Bug testing and corrections

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Interactive Media Project

Bug Testing and Evaluations

Bug Testing

(Unit 07 LO2 2.1, 2.2)

Thursday 3rd February

We started the day with looking at project 2. Danny introduced us to the sheets that we would use for Bug testing. This looked quite complicated at first, and I was also slightly annoyed, as I have already done quite a lot of my production, so now I had to go back and bug test all of it.

However, once I started actually doing it, it wasn’t too complex. The hardest part is mainly finding the problems. So far the only problems I’ve encountered are minor ones, such as button or image mistakes, that can be fixed really quickly. I will be continuing bug testing over the coming days.

3rd February

Friday 4th February

I then moved onto more project 2 work. I first continued with my bug testing, and just as yesterday, I only ran into minor problems that could be solved pretty simply. I will be continuing with bug testing as I continue with production as it will help me keep them in time with each other.

4th February

Monday 7th February

Once I had completed that task I moved onto bug testing. Once again, I did not run into many major problems. The only problem that took a while to fix was that my proposal for my options project was not correctly sized to the page. When I resized the gallery slider to one page, the other pages would then not be the right size. In the end, I had to replace the original slider gallery that the screenshots were in and just place the individual screenshots on the page. This was slightly annoying as I felt it didn’t look as good but form follows function.

7th February

Tuesday 8th February

Then once I completed the journal page, I continued onwards with my bug testing. Out of all the pages I did today, I only went through two pages today, but there were no problems in either of them so I didn’t have to write up any bug reports today.

8th February

Thursday 10th February

Once I had fixed that problem, I devoted the rest of my project 2 time to bug testing. Once again the only problems I ran into were very minor problems. I did run into the same problem quite a few times today, which was the text blocks and decorative squares not being overlapped on the mobile phone version of the website. Now that I’ve fixed all of those, I am up to date with all my bug testing, although I will continue to do it as I make more pages.

10th February

Monday 21st February

Finally with project 2 I did some more bug testing, as I had previously finished the bug testing for all the previous pages it meant the only page I had to bug test was the contact page I had just made. Luckily, there was nothing to change, so all my bug testing is now complete.

21st February

Interactive Media Project

Evaluations

Evaluate your investigations into the requirements and parameters of Interactive- based media productions (web sites) – what did you discover about website development and design (Unit 7 LO1 1.1)

When starting my investigations into this project, I began by researching into other WIX websites. WIX was the best platform for me to be able to perform this project on as I already had basic knowledge of the platform as well as a rough website. Conducting this project through WIX would allow me to further develop my knowledge as well as improving and producing a better website which I could then use to advertise myself as a growing practitioner.

In the end I did research into two different websites both built with WIX. These were the Lin Manuel Miranda website as well as the website for the video game Hello Neighbour 2. It was important for both websites to be built with WIX as this would give me a realistic goal for what I could achieve, as I was using the same platform. In fact each website introduced me to a couple of things I hadn’t considered in great detail before. For example the Lin Manuel website’s excellent use of colour and layout was impressive and inspired me into thinking how I could improve the form of my own website. The Hello Neighbour website made good use of interactivity with its many buttons and images, leading me to consider thinking about the visitor of my website instead of just myself.

However, there were also some downsides to these websites that I researched. Specifically the Hello Neighbour website, once I had fully researched it, I realised it wasn’t actually that good of a website. But if anything, having one good example website and one bad website was great in showing me what to do and what not to do when using WIX myself. There were many annoying things about the Hello Neighbour website such as no up buttons or distracting GIFs. But seeing these things for myself and understanding what makes me annoyed as a website viewer allowed me to better understand what other viewers may feel when they visit my website.

Finally, while analysing these websites I delved into the codes, conventions and theories of website design within them. This helped to progress my own basic understanding of these practices as well as providing me with examples I could picture in my mind. Developing my growth of understanding in this area was super useful as it meant I was able to take these things into consideration when I was improving my own website.

