Review Of the Assignment-Tim Holden

My roles in the creation of this project was Team Leader. It was up to me to arrange meetings, keep everyone motivated and on track, and make sure that the project comes together as planned. i feel that I did ok in this regard. I arranged meetings in order to keep on top of everything, but I think that having more detailed agendas could have been useful. I think think that I should have been a little more forcefull when trying to get people to try and complete their tasks.I also made the movie and contributed to the creation of the website.
I think that all other group members did their best with what they had. I should have been more helpfull when it came to ading them with teir individual elements and helping them understand how the software works. The initial focus on individual elements did, I feel, estrange us a little from the final product, so sometimes things were not quite right and had to be changed.
I feel that the website is fairly good. I do feel, however, that, due to circumstances, we did lose focus a little and the overall feel of the site does not quite fit my expectations. I think more could have been done to keep the colour scheme in line with the college's, as we had planned. With more time and skills, I would like to have spent more time in polishing the website and making it more intuitive, mabye even running a few usablility tests. I think that, if we were to do the taks again, we would be able tor apportion time more effectively. I am pleased that all of our elements fit into the site logically, this makes the site feel more natural and ingrossing.
This is a shot of the homepage, which was made by Aron, but I altered it slightly. I added the four section boxes, embedded the youtube video and flash slideshow, and changed the header and put the banner and college logos up there. I also changed the master css file that controlls the basic layout of all of the other pages, and so I changed the colour of the navigation bar that Aron made in order for it to suit the need a bit better (It was originally green). I quite like the feel of the homepage, although I would have liked it if the background gradient could have been bluish green rather than gray, since that would have fitted the college's colour scheme. I also would have spent more time formating the text, putting headers in and making the bullet points more interesting. But, overall, it doesn't look too bad. It would have been beneficial to have spent more time on the text content of the homepage.

I am quite pleased with the overall standard of all of the elements. I would have liked to spend more time shooting the raw footage. I was only able to borrow one of the students for half an hour, and his ability to be interviewed was, to put it nicely, lacking. I would have liked to have used different camera angles and zooms, and to have had the original lineup i had planned, but, unfortunately, i was unable to have them. It would have been good to have been able to spend more time in looking for a more comprehensive editing program so that I could use more powerfull effets, although I doubt my laptops ability to have coped with such a program, since it had a few glitches with OpenShot. I would have liked to have had the time to put music to the video, but i did not have enought time to spend searching for the right track. I feel that the video could have done with subtitles as well, for those with hearing difficulties. The titles could have been more interesting, and maybe using a few filter effects and distortions in order to highlight the focus of the shot.
I am pleased wit the way that, when julie is talking about the different modules, an appropriate screen recording appears. I could have done more with that and directed her comments so as they are more pointed, but i really wanted the monologue to seem natural. I am extremely happy with the admonision for girls to not fear taking up the course, and ending on a laugh, which is something I was really quite anxious to get into the video, because, i felt, that it would give the video and the course a real human, light and friendly feel, and convey the message that Julie really does enjoy the course, and is not lying, since it is very hard to fake a laugh.

If i was to start the project again, from scratch, I would set a clearer, and somewhat more rigid timeframe in which to complete all of the tasks. Also, i would have liked to have had made, from the outset, a clear vision statement, outlining the purpose of the site, so as all of the elements could have worked even better together.  I would also like to have spent more time in the disgn stage making the designs as detailed as possible in order to make the creating of the site far easier. I also think that it would have benefited us all to have spent far more time in getting to know how to create our individual elements and using the software, so as the finished work could be to a higher standard. More regular and purposefull meetings would have made sure that no one was unsure of what the yhad to do, and they could have dedicated more effort into those tasks. I would, however, have to be careful as it would be very easy to begin micro-managing everyone, which is counter-productive.