Link to Time-Lapes: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gxP4hMZywu0
So, this was the first time ever using muse and I felt like I was ready to start using the software. I decided to watch the video that I talked about in my Research in Web design blog just to familiarize myself.
First off I designed the header, I thought that this was very important to do first due to it being the main navigation around the site. I also added the colour scheme I talked about in my How did my timetable for the holidays go? blog to my website. To be honest, I was not overly fond of the look of the colours I used, however once I started using Muse I just really wanted to get my ideas, that I was coming up with, on the page. I knew that I would have to come back to the colour scheme at a later date. I tried to see if I could put the hamburger menu on my site but while I was about to do this, I decided that it didn't really fit with the theme of the site and so I put a normal menu bar on the page instead.
I briefly worked on my front page but I only added the initial main image and the logo to the page because I knew that below this, I would have to put images and links to other pages that weren't made yet. After this I went on to a page that was quite easy to make and I wanted to do this so I could get to grips with Muse. I think this was a good idea because after I made the 'log in' and 'sign up' page, I understood everything pretty well, I knew how to layout pages so that they all looked the same and I knew where to put colours for certain things. For example, I would use the red colour for things that were very important and use the cream colours for things that were still important but not as important as the things that were red.
I also made the footer and when I was making this, I realised that I really didn't have a whole lot of pages meaning that I would have to include more. I decided to look at other websites to find out the sorts of pages that they include. Doing this at the start meant that I could get a good understanding on the sorts of pages that I will have to add. I decided to look at an article titled, '24 Essential Pages To Include On Your Website'. On this page, I got a lot of ideas for pages that would suit my website so I decided to add them to my footer. This made my website look a lot busier. I also have plans to add social icons to the footer so people can quickly get to our social media.
Bibliography: Websites 4 Small Business (2016), 24 Essential Pages To Include On Your Website Available at: http://www.web4business.com.au/resources/articles/24-essential-pages-to-include-on-your-website/ [Accessed: 24 April 2017].
Friday, 5 May 2017
Why did I decide to continue making this website?
I am deciding to make this type of website because it is something that people will find useful. During Unit 12 I decided to conduct my own survey and found out from 62 responses that at least 37 of the people who responded have run into problems while making their furniture. I believe that my website will decrease this number significantly and this is the goal of the site, to make it as simple and easy for our users to construct their own furniture.
Another real big reason why I picked to do this website, and not a website based on something else, is because other website from companies that provide the actual furniture, do not include very simple things for their products that users value greatly. I found out on my survey that just under half of the people buy buildable furniture online. This is quite a large proportion of people and the websites limit people to what they can see.
My website will combat these issues. Websites like Ikea's do not include their own review system, you do not get to see what others think about the product and whether it is worth the money. Even though Ikea furniture is cheap, people know that the materials used are not the best and can wear out and break after two, three years or so. Allowing people to talk to one another about these types of topics would be great, it would allow people to be more selective about their furniture and it might even save them a bit of money.
My website is going to focus a lot on the social side of things, kind of like a community where they can all help each other. People like socialising and by making this one of the main parts of the site, makes people want to come back. This is why sites like; Facebook, Twitter, Snapchat, Reddit are so popular. I think having this will entice people to visit again and if they find that for example after watching a video on the site and finding out that they have saved themselves a bit of money, they might buy more buildable furniture more often. People always relate 'building furniture' to being quite stressful and annoying, hopefully with a clear video, this will tackle this issue greatly.
I talk about my research in Unit 12 but just to go back to it, the website Ifixit is a very successful website. It has stayed so popular and relevant over the years due to its community and once people stick with one community, they usually find it hard to break away from it and go to different places. This is why there are no real other contenders for Ifixit. If I use this technique and execute properly, I should have a pretty successful site on my hands.
Another real big reason why I picked to do this website, and not a website based on something else, is because other website from companies that provide the actual furniture, do not include very simple things for their products that users value greatly. I found out on my survey that just under half of the people buy buildable furniture online. This is quite a large proportion of people and the websites limit people to what they can see.
My website will combat these issues. Websites like Ikea's do not include their own review system, you do not get to see what others think about the product and whether it is worth the money. Even though Ikea furniture is cheap, people know that the materials used are not the best and can wear out and break after two, three years or so. Allowing people to talk to one another about these types of topics would be great, it would allow people to be more selective about their furniture and it might even save them a bit of money.
