Course Reflection

The course aims:

1. Introduce students to design methods and techniques for the generation, refinement and implementation of design ideas in a project setting.

I felt that through this course i was introduced to many new design methods and techniques, through the use of the lectures displays, contacts and workshops. Through the lectures we were able to learn the basics of how to implement new techniques into our application and new tools that the IT industry uses. Within the contacts and workshops we were able to asks questions about these new tools and facilitate help if needed.

2. Provide students with the opportunity to work in multi-disciplinary teams on design computing projects

Within our group, we were able to gather many different skill levels and individuals who displayed strengths and weaknesses to different aspects of the IT design; this in turn helped us to develop our application as we had group members that allocated themselves to their own strength within the application construction.

3. Introduce students to techniques and methods for effective team work and project management

Within the team development skills and techniques, i felt that we were not taught a lot of items on this topic. Within my group, a few of the team members had disagreements about workloads and un-organisation. I think that in a future I would personally like a individual tutor to talk to us about how our group dynamics are working and make sure everything is running smoothly.

4. Develop students ability to communicate design ideas and outcomes through a variety of forms - visual, oral and written

I felt that this statement was clearly developed as for each assessment task we had to produce a visual element of the application, a written element and lastly as oral presentation. With these three elements combined, i felt that we were taught many different multi-disciplinary skills that will help me individually in the future.

5. Promote and foster creative thinking through projects.

Through the groups having to use an external resource to implement our application, i felt that we were able to think outside the box within our design and technical thinking process. With the external website being Trove, we were given a broad spectrum of concepts that we later created into a application.

6. Promote and foster critical analysis of design computing works - own and of others - through studio discussion, exercises and project work.

Within the contact sessions, the tutors conducted paper prototype sessions and digital prototype sessions to displays to help us discuss our application with potential users and retrieve vital feedback needed to develop our application. Within these session, we were also able to view other groups projects and discuss with them about their application and vocalise the changes that we would want seen.

7. Promote and foster reflective practice through feedback and discussion around project work.

Throughout this course, i felt that retrieving feedback and discussing what changes should be done to our application really changed the way i thought about group projects. Without the use of feedback and discussion, we would not have highlighted the positives and negatives of our application, thus helping our application to evolve into the state it is today.

8. provide students with the opportunity to apply skills and knowledge gained in other courses to design computing problems

Within the DECO1400 and DECO1100 course, we were able to learn about the basics of web design and creative thinking. Within the DECO1800 course i was able to apply these tools to be further developed within our application process.

9. provide students with the opportunity to build a body of work through the design and development of solutions to given problem space.

Within giving the problem space of Trove, I was highly uninterested in the data it provided, although it was interesting how much information it actually stored. In the future, i hope for the tutors choose a more interesting space that other students could relate to better.

Week 14

After displaying out application in the trade show, our application got selected to go in a innovation showcase to display our work. It was fantastic that we were able to show our work to the public and be proud of what we did this semester.

Week 13

Today we did the Trade Show and demonstrated our presentation.

We had a huge group wanting to play our application:

Our group:

Another group application:

Everyone wanted to play our application:

Another groups application:

We bought so many lollies haha:

User Feedback:

From conducting digital prototyping activities and asking for personal feedback, our group was able to accumulate accurate and vital feedback to make perspective changes to our application.

The feedback that was accumulated included the following:

• Many of the users didn’t see the 3 hearts system representing health
•  The users didn’t take interest in the Star Box
• The users wanted the Trove data to be displayed in a more aesthetic manner
•  A more noticeable ‘Return to Game’ button within the Trove Pages was requested
• The checklist should be “clickable” so users are able to view the Trove data, and this should pause the game
• Add more elements to the instructions page
• Explicitly narrate the theme for each level (make it more obvious)
• The users wanted to be able to see the highest scores of the game
• The users wanted the location of the Star Box to change each time they played
• The tutors wanted the coding to be fixed up by commenting, indenting and deleting redundant code, making it more aesthetically pleasing
• Within the menu, the user wanted to click the high scores leaderboard page to lead to the high scores page. This had not yet been implemented
•  The users found the scoreboard page lacked style and structure
• The tutor wanted the Trove data to be displayed in a more aesthetically pleasing manner by adding PDF pop ups to the articles instead to linking to Trove itself
• The users wanted the whole application to be more aesthetically pleasing
• The users wanted more information and pictures to be displayed on the home page of the game
• The users wanted the Star Box to be included within the checklist of the game
• The users wanted to see an interactive menu within the game

From the feedback provided, we hope to make accurate changes to the application to please the needs of our target audience.

From the feedback given we made several changes to our application that appeased our user feedback.
I added more elements to the tutorial page including:

What i thought about this week:

This week i thought our trade show demonstration went really good. We got the right feedback needed to fully complete our application and make it good. I made changes to the tutorial page as well as choosing the right music for the application.

Week 12

This week we were super busy finishing off our final report and our application. This week we had to complete the following:

1. High scores leaderboard page
2. Fish images for animation 
3. Star Box Page. CSS and images need fixing up so that there are more images being returned, the images need to be laid out properly, and the whole page needs to be styled in a similar way to the game. Can someone else please do this, I only did the Star Box page for the WIP because i didn't think nik was going to. I don't want to spend any more time on it.
4. Music - does anyone else want to do this, it really won't be hard, there's just a basic html music tag or something like that.
5. Add a trove page in when the user dies
6. End-level page: Change styling so it fits on the page horizontally, get rid of the buttons, should have more than one image per fish
7. Link in the checklist functionality, do we even have a checklist page yet? We need the checklist to be clickable. 

Game 

1. getting the sizes of fish working properly,
2. fixing up level bugs,
3. getting the difficulty right. 
4. Incorporating animation
5. User controls in-game like Menu, Instructions, pause, mute, go to High Scores Leaderboard.
6. Adding cookies to remember the user's name and what level they were up to.
7. Fixing up the links to end-level page

Other:

• need to decide on what we're wearing, how we're presenting, make flyers/posters/whatever for the contact 
• figure out when we are going to meet before the contact

I focused on developing the music and instructions page.
Lecture
In the lecture we focussed on wrapping up the course and learning about what we had to know about the final assessment tasks.


Development of Portfolio:

In my portfolio, i drew the border and did most of the icons in illustrator. I am keeping the brown, pink, white, grey and green colour scheme though out. This week i plan on doing the "about me" entry.