Usability

Well I finally did my usability testing on sunday. I was very fortunate to get some kids...( or as i discovered they are refered to as tweens... its a mixture of teen and....... i don't remember) anyways these kids tested out the site for me in exchange for some junk food. Basically I was blown away at first by their computer savvyness... these kids can type better than me, they know all the hottest sites and they keep blogs and other things (they kept talking about myspace... i don't really know what that is i guess a blogging thing?). Anyways so they did my tasks and it wnet alright I guess. I didn't expect the site to have amazing results, but it wasn't terrible either. I still think an improvement would have been a pop up menu, but then again hidsight is always twenty twenty.
I spent the entire day cooped up in the library finishing my 500 assignment which our wonderful group left to the last minute. Anyways so I'm not done the report. At least I started some though. I'll finish it tomorrow, but hopefully it's not an all nighter like the website portion.

Monday

Well it's not Monday, but whatever...
Last week... Few days ago was final website due date. Man that was so scary, I didn't think I was going to finish... But I did. Hopefully it's not a total mess, only time will tell.
Then... On top of having to finish the site I had to present my reference. I am such an idiot I didn't even notice the date that I chose to sign up was the same date the website was due. Terrible decision making on my part.
Ok yeah then we used Camtasisa in the lab to do a usability study.. Which was interesting. I gotta write that report later this week because it's due on Friday. Then I got to do the usability study and the final report. And then it's bye bye 530....!!!

10

I was pleasantly surprised in class when we didn't have a lab to do. Not that labs are a bad thing... I like getting out of class early. Anyways I was taking a look at my agenda and it seems like after next week (which is when my kitty is getting spayed... le sigh) uh its final project due date. That was fast... I'm still trying to think of things to put into the site to make it more interactive... I know there are so many things that can make a site more interactive, but for now they are just alluding me... Hopefully I can figure something out in two weeks.

In ryenews.... my last assignment was due for 410... we heard through the grapevine that the prof will be marking this one so we worked extra hard on it... then the member who printed it out printed out the wrong stuff! At least the prof was understanding, that could have been a potential downer. Next week I have a case study due... I want to start it right now so it's not a last minute effort, but I don't think that will happen. I think I'll go see if I can find the human-computer interaction book in the library so I can start my presentation which is coming up soon... not sure when though I should look taht up.

Work in Progress

Well that's done and over with... I was stressing so much and it went by pretty fast. I like the work in progress because you always get some good input into your project. However, it's also a little intimidating because you have to show the prof your site and you don't really know what they are thinking. Hopefully they're not like... ew what a horrible website. If that was the case my webmistress dreams would be shattered. Ok.. not really making sense, but who can blame me, I just went through post-reading week aka hell week. I had an exam from itm500 and mhr505 on the same day right after one another... I was still in query mode in my hr test. And then wednesday I had itm410 and then the WIP.... at least WIP was less stressful because it was not a finished product. Anyways now that the week is over I am going to go get some much needed sleep.

Reading Week.

Reading week... a fun time also stressful i guess. Basically everytime reading week comes along I say to myself "you are going to study"... and then nothing happens. The WIP is due on the friday following the reading week which means i gotta do something for the site. Every other calss pretty much has a midterm for me when i come back so when next week rolls around... it is not going to be pretty.

More Flash...

I planned on making my weekly Thursday posts, but I really didn't get a chance to write anything at all. Basically what I was going to mention was that I had finished the flash form that we had to do this week. It wasn't so bad because we had done most of the stuff in the two previous labs so it was basically just combining all of that. Still it took me a while, especially since I wanted to make it look pretty... Somehow I think pink equates with pretty but whatever.
Anyways today we were doing our video conferencing lab. It was pretty straighforward copy and paste step by step procedure. My only problem was the clear button which wasn't working. Turned out I was setting the function to clear the clear button and not the chat... Wow that was dumb. Luckily Cindy was smart enough to point out my mistake.
Ok, so it's now officially reading/study week. I have to work on the site to make sure that I'm done about 70% hopefully it's not a last minute struggle.

Flash

Well I had a steady stream of Thursday night posts but I decided to break the cycle because of a wonderful program called Flash. Last week we were reacquainted with Flash by making video controls. Just two video controls to be exact, play and stop. Now that doesn't sound so difficult, but then why did it take so long to figure out. Thanks to Bertha I figured out that my code was stupidly placed outside of the on release function... After that the lab was a breeze.

Ok so today we had another flash lab this time... Forms. Everything was going smoothly until I tested the movie and was getting errors... After trying to figure it out on my own I called Bertha over and she pointed out that data collected by radio buttons was supposed to be collected by the group name. But then when I was doing the reset button I had to refer to them individually... In conclusion it was long... And confusing... And the way I was putting up my hand every five minutes reminded me of third grade. I haven't even looked at the assignment/hand in part yet.