I’d also like this opportunity to post what each of us in the group took away from the project and what we learned:

randy church – even after weeks of design and concept, the visual direction of a project is far from done. during development it becomes obvious what works, and both the development and developers need to be flexible enough to implement and expand the project as needed. designers and animators are also along for the ride as new visual solutions are always needed. delegation is a great way to get pieces of the project finished, but nothing compares to sitting down as a group and working through problems. group meetings, at least once a week, help keep the project consistent and on schedule.

isabel yerkes – sticking to a schedule is important. we needed to stay on track over a fair amount of time, which wasn’t easy. we set our own deadlines and had to enforce them.

scott lanning – lots of testing by both the creators and user is always key. you find many bug and little quirks with your program when you or your users test the program.

matt austin – working with a team has its obstacles, but when a group of people get together and create something from absolute nothing, it’s pure amazement. our project had its ups and downs, but as a team we managed to fight through conflicting schedules, numerous sandbox issues, and a bit of senioritis and create the site we had hoped for. these past 20 weeks have been a testament to the hard work and dedication to those who put forth the effort to make this project great, and serves as a perfect primer for the real world.

joanna belding – the dynamics of a team really rely on leadership and organization. we worked well as a team because we got along and took each other seriously. however, i think i speak for all when i say if we’re ever faced with an large team situation again, we would make sure to delegate responsibilities more clearly. each person would have smaller assets and portions of the project to work on, instead of everyone trying to individually make an entire version of the project themselves, and then have to choose between each. that way, design, interaction, and then finally development all get done within set timeframes.

brooks eastman - i think the biggest problem we had was getting the design concept down. we had all four designers make seperate designs for several iterations and this made the process take far too long. in the future, i think a better practice would be to have all the designers work more closely with their comps, have the differences between them be smaller, as well as work with the development side to more understand how their designs will be integrated with the interface. basically, instead of doing design > development, the process should be more unified. the closer everyone works together the more people are on the same page, and the faster everything gets done.

niraj shah – having all the developers on the same page is key. working on our code together with the rest of the team helped us during the development stages since we were able to help each other out when coming up with ideas and fixing bugs. also, having the developers be able to communicate in person while combining our code made the process significantly easier.

kristen curtze – i think we all learned how having a bit of excitement towards the project and each other can really influence the amount of work you are willing to put forth. i believe our team was fun and we always mixed business with pleasure, but we were sure to get stuff done. throughout the 20 weeks, i heard about a lot of drama within other teams. anytime i heard a bad account of this, i felt relieved that I actually enjoyed working with my teammates and often anticipated seeing what crazy things i’d take away from each meeting (mainly squeaky kittens and questionable song lyrics). did we goof off a lot? yes. but we still have a project of which we can all be proud. we worked hard and we played hard. i think it was a great mix and none of us are ready to kill one another!
as for respect, i think we all had each other’s backs throughout the 20 weeks. should one half of the group miss out on a meeting, the other half would likely show up the next time to balance out the time spent. i usually felt guilty should i not be able to make a meeting, but we respected each other enough to understand that sometimes you can’t make every meeting and to know that i or anyone else missing would likely make the next one. also, most of us ensured that everyone had something to work on or that the work was distributed. of course there are times that some members took on larger obstacles than others, but in the end everyone contributed a significant piece of the project. we respected each other as teammates and didn’t want to see anyone drowning in work. the concept saved anyone from having a mental breakdown and we all feel like we are a crucial part of the project. win/win.

Final Notes:

What was unique about this project was that we each took different roles in the project so each persons experience was a bit different, but all came together in a really exceptional learning experience. I think that everyone in the group learned so much and definitely considers this a very useful experience for what is ahead in the “real world”.

As a group we’re going to be submitting our project to the Adobe Design Achievement Awards, The FWA, and HOWmag Interactive Design Awards for their consideration.

Sorry for the delay, but Team IV has been busy tweaking and coding away at our lovely senior project yu know and love.  Plus, having ImagineRIT in our minds kept us driven to keep working and put off a bit of sleep for a while.  No harm there!

Anyways, we have changed a lot since our last post.  We have found a great transition from the nodes’ closed state to their full story window state – flipping them on their sides!  The transition helps change the node from circle to line/square (on it’s side) so we can pull out a little window for your feed-viewing pleasure.  Also, Matt helped to add some awesome particle animations to give some added visuals to the project.

We changed the transition because companies from Industry Day advised us to take away some clicking points.  In other words, we wanted the story to load immediately after one click, not after seeing the tweets load and THEN clicking to get the story.  So now, the full story window loads and the tweets appear on the right side of the window.  Done and done.

We got this design functioning just in time for ImagineRIT, which was May 2nd here at RIT.  We had visitors ranging from ages 8 to mid-70′s and all seemed to be impressed with our concept and accomplishments.  I found that middle-aged visitors really appreciated out site as they could get all their various news sources in one location without too much text to read/filter through.  But, we still got a lot of feedback based on how the visitors experienced and used our site for the first time:

- Node sizes.  A handful of visitors asked us if the node sizes they saw on the idle screen indicated levels of importance in terms of the news.  We were confused at first, but then we understood that the presence of depth in our site is not so obvious.  Since we have been staring at this project for two semesters, we understand that you are to click and hold down the mouse key to surf through the nodes.  Yet, this evidently was not obvious enough.  The users understood that the sizes were due to your current position on the z-axis, but only after we told them how to move through the nodes.

To fix this problem, we implemented a more 3D-like cursor to help show that you are to move forward and click on things.  Also, we added a “breathing” design to the nodes in hopes of drawing people to the distant nodes.  The subtle movement/change can catch a users eye and indicate that they should click on the node as well as dig deeper into our site.  We are still fine-tuning the concept to ensure that there is little confusion from the start as to how to use our site.

- Smoother transitions.  Since ImagineRIT seemed to sneak up on us despite our constant reminders that it would, we showed our project with a few snags and incomplete designs.  Our transition from node to full story was a bit rough, but it at least functioned properly and showed the story.  Our YouTube nodes were working great and we showed an AWFUL amount of Susan Boyle videos.  Fortunately, we discovered that YouTube has a standard “Most Popular” feed should you not specify the date.  Once we realized this, we changed the feed link in Flash and immediately saw videos from Obama and from shows OTHER than ‘Britains Got Talent.’  (No offense, but really).

- Last minute additions.  Since ImagineRIT, we buckled down and got the final touches in for the most part.  We removed unecessary features like the “sound on/off” button and replaced it with our new ‘filter’ button.  I mentioned our new 3D cursor above, but I think it really adds to the project.  We tweaked the full story mode so that there isn’t a HUGE window for small feed description as well as smoothing the transition all together.  Tweets now come in perfectly and have a subtle transition when hovering over them….aaaand we finally added Matt’s partical loader, which explodes into our current, starry background.  Everything has been falling together quite well and we are in a very awesome position!

As of now, we are wrapping up our final presentation to show off our hard work.  Our project is 97% complete and we are excited to see what our peers and professors think once they get a full showing of it.  Here’s to the final week and our upcoming graduations!