My website is going to focus a lot on the social side of things, kind of like a community where they can all help each other. People like socialising and by making this one of the main parts of the site, makes people want to come back. This is why sites like; Facebook, Twitter, Snapchat, Reddit are so popular. I think having this will entice people to visit again and if they find that for example after watching a video on the site and finding out that they have saved themselves a bit of money, they might buy more buildable furniture more often. People always relate 'building furniture' to being quite stressful and annoying, hopefully with a clear video, this will tackle this issue greatly.
I talk about my research in Unit 12 but just to go back to it, the website Ifixit is a very successful website. It has stayed so popular and relevant over the years due to its community and once people stick with one community, they usually find it hard to break away from it and go to different places. This is why there are no real other contenders for Ifixit. If I use this technique and execute properly, I should have a pretty successful site on my hands.
How did my timetable for the holidays go?
Final Animation Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9IkdP9b46O0
So, before I started my holiday, I set myself a plan to stick to so that I would be ahead with my work, when it came to coming back to college two weeks later.
I thought that I did rather well here and even though I did not hit all of my official goals, I still believe that I set myself up well for when I got back and that was the main goal of the timetable.
The Video
The first objective that I decided to have a crack at, was making the construction video for my website. Like I said before hand, I wanted to get all of the content done for the website before I started it. This would mean that I would know what to talk about and it would give me a good idea on how I want those product pages to look while fitting alongside the video and animation.
So, as I said in my reflective blog posts, I ran into a lot of problems throughout this project. However, because I gave myself lots of time it meant that it didn't throw me back and put me in a bad position. One of the problems that I ran into was struggling with building the shelf. Me and the person I worked with on the first day did not think that it would be that hard to build. We ended up making a lot of mistakes, having to go back on ourselves and consequently deleting footage that was unusable. This was quite annoying and it really stressed us out at points. We also ran into these same problems when I worked with my mum on the second day. However, it does also show me that we all struggled with constructing furniture and that we would all benefit from the site.
Another problem that pushed me back was that my friend decided that he did not want to help me after the first day. At first I had no idea what to do, my other friends were on holiday and would not be back until college started again. I did not want to wait this long, I wanted to finish what I had started and having a gap in-between that far apart, would mean that I would have to keep the pieces back and deconstruct the set that I had set up for the video. I did not want this to happen. Thankfully, my mum decided that she would come help me, I was very grateful for this and even though she was not the best with a camera, she did a great job. I did not believe that shooting the video would take more than a day but as you know, it did and luckily I had forward thought and set myself some extra time on my timetable, just in case something like this happened.
Editing the video was the next challenge. Fortunately, I edit my own videos in my own time for fun and I already had a good idea on how to use the software. I have to say, if I did not do this, I would have had no idea what to do when it came to editing my construction video. This part was quite easy, all I had to do was make sure that I got the right footage in the right order. After looking at the footage, I realised that the lighting was not as good as it looked on the camera and this was rather saddening because it meant that the video looked quite grainy. Also, the parts where my mum was filming were quite shaky - I tried to stabilise the video to the best of my ability, however it still looks rather shaky at times. I managed to get this done in a day which was the exact time I gave myself in my timetable.
The Animation
This was the next project that I had to do, I was at college for this because I did not have the software at home.
Making the animation was not good, I really struggled with the software and I could not get to grips with it. I decided to pick an Item from Ikea that was very, very popular but did not include a lot of steps to make, I knew that I would struggle with the animation and I wanted to make it as easy as possible for me so I could get it done in the time provided and still learn a lot of skills. For the first day I did not make a lot of progress, I really got lost with moving everything and it ended up looking clunky and not good at all. I was really not proud of the animation, however I gave myself another day to try and improve what I had done.
For the second day, I decided to go back over what I had done and change a lot of things. I did this because I believed that it did not look good enough. It did not look clear enough for users to understand what was going on and it looked very clunky. I decided that I would only include the first part of the build for the animation because I was really not making a whole lot of progress and it was really stressing me out. I have shown a few people the animation and they thought that it looked good, it was clear and it was paced well. I am happy that at least it achieved it's purpose.
I had another crack at the animation when I got back to college. I did this because I knew peers that had a good understanding of the software and they really helped me clear it all up and make it look a bit more understandable. Even though this process was a failure in my opinion, I still learned quite a lot and gained a simple understanding of animate.
