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Week 15 - Reflect on learning outcomes & portfolio

Reflect on learning outcomes

Expectation at the beginning

At the beginning of the semester, I had 3 expectation to this courses.

Finish a design computing project in a team setting.

Enhance my understanding of the web design.

Improve web programming skills.

Result

1.Successfully finished the project and improved communication skills in a team setting.

In this semester, I successfully finished a project with 3 awesome teammates.Team members got very different backgrounds, some are good at programming and some are good at design.A good thing of working with people with the different backgrounds is that we can think in a different way and can contribute the different ideas.But at the same time, it needs a lot of the communication to combine all of the ideas as one decision.

As the team leader, I did a lot of communication work among group members and tutors.Group members are from 2 different countries, in order to know what everyone is thinking, I tried to talk to everyone in both group meeting and private time.I found out sometimes we couldn’t understand each other perfectly, especially in the group meeting group members tend to not speak out the different ideas. So besides the group meetings, I talked to every group member in private and try to get more feedback and ideas about the project.The good communication among the group members made our project went very smoothly.And individually, I got more experience of working in a team and working as a team leader.

Another thing I learnt about communication is talking to tutors about assignment criteria.Sometimes, I worked very hard for an assignment but the result wasn’t good. I talked to tutors about the situation and found out the reason is that I had a different understanding of the course criteria. The reason for that is partially because the different culture backgrounds, but communicate more with tutors can definitely solve the problem.

2.Improved web programming skills.

Programming in PHP was the biggest challenge in the project. I spent much time on achieving some functions in PHP, but the result was not always good.I was a bit frustrated at the first, but the progress of solving the problems let me learn how to debug my code and how to program in a more efficient way.

3.A better understanding of time management.

Project dues in the last week of the semester. In that period all group members got a lot heavy assignments duties.We couldn’t consider this problem when we made the project schedule, so in order to finish the project in time, we modified the original goals and time schedule. Everyone contributed a lot to the project and as the team leader, I was tried to cover some extra parts the project to reduce other group members task allocation.This experience gave me a good lesson about time management and let me realise how important to start the project early.Reflect on portfolio design process.

Reflect on the portfolio

The visual design of the website was finalised as following.

Homepage

Work page

Contact page

Only three components on the homepage. A position fixed menu bar, a brief introduction to myself and the website and a link to my Instagram page.

Besides the full-screen background image was taken by myself in Melbourne. I really like the colour and the structure of the photo and it looks perfect as the homepage background.

Overall, I tried my best and I’m really satisfied with the current website. In the future, I would add more content and more interactivity to the website to make it more professional.

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Week14 - Reflect on the portfolio

Collecting & Selection

At the beginning of making the portfolio website, I was trying to collecting everything I’ve already done in this semester.Proposal reports, final project reports and online journal really helped me. I put everything related to each part together and sorted everything in Notes.

Reports written during the semester helped me collecting the most content, but a big part of the report content reflects the project as a group instead of individual, so I tried to combine the report content and online journals together to reflect the project in both group and individual aspects.

As Matt mentioned, the portfolio is a place to show the best side of my project. So I deleted some rough parts of the content and strength the good parts via images.

Design Process

I’m always into the simple and well-designed websites and I hope my portfolio could be as simple as possible but should be a well-designed work.

I love photography and I took a lot photos in these years. I decided to use some of the best photos as materials of my portfolio to reflect my extra works besides the course.

After collecting all of the text and image contents for the portfolio website, I draw a sketch of the website.

I made it as simple as I could but considered a lot of the layout, design, colour usage and structure.

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Week 13 Reflect on Trade Show

Due to Erika’s business trip, our group trade show was changed to Thursday.

We arrived 15 mins earlier than the scheduled time to prepare and decorate the trade show space.

Trade show poster

The trade show room was different to the postgraduate one and we didn’t need to decorate white board and only need to make a very simple preparation.

Trade show space

The trade show went very smooth. Erika and I did the pitch. We introduced every functionality we achieved in our website and all functions worked perfectly in the trade show. After a brief demonstration, tutor asked a question about what would we add to this website if we were a very experienced programmer group. We have discussed this in the previous meeting, so the answer was to add cafe/restaurant recommendations to every library’s details page. This is one of the functions that we wanted to implement to our website, but couldn’t be done due to the time limitation and extreme inexperience in PHP programming language.

