Client Oriented Practice
Brief
The brief for this module was to work as part of a small team, responding to a given live client brief. Emphasis was to be placed on teamwork, project management, and working towards tight deadlines.
Our task was to design and build a website as a group for Force-7 and York Theatre Royal. The website was required to be fully functional, with a content management system and content on every page.
My Contribution
I was part of the design team and at the beginning of the project my main role was to create mock-ups with other group members to send to the client for feedback. Based on the feedback we received, we created some more mock-ups and I went to the client with two other group members to discuss the finalised design
Once the design had been agreed on, I was responsible for the HTML and CSS; I created the main style sheet, along with some of the separate colour scheme style sheets and the colour swatches for the CMS.
Throughout the project, I made changes to the site based on feedback from group members and other people who tested the site and constantly communicated with group members through Basecamp and in lessons to find out what jobs needed to be done and what everyone was working on.
Evaluation
The project has enabled me to improve my design skills and has given me experience in working as part of a team and with a client. One problem the design team faced was getting in contact with the client; emails and texts were sent but no reply was received. However, we sorted this problem by turning up at the client’s office to encourage them to sign off the design so we could move the project along and begin coding the site up.
Many changes were made to the design at the beginning of the project and this also stopped us from progressing with the rest of the site; this could have been prevented by turning up to the client’s office sooner and explaining that the deadline could not be met if the initial design stage was to take any longer.
At one stage of the project, the style sheets for each page had to be recreated due to changes in the layout design and requirements of each page. This could have been prevented by carrying out a more detailed plan of each page and how the site was going to be used; for example, the secondary navigation had to be removed from each page since the links for cafe, membership, etc. would not be required by the user on each page. Many of the mock-ups for the dynamic pages incorporated the 12 degree angle in the headings but this had to be changed since the page titles were dynamic and could not be displayed on an angle.
Finished Product
View the redesign of the York Theatre Royal site.
Year three
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