuesday morning so that we can run an initial in group walkthrough of the system to weed out any obvious interface problems. We have still yet to decide who will be running the testing session with our prototype in the contact session and who will test other groups prototypes. I am expecting that we will discuss that tomorrow.

That is enough ramblings for one night. Until next update (hopefully there will be multiple this week)

Week 5 Hitting the APIs

I spend a lot of time this week familiarizing myself with AJAX and API requests. I followed a few online tutorials (I found the one from w3schools http://www.w3schools.com/ajax/default.asp) which were very helpful in deepening my understanding of how the client side interacts with the server side. The Mozilla developers network was also a good source for trouble shooting XMLHttpRequests.

After doing all this reading I jumped into Notepad++ and made myself up a few html pages with simple buttons that I could click that would run functions to send out XMLHttpRequest's the to various APIs we were going to use for our group project.

The first images below are playing around making calls to the MementoAPI which is an easy way to access the archived website links available on the Wayback Time Machine as Trove does now allow access to their website zone.

API call to Memento Wayback Time Machine

Response from API call to Memento

At the moment the results are just coming back as text, but I did this exercise more as a proof of concept to make sure it would work and that we can grab the url links. Moving on from this I think got the w3schools validator API up and running with another simple test.

API call to w3schools validator

Response from call to w3schools

This weeks lecture and the workshop content helped to reinforce what I had already learned myself but it was good learning how to access the back end of our website in the workshop session. Coming from a non-technical backgrounds it was good learning about file transfer protocols and how to actually get content up and onto a web server.

Also managed to set up a simple mySQL database with a single table. We should be able to use this in the group to manage Usernames and Passwords so that we can have a login system, and even save users progress. Our group is also using Github for this project so learning how to use both it and FileZilla will be a great experience.

Next week my goal is to set up a login system which can actually store usernames and passwords using PHP. I will begin by looking at the PHP beginners links posted on the deco1800 resources page and then look for online tutorials from there.

Our team has also agreed to have the proposal document written and finished by this weekend so I will spend some of next week editing that and getting ready for the pitch and final submission. Overall I am pretty happy with this weeks progress and hopefully we can start getting into some low fidelity prototypes late next week so that we can think about testing.

Teamwork Module (Week 3)

We would like you to reflect on how you found this teamwork module useful in relation to your team expectations

This module was very similar to the online training programs at my workplace. Working in sales a lot of the content around communication and active listening was more of a revision than any new learning. However, it is always good to have a refresher and to keep all these aspects in mind when jumping into a group situations.

Another take away that I took from the module was the importance of Team roles and setting down expectations when the group forms. I feel that this has been an issue in previous group projects where not all team members had similar expectations which caused conflicts later into the process.

Major Concerns

After our first team meeting I do not really have any major concerns. This is the first time I have worked in a group where people have actually chosen a topic because they were interested in it, rather than being assigned randomly or forming groups with their friends.

I am excited to see how this works out as everyone should have a vested interest in the concept. That being said I am concerned that because the design idea our team was formed around was based on my pitch, that the team would consider me the 'owner'. Making them less likely to contribute ideas or challenge my position on design ideas because I might be offended. However, I am not significantly attached to my topic and am more interested in how others could help me to evolve the concept rather than pursue it alone.

I am also somewhat concerned about the expectations, while I am eager to learn new technologies and expand my understanding. I feel that my concept was definitely ambitious for my current level of skill. But with the help of the team, tutors and online resources I am sure it will be achievable.

How you could avoid them?

Communicate, communicate, communicate. That was one of the biggest takeaways from the training module and something that i need to improve on when working within teams. I feel that this would be the best way to ensure others provide feedback on the concept and take ownership of it themselves.

Effective team meetings are something that I want to try and implement more and more. I feel like these are an excellent way to manage team member expectations, providing everyone with a single purpose and then outcomes that they need to produce.

How you think you can be a good team member?