So, before I started my holiday, I set myself a plan to stick to so that I would be ahead with my work, when it came to coming back to college two weeks later.
I thought that I did rather well here and even though I did not hit all of my official goals, I still believe that I set myself up well for when I got back and that was the main goal of the timetable.
The Video
The first objective that I decided to have a crack at, was making the construction video for my website. Like I said before hand, I wanted to get all of the content done for the website before I started it. This would mean that I would know what to talk about and it would give me a good idea on how I want those product pages to look while fitting alongside the video and animation. So, as I said in my reflective blog posts, I ran into a lot of problems throughout this project. However, because I gave myself lots of time it meant that it didn't throw me back and put me in a bad position. One of the problems that I ran into was struggling with building the shelf. Me and the person I worked with on the first day did not think that it would be that hard to build. We ended up making a lot of mistakes, having to go back on ourselves and consequently deleting footage that was unusable. This was quite annoying and it really stressed us out at points. We also ran into these same problems when I worked with my mum on the second day. However, it does also show me that we all struggled with constructing furniture and that we would all benefit from the site.
Another problem that pushed me back was that my friend decided that he did not want to help me after the first day. At first I had no idea what to do, my other friends were on holiday and would not be back until college started again. I did not want to wait this long, I wanted to finish what I had started and having a gap in-between that far apart, would mean that I would have to keep the pieces back and deconstruct the set that I had set up for the video. I did not want this to happen. Thankfully, my mum decided that she would come help me, I was very grateful for this and even though she was not the best with a camera, she did a great job. I did not believe that shooting the video would take more than a day but as you know, it did and luckily I had forward thought and set myself some extra time on my timetable, just in case something like this happened.
Editing the video was the next challenge. Fortunately, I edit my own videos in my own time for fun and I already had a good idea on how to use the software. I have to say, if I did not do this, I would have had no idea what to do when it came to editing my construction video. This part was quite easy, all I had to do was make sure that I got the right footage in the right order. After looking at the footage, I realised that the lighting was not as good as it looked on the camera and this was rather saddening because it meant that the video looked quite grainy. Also, the parts where my mum was filming were quite shaky - I tried to stabilise the video to the best of my ability, however it still looks rather shaky at times. I managed to get this done in a day which was the exact time I gave myself in my timetable.
The Animation
This was the next project that I had to do, I was at college for this because I did not have the software at home.Making the animation was not good, I really struggled with the software and I could not get to grips with it. I decided to pick an Item from Ikea that was very, very popular but did not include a lot of steps to make, I knew that I would struggle with the animation and I wanted to make it as easy as possible for me so I could get it done in the time provided and still learn a lot of skills. For the first day I did not make a lot of progress, I really got lost with moving everything and it ended up looking clunky and not good at all. I was really not proud of the animation, however I gave myself another day to try and improve what I had done.
For the second day, I decided to go back over what I had done and change a lot of things. I did this because I believed that it did not look good enough. It did not look clear enough for users to understand what was going on and it looked very clunky. I decided that I would only include the first part of the build for the animation because I was really not making a whole lot of progress and it was really stressing me out. I have shown a few people the animation and they thought that it looked good, it was clear and it was paced well. I am happy that at least it achieved it's purpose.
I had another crack at the animation when I got back to college. I did this because I knew peers that had a good understanding of the software and they really helped me clear it all up and make it look a bit more understandable. Even though this process was a failure in my opinion, I still learned quite a lot and gained a simple understanding of animate.
Friday, 28 April 2017
Making my website Day 2
Link to Time-Lapes: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gTED1coB9po
So far I am continuing to make my website from what I have done yesterday and I feel like I am getting to grips with the software now. Today, I focused on some of the more text heavy and widget heavy pages.
So far I am continuing to make my website from what I have done yesterday and I feel like I am getting to grips with the software now. Today, I focused on some of the more text heavy and widget heavy pages.
The pages were quite short but were vital to the site and I am glad that I did those pages first. One of the pages that I did was the 'about us' page - probably one of the most important and major pages on any site. It allows the user to find out what the site is about and for my site specifically, it tells the user how things work. On the 'about' page, I talked about the site itself and also talked a lot about how the forum works. I believe that the audience that I am focusing on for my site might not have used a forum before so I decided to break it down for them. I also talk about the advantages of taking part in a forum and a few of the plans for the site in the future. The project is all about me showing my idea and the plans that I have for it. I think placing a few of my goals for the site for the future on the 'about us' page is a great place to put this.