After the trade show, we took a group photo as an end of the project.

Overall, the project went fine and every group member contributes a lot to the project.

As the group leader, I’m so glad to have a chance to work with three excellent group mates and I learnt a lot from them.

At the same time, I feel very sorry about we couldn’t finish all functionalities as planned. I should have done better as a group leader.

What we couldn’t do good in the project are the time management and programming skills.

I underestimated the difficulty of the whole project and PHP programming language. I spent much more time on even a very simple function than expected. And that’s the reason that I couldn’t implement all functionalities as planned. Besides, I couldn’t manage everyone’s schedule, especially in the week 12 and week 13 when everyone got heavy assignment duty and potentially didn’t have enough time for this course.

The lessons I learnt from this course definitely helped me to get a better understanding of the teamwork.

I really appreciate everyone who helped us in the project, and I believe I could do a better job in the future.

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Week12 Reflect on project up to date

Week 12

Project—Details Page

The trade show will happen in the next week, so I tried my best to finish the details page.

The goal of the details page has to be changed because I don’t have enough time to finish every function as plan.

In this week, I’d like to finish the SLQ API  and try to figure out how to use the Flickr API.

Yonglin helped me out with the SLQ API, the SLQ API is fully implemented now, and the details page will be refreshed while users click on the different libraries. 

Fully implemented details function

In terms of the Flickr API, I finished the most part of it. However, I couldn’t figure out how to use the variables from PHP in my javascript code.

I attended two tutor help session but still couldn’t figure it out.

Report

The project report dues on Monday of the week 13.  

So all group members had a group meeting on Sunday and decided the task allocations.

Group contact

Yonglin is helping us on the programming part and Erika is on a business trip, so I didn’t give them two a lot of tasks.

I finished a big part of part A before the group meeting, but there’re still a lot of modifications to be done.

Task allocations & To do List

We discussed the report and decided to make part A more detailed. So personas have been modified as following and appended to the appendix part. And some other changes have been made to the report.

Personas Example

Result

Report images

I’m so happy that a 56 pages report was finished and reviewed by all group members. We discussed all the details together and everyone contributed to both project and report.

 Group meeting notes (partial)

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Week11 - Reflect on project up to date

Week 11

The goal of this week is finishing the SLQ API.

Based on the practical examples, I tried to code the SLQ API. But unfortunately, my code didn’t work, and it keeps showing errors.

I was very stressed because the SLQ API seems the easiest one among all API functions intended to be implemented on the details page.

I tried to ask teammates for help, but nobody can figure it out. So I prepared some questions and asked them during the workshop session.

Prepared Questions

Eventually, Jason helped me out.

There are two main reasons that I couldn’t work it out.

Firstly, I couldn’t fully understand the original data in the database and the for loop’s meaning in the practical example.

Secondly, I didn’t know how to debug my own code.

I learnt some debugging tricks from Jason, which I can apply in the future.

One of the very useful tricks is use “echo” to check each part of the code, and figure out where the problem is.

Use “echo” to debug

Result

The SLQ API was semi-implemented.

All of the details data is retrieved from the database, but I couldn’t figure out how to get the library name that users clicked.

So the at the moment, no matter which library users clicking. The content will be the same.

Schedule

Due to the extremely inexperienced in the PHP. It takes very long time for me to finish even just a simple function.

The progress so far is way behind the schedule, and implementing all functionalities as planned seems impossible.

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Week 10 -- Documentation and Reflection on project over the holiday

In order to finish the project on time, I made a to-do list for the holiday. Since it’s the first time for me to code in PHP language, so I spent much time on studying and reviewing the practical examples.

To-do list over the mid-semester break

1.Figure out what do I need to do to finish the details page.

2.Review all practical examples(especially week 3, week 6, week 7 and week 9 )

3.Try to finish one of the API functions on the details page.