Contribute to team discussions and provide energy in all aspects of group work. Complete assigned tasks to a high standard and help others with their tasks when asked too. Encourage inputs from all members.

Overall just be a good person ^.^ 

Trovin

Crawling through Trove for some more inspiration and ideas. I started off looking in the maps section, to see if there was anything I found particularly interesting. I wanted to get away from a historical / educational theme and figured that maps of some areas from older time periods could still be useful for tourism.

Maybe hidden on old maps of Brisbane or Queensland there were some hidden gems that people had forgotten about or did not know about at all. After looking at the Official guide book to the capital of queensland it seemed that not a lot had really changed, maybe just the names of things were different. But there were still day trips and getaways to places. With this style of data perhaps a retro tourism website could be created?

Alternatively my search through trove also took me to looking at tourism posters for Queensland.

While these posters themselves might not be the most appropriate they appear to be the right shape for playing cards. Which got me thinking that some sort of memory game or even a pairs game might be a good way to show some of the more interesting art works or posters that are on trove.

Week 2 Workshop - Digging through the Trove

This weeks workshop was another chance to explore trove and yet another chance to get astounded and confounded by its enormous scope. I thought trove was already scary but looking through the API and doing some queries things were made a little clearer on how I could retrieve the information I wanted.

However, with each question answered more popped up in the form of definitions and concepts that I was unfamiliar with. Sure I had heard of an API and XML and JSON objects, but what they actually were and how they worked mostly foreign to me still. So after sifting through trove for a little while I jumped onto the w3schools website to read up about XML and JSON to get a better idea of what was actually happening when I made a query. I figured out an API was an application programming interface, but it could not really nail down what exactly that means despite some searching. Hopefully we will go a little bit more into the nitty gritty next week.

While I could use the query systems on the DECO1800 cloud sever, the background of why I had to use that and what is was actually doing is still fuzzy. Perhaps that is enough and will get me through the next few weeks, although on a personal level I love knowing how things work so I might look into it more.

Either way its time to start churning out some actual ideas on how to make Trove data more useful and interesting ways to display the data in a web based application.

Studio Session

Exploring Trove

First impression of Trove is that it is terrifying and monstrous. There is just so much information and so much data it feels super easy to get lost. I spent the beginning of the studio session and the group brainstorming trying to figure out how the system worked and what kind of information that could be found there.

The help section was exceptionally useful, however the best find was the application gallery and the experiments that other people had created using trove. A quick look at the eyes on the past project gave a great insight into the kind of things could be done using trove.

These are resources which I will need to look into further to help with idea generation and exploring the problem space once the brief has been released.

The results of our group brainstorming are shown below.

Results from group brainstorming

Our teams discussions revolved quite heavily around naval history and the early historical period associated with seafaring and exploration. Ideas for point and click adventure games as well as choose your own adventure tales were plenty.

While I know a little about Australian history it would be interesting to delve deeper into one specific area or time period to consider for the project. 

Course Expectations (Week 1)

Based on what I know of this course, I expect to be doing a lot of work this semester and hopefully having a lot of fun.

I will admit that before going to the first lecture and even after i was not 100% on what I should be expecting from this course. However, after doing a little bit of looking around (which I probably should have already done) I have a better idea of what to expect.

After a good look at the course profile and noticing that introduction to web and introduction was listed as a Pre-Requisites and introduction to software engineering being a companion course. From this is expect that there will be MORE coding in this course which should be fun.

From looking at the workshop details posted on blackboard I can now safely expect that we will be doing some image manipulation in Photoshop and design work in Illustrator. Then a quick look at the last years Google+ community I am expecting group work and interaction with other groups in the course.

I want to learn different software packages and programming languages to improve my overall skills an capabilities. Ultimately I just want to learn and absorb as much as I can from not only this course but my team members and class members.

I am worried about juggling all my courses which all seem to have big design builds this semester.

I hope that I can manage my courses and time more effectively this semester.