I also did the contact us page as I thought that my website might need it because of how social it could be. This is a place where people can contact me about disturbances going on in the forum, grammatical errors on product pages, problems with video animation and errors around the site. I think users will really appreciate that this is on the website. They might have a few problems and knowing that they will get their voice heard and will be able to get a response in a quick amount of time, will greatly increase their happiness when using the site. I also added a few social media links that they can use to contact us as well. This will not only be on the 'about us' page but will be on the footer so that people are constantly reminded that we have social media that they can follow to keep up to date with the site.
Overall, I think that today was a very productive day. I found some more pages that I could include on my site that before starting the productive work I had no idea I needed. I am also very happy with these two pages - I am happy with the content I included on both of them and I am happy with how the pages look.
Tomorrow I have plans to make the more content heavy pages, these might be hard jobs, however I have a lot of ideas to make the pages a lot more interesting and engaging. Hopefully tomorrow I can also figure out how to fix my main page, I am still having a bit of trouble with it but I might look at some video tutorials to see how to resolve the problems, I might also learn some new skills while doing so.
Thursday, 27 April 2017
The second day of shooting the instructional video
Final YouTube Video Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zEEolv6djlo
So, today was not a good day for shooting, my friend had told me that he did not want to continue helping me with the video so I was really stuck with how I could finish it in as quick a time as possible. Luckily, my Mum was about to help me in my time of need but she however, really did not want to be in the video and that was fine. Due to this, there was only one other job she could do...filming! I had doubts that her camera skills were even as good as mine, and mine were not the best! I had to make sure before every shot, that things were focused properly and that the lighting was good, however I believe that some shots were not the best.
Obviously, with my friend being the star yesterday and me having to take his place, the continuity of the video was not good. I am sad that he would not budge from his motion and it was too late to take part what we had already built. This was a big problem that we ran in to throughout the process of making the piece of furniture but thankfully, we managed to recover in a lot of stages.
Things today were a lot more straightforward when it came to shooting. We got the exact shots we wanted, we took a step back at times and thought about better approaches to make the video simpler for people to understand. Furthermore, we had the right tools for the job and this allowed everything to run as smoothly as possible. Despite today being much more positive and successful, we did run into some problems and get a bit stuck when building the product, once again showing that it is not so easy to build your own furniture.
We did manage to wrap everything up today and I am very proud of that. I am a day behind but still doing great and this is why I set up a few days extra, just in case things did not go to plan. Foreseeing and planning for potential problems/setbacks is so important to ensure that things like this don't suddenly have a domino effect and end in disaster. I am really happy with the footage we got and I am sure that tomorrow I will have fun editing it all together. Overall, the whole shooting phase was not what I had planned it to be from the very start but I believe that in some places it is better than I had envisaged.
So, today was not a good day for shooting, my friend had told me that he did not want to continue helping me with the video so I was really stuck with how I could finish it in as quick a time as possible. Luckily, my Mum was about to help me in my time of need but she however, really did not want to be in the video and that was fine. Due to this, there was only one other job she could do...filming! I had doubts that her camera skills were even as good as mine, and mine were not the best! I had to make sure before every shot, that things were focused properly and that the lighting was good, however I believe that some shots were not the best.
Obviously, with my friend being the star yesterday and me having to take his place, the continuity of the video was not good. I am sad that he would not budge from his motion and it was too late to take part what we had already built. This was a big problem that we ran in to throughout the process of making the piece of furniture but thankfully, we managed to recover in a lot of stages.
Things today were a lot more straightforward when it came to shooting. We got the exact shots we wanted, we took a step back at times and thought about better approaches to make the video simpler for people to understand. Furthermore, we had the right tools for the job and this allowed everything to run as smoothly as possible. Despite today being much more positive and successful, we did run into some problems and get a bit stuck when building the product, once again showing that it is not so easy to build your own furniture.
We did manage to wrap everything up today and I am very proud of that. I am a day behind but still doing great and this is why I set up a few days extra, just in case things did not go to plan. Foreseeing and planning for potential problems/setbacks is so important to ensure that things like this don't suddenly have a domino effect and end in disaster. I am really happy with the footage we got and I am sure that tomorrow I will have fun editing it all together. Overall, the whole shooting phase was not what I had planned it to be from the very start but I believe that in some places it is better than I had envisaged.