Intended design for the details page 

Plan for achieving the goal

As shown above, all of the content of the details page has to be retrieved from the different API resources. Pictures of libraries have to be retrieved from the Flickr API, detailed information is from state library of Queensland database, the brief introduction is from wiki and comments have to be retrieved from the Twitter API.

Workshop Content List

PHP Study Notes(partial)

Result

Over the holiday I reviewed all of the workshop examples relating to the API usage and realised that the goal is much more difficult to achieve than I thought because of the multiple API usages in the page. Over the holiday I couldn’t finish the SLQ API, but will be finishing it in the week 11.

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Week9 -- Reflection on Demonstration

This week’s blog post topic is a reflection on your Major Project Part B presentations.

Are you as far along as you thought? What's left for Major Project Part C?

Project Progress so far

Schedule for the future

What responses did you get back from your request for feedback?

Feedbacks

We received 38 feedbacks in total. And 73.7% of the feedbacks are great or excellent.

Feedbacks from audiences and responses

1.What’s the target audience?

As we explained in the proposal.

Our audience will be the following four groups of people.

Which are travellers, students, scholars and local residents.

2.What’s the difference to Google Maps?

Smart Library is different to Google Maps in following 2 aspects.

1)Data usage

Google Maps provide all libraries around the location, but many private libraries are not accessible.

Smart Library will only provide the public libraries data so that every library provided is accessible.

2)Functionality

The web application will be focused on libraries searching. There will be four main functionalities in the application: Find Libraries, Route Suggestion, Favourites and Search Libraries. When a user searches for a library, the web application will display only the publicly accessible libraries. Additionally, information about Wi-Fi availability will be included, which is not provided by other applications. The applications searching function will allow the user to filter the results by conditions such as ‘Currently Open’ and ‘Has Wi-Fi’, as these are two pieces of information that are essential to visitors.

3.Not creative. The interface is similar to another group.

The idea of this project is about helping people to find libraries. The purpose of the website more practical than creative. But we will try to add more functions to make the website more creative in the practical aspect.

4.Users can’t save favourites libraries if there’s no log-in system.

We are trying to find a way to store the favourite libraries in the local storage.

5.Use more API to make the website more functional.

We will add more APIs to enrich the content of our website.

6.Consider the display for mobile, the design might not be the best.

Due to the project website will be responsive to devices of different screen sizes, we’ll try our best to find a good design to suit different sizes devices.

Responses to the Questions we asked

Improvement within the team

So far I think I conducted a good communication with my team members.

At least two times work contacts per week and immediate responses when members got questions.

In the future, I would like to contribute more to the development aspect.

And keep an efficient teamwork. 

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Week 8--Reflect on scoping session

Functionality Necessary for MVP

1.Set city location

—

User needs to be able to choose the city

2.Searching Libraries:

—

Incorporate library dataset 1) Use and display data for an individual library 2) Access and use the address of an individual library

Google Maps API 1) Use library dataset to search and display libraries 2) Use city location in searching 3) Use address of library to find route suggestion 4) Use dataset and Maps API to allow users to refine search

3.Favourites:

— 1)User needs to be able to add and remove libraries 2) User needs to be able to see all libraries favourites 3) User needs to be able to move from favourites to a specific library

Desired Features

1.Twitter API: —

Use Twitter API to display Tweets from people around libraries

2. Cafe and Restaurant Suggestion: —

Use Maps API to suggest and display cafes and restaurants close to library

3.Travel Times: —

Use Google Map API to calculate and display travel times from user’s position to the selected library

The process to reach a consensus with team members.

Everyone has involved the discussion. When there were any different opinions 

We discussed it immediately and tried to reach a consensus eventually.

Team Planning

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Week7 -- Reflect on paper prototype

Though this week’s paper prototyping, our team get many feedbacks and suggestions about interface and navigation. The feedbacks from other teams are really helpful for us to improve the project and let us realise some problems that we didn’t think about before.

We used a google survey to record most feedbacks, at the same time, we are observing and taking notes of test users’ feedbacks.

We got 9 online survey feedbacks.

Majority of the people think it’s easy to achieve tasks.

And most people are very interested in the Twitter function.

By observation, we found out many twitter function is a bit confusing to users.

We also got a feedback about adding cafes and restaurants information to the website, which we thought is a very good idea. 

In terms of other groups test experience, I noticed that adding searching functions to game based website is a very challenging task, but all of them are doing a good job to make game interesting. 

Overall it was really productive and meaningful paper prototyping.

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Week 6 -- Reflect on teamwork

The first week as a team was very productive. Everyone in the group finished their task allocation and had a perfect communication with each other.

We used the Facebook group as the main communication tool. Besides, we had a one-hour group meeting to discuss the task allocation and some design details of the project.

In term of working on the project. We used Google drive and Google doc to collaborate with each other. We created a shared folder on Google drive so that we could put everything related to the project into it. Google doc helps to edit the project proposal and work together at the same time.

It was a really productive week, and we had a very good teamwork.

I wish we could keep working like this week until the end of the project.

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Week 5 --Reflect on completed work

Reflect towards Major Project Part A.

This week, our team finished task allocation and a work schedule for the final project. The preparation for the presentation will finish before Sunday midnight, and the report will be finished before 30 / 08. 

Task Allocation

Schedule

In individual part, I finish a part of the background research. And under the discussion of the difference between the project application and other similar applications, we find out how our application will be different itself.

The application will be focused on libraries. In addition, the functionalities and interface will be different. Google map shows all libraries around, but it turns out that not all libraries are open to the public,  the project application will only provide the accessible libraries information. In addition, the information provided by the application will include the WIFI service, which couldn’t find on google map. Besides, the application’s searching function is specially designed and provides filter searching function such as “Opening now” and “Libraries with WIFI”.

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Week 4 Reflect on Design Exploration

How did your pitch go? Include, content, pacing, timing, how audience received etc.

Overall my presentation went pretty well. The content includes general description, audience, inspiration, data/api, functionalities and interface. And the pacing was fine, but I spent so much time on introducing functionalities  that the time nearly ran out. From audiences facial expression and some personal feedbacks, I think audiences understood my idea.

How would you rate your concept when compared to other concepts you witnessed?

I think I could get at least  8 out 10. The poster was well designed and includes everything relates to the idea. Interface design was also included to introduce functionalities and interactivity of application. Besides, my concept totally meet the project requirement. So I think I did a good job in the design explosion.

Critique two other concepts. What was good and bad about them?

Postman

Good: 1. Well designed poster. 2. Unique idea to use the API. 3. Took full advantages of the API resources.

Bad : 1. Although the poster is well designed, text information is a bit not enough.

Music Map

Good: 1. Many API usage, to make it a worldwide application. 2. The idea is interesting.

Bad: 1. The poster and concept are complicated. 2. Too many API usages to make the concept complex.

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Week 3 Reflection Piece

PART 1  Materials for the Major Project

General Description

This project is about an LBS(location based service) mobile application which is aimed to help people to find libraries around them. The target users are people who are not familiar to the neighbourhood but want to find a library around them to use wifi, printing service or other library services.

Functionalities

1. Find libraries around them and provide the basic information(opening and closing time,  location, wifi and printer information …) 2. Provide route suggestions. 3. Provide specific purpose search(such as libraries which has free wifi service

Personas

Backpacker — Mika

Gender: female Age : 22 years old Nationality: Japan English Level : not good at speaking and listening but has the basic reading skills. Situation : It’s Mika’s first time to be Brisbane. She’s living in a hostel around Roma street station and she tries to find a place where she can use the free wifi and print her resumes for job hunting. She heard the public libraries provide all kinds of services but she doesn’t know where the closet library is and how to get there.

High School Student — Michael

Gender : Male Nationality : Australia Age : 16 years old Situation: Michael is a 16-years-old high school student. He’s studying at BBC (Brisbane Boy School) and work in a cafe around ascot in the weekend. He’s trying to find a place to have rest in his 2hours break of work, and return the book he borrowed from another library close to his home last week.

Data / API SLQ — Queensland public libraries ( http://data.gov.au/dataset/queensland-public-libraries) Google Map API (https://developers.google.com/maps/)

Similar Application Analyse All Bikes Now

General Description AllBikesNow is an application for users of self-service bicycle systems to find bikes around them.

Similar Functionalities 1. Bike Available Information  Provide users the number of bikes available at each station.