The first day of shooting the instructional video
So today was the first real day where I began making my product. Like I have stated before, I really want to get all of the content for the site out of the way first so that when I start to create my site, everything just falls into place. It also means that I have enough time to plan and get more content in the future if needed. Camera work is not my area of expertise as I have mentioned in the past, so I really wanted to take some time before we actually started shooting the video, to make sure that I knew how to operate the camera well. I got to grips with how the camera worked relatively quickly and I also got a chance to move around lighting to make sure that the area that I wanted to be shown and the objects that I wanted to be focused on, were well lit up. I believe that I did not get it perfect and I did run into a bit of trouble setting up one of the cameras, resulting in one looking a bit more dull than the other.
I had already purchased the piece of furniture that I was going to construct. I decided to get a piece of furniture that looked relatively hard but at the same time a product that looked quite popular, that a lot of people may or will own in the future. I believe I was successful at this, there were a lot of parts and a vast amount of steps to building the furniture. So, today we began building the product once we had our test with the camera and set everything up to what we thought was a professional standard.
My friend, who was the star of the video, ended up leaving early which impacted my initial plan to get this all done by the end of the day. Due to this, things did not work out well and we will have to bring the next shoot to tomorrow. When building the product, we really struggled, we ran into many problems and actually got stuck for the good part of half an hour - it really shows that even people from our age range struggle at this sort of thing. We also did not have the correct tools for the job. We believed, along with everyone else who I had asked, that we did not actually need any of our own tools to make the furniture and that everything we needed, would be in the box. However, we were all wrong! We actually needed a screw driver for quite a lot of parts plus, I believe that if I had a video to follow, I would not have made the mistakes that we made today.
I got some great shots today and I am really happy with how it turned out. Hopefully tomorrow we can finish the shoot and not run into anywhere near the amount of problems that we ran in to today.
I had already purchased the piece of furniture that I was going to construct. I decided to get a piece of furniture that looked relatively hard but at the same time a product that looked quite popular, that a lot of people may or will own in the future. I believe I was successful at this, there were a lot of parts and a vast amount of steps to building the furniture. So, today we began building the product once we had our test with the camera and set everything up to what we thought was a professional standard.
My friend, who was the star of the video, ended up leaving early which impacted my initial plan to get this all done by the end of the day. Due to this, things did not work out well and we will have to bring the next shoot to tomorrow. When building the product, we really struggled, we ran into many problems and actually got stuck for the good part of half an hour - it really shows that even people from our age range struggle at this sort of thing. We also did not have the correct tools for the job. We believed, along with everyone else who I had asked, that we did not actually need any of our own tools to make the furniture and that everything we needed, would be in the box. However, we were all wrong! We actually needed a screw driver for quite a lot of parts plus, I believe that if I had a video to follow, I would not have made the mistakes that we made today.
I got some great shots today and I am really happy with how it turned out. Hopefully tomorrow we can finish the shoot and not run into anywhere near the amount of problems that we ran in to today.
Friday, 7 April 2017
Holiday Spreadsheet
Spreadsheet
With there being less than a month left for the deadline, I believe that I will have to come in over the half term to make sure that everything is completed. To make sure that I know what I am doing and I know what my aims are every day, I decided to make a better timetable that describes in detail, what I have to do for my production work. Like I said in the past assignments, it is very important that I complete the content for the website first and this includes getting photos for around the site, shooting a video and making small animations. I have to make sure that these are done right and look great. This may take a bit more time to accomplish but I believe that this is needed.
With there being less than a month left for the deadline, I believe that I will have to come in over the half term to make sure that everything is completed. To make sure that I know what I am doing and I know what my aims are every day, I decided to make a better timetable that describes in detail, what I have to do for my production work. Like I said in the past assignments, it is very important that I complete the content for the website first and this includes getting photos for around the site, shooting a video and making small animations. I have to make sure that these are done right and look great. This may take a bit more time to accomplish but I believe that this is needed.
After I have completed making the content for my site, I will begin making the website. I have not had much experience with Muse before, however I have been looking at videos on Youtube to show me the basics of the software and it has given me great confidence. I may have to do a few web searches throughout the production if I run into problems but now that I know the basics, I feel like I know enough. Pages that include more content will be focused on first. This is because I really want to make sure that those pages look good and interesting and they may also give me better ideas for the text based pages. These pages will also take more time so I want to make sure that those pages are done first, ensuring that afterwards, I only have smaller pages to complete, requiring less time.
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