2. Route Suggestion  Offers routes of  one address to another, bicycle or on foot, and indicates stations nearby.

3. Favorite Station  Mark the stations users like as favourite, make it easy to find favourite stations.

PART 2 REFLECT EXPERIENCES AS AN INDIVIDUAL RESEARCHER

(image from:http://web.peanutlabs.com/research/)

I’ve done some researches in my bachelor degree. And I struggled a lot on two of those.One was about the attitude (towards Japan and Japanese) changes after 3.11 earthquake, another one was the comparison between two mobile applications WeChat and Line.

The problems I faced in my researches mainly focused on the following 2 points.

1. Insufficient data and relative research papers.

Solution — 1)Ask professor and tutors for suggestions. 2)Collect data by doing questionaries. 3)Take full advantage of reliable online resources.

2. Writing skills. Solution — 1)Self checking. 2)Peer support.

The Best Method

In my experience, asking tutor and professor for suggestions was the best method to garner inspiration. Tutors and professors can provide much useful information about gathering data and collecting relative papers from their experiences. And the inspiration are sometimes  from papers they recommended. A conversation with experienced researchers also means you can know if you are in the right direction and if not, how to correct it.

Sources: — 1.ALLBIKESNOW HOMEPAGE http://www.allbikesnow.com/index.html

2.Queensland public libraries http://data.gov.au/dataset/queensland-public-libraries

3.Google Map API https://developers.google.com/maps/

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Week 2  Idea Generation

PART A  VISUALISE IDEAS 

Idea 1 : Location based services app — Find the library 

Description 

Idea 1 is about an mobile application to help people who are not familiar to the neighbourhood to find the closest libraries in Queensland.

Functions 

Find the closest library.   

Find the libraries under some specific conditions(wifi only, printing services etc.)

Provide route decision via google map for uses.

Data / API 

State library of Queensland —World War 1 soldier portraits data 

Google Map API —  Make the route decision.

Target users 

Backpackers & Student

Idea 2 : Interactive game — Find the differences 

Description 

Idea 2 is about making a online interactive game to teach young kids the history about the World War 1.

By means of showing two similar soldier portraits (one of it will be done some minor edits), the game will guide user to find the differences between two pictures. When user succeed in finding all differences, a description about the soldier and one of the battle the soldier participated in will be introduced to the user.

Data/ API sources

State library of Queensland —World War 1 soldier portraits data 

Wikipedia API—Introduction of the soldier and battles  

Target users

5—15 years old young kids.

PART B — REFLECT

Methods of brainstorming 

A. Thinking alone 

 | Advantages |

Think freely with no boundary.

Come up with a lot ideas.

Time efficient.

| Disadvantages |

Some of the ideas are unrealistic.

Forget the previous idea sometimes.

Get confused by the disordered ideas.

B. Thinking alone + Group talking + Memo taking

| Advantages |

Get inspiration via talking with group members.

Get feedback from other people and make ideas more realistic.

Taking memo while thinking and talking helps sort ideas and help recall them afterwards.

| Disadvantages |

Although the combination of these three brainstorming methods could help form a solid idea ,it’s hard to deny it takes more time than thinking alone. Hence, in the early stage of the brainstorm, thinking alone might be a better way.

PART C — KEY OPPORTUNITIES AND CHALLENGES

Key challenge 

 Form the final idea and finish the poster before the week 4.

 Doing more research about similar applications and personas.

 Practicing making presentations in front of the whole class.

Skills need to brush up on 

Presentation skills.

Making personas.

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Week-1    Course aim and Expectations

Based on what I know of this course, I expect to be doing a design computing projects in a team setting. At same time this course could help me to enhance my understanding of the web design and equip me with more advanced web programming skills.

Designing and developing a project with other teammates not only requires technical skills(designing & programming) but also needs a good teamwork and communication among the teammates.

Deepen my designing and programming skills is the biggest expectation to this course. However, learning how to work with other people in a team setting, hence improving my communication skills and teamwork is also very important.

Lacking of programming experience in javascript/jquary is what I'm really worrying about. I hope I could do enough self-studying to catch up with other teammates.