Requirements of Interactive based media productions

Evaluate the suitability and effectiveness of the research activities you undertook to support your ideas development (Unit 7 LO1 1.2)

The research activities that I undertook consisted of investigation of WIX and the services it offers as well as how I would be able to use it effectively in creating my own interactive media experience. I mainly focused on 5 key aspects, being; Interactive Authoring; Scripting; Navigation; Functionality and design potential. Researching these allowed me a wider view into what WIX could offer me.

My main method of research was secondary, with me finding out lots of information and examples for each of these 5 categories. I used a variety of sources ranging from news articles, computing youtubers to WIX itself. This wide source was the most effective method of research for me as it allowed me to gain a wide variety of opinions and views on a certain aspect. And with little prior knowledge I was not swayed either side so I was able to view all opinions with an unbiased opinion which allowed me to keep my mind open to more possibilities.

All of this research allowed me to discover a lot about WIX. Significantly many features of it that I hadn’t realised were a thing before I undertook the research. For example, being able to code in WIX as well as understanding that normally WIX does the coding for you was something I had never realised before. However, more useful things such as more navigational features and design potential components were something that I now have a broader mindset of and will allow me to improve my WIX website in all of these aspects.

Undertaking this research definitely improved my researching skills. Most notably, I’ve realised when looking for research online, it’s really useful to search for what you’re trying to find using multiple search terms. For example when researching WIX's navigation, I searched for “Wix Navigation” but also for “Navigation tools within WIX”. Using slightly different search terms around the same topic allows for a wider variety of sources as different sources come up for each search. However, if I were to do my research again, I would definitely make sure to do more primary research, as I definitely relied on secondary research too much. This most likely led to me having a good grasp on the technical side of WIX and what I wanted to do with my website. However, if I had conducted more primary research I could have potentially discovered what other people would’ve wanted within my website which would have improved my overall update of my website as well as overall user satisfaction.

Effectiveness of research activities

Evaluate the effectiveness of your planning and organisation of your web site (Unit 7 LO1 2.1)

I began my production planning process by making a navigation flowchart of my website. Initially, I began with creating it based on my currently existing WIX website and all the pages that were currently present. Then, using the course information booklet which we were given at the start of the year, I researched all the upcoming projects and discovered what pages would be required for them. I was then able to add these future pages onto my navigation flowchart which gave me a realistic goal for the pages I would have to create and additionally how my final WIX website would look by the end of my course.

Although the navigation flow chart was super useful, it was my mock ups and page designs that I found the most useful in preparing myself. This method of pre-production included the initial ideas, exploring designs and finally the creation of proper designs and full page mock ups of either new pages that would be added to my website, or new/updated features that were to be added such as my new page designs. I found this technique the most helpful in preparing myself for the production of my website as it allowed me for a visual target of what my website would eventually look like. Having a visual basis on which to build my production work upon was really helpful. Furthermore, when designing, I made sure to design basically everything that was going to be changed on my website, so having everything also showed me the amount of work I would have to do, which I could then correlate with the amount of time I had to do it in, making sure I spent my limited time wisely.

All of this preparation for my final production really helped me in understanding how to properly prepare myself for an upcoming production, but most importantly I think it helped me with my time management skills. As previously stated I had planned everything that I needed to create in my production stage, and I had been given the length of time for that production stage. Using these two bits of information, I was able to correlate them with one another and was able to get my production completed in the desired amount of time. I did end up taking more time than I had originally planned for the production stage, as the work I was doing took longer than I had initially expected. However, this allowed me to develop my time management skills, as I now recognise the slight error I made back then, which will allow me to correct this error and make sure I don’t make the same mistakes in future projects.

Effectiveness of planning

Evaluate the effectiveness of the production process you undertook (Unit 7 LO2 2.2)

At the end of my pre-production stage, before I began my production, I created a list of every single thing I needed to produce in order for my website to be up to the level of detail and functionality that I had originally planned. Then over the course of the next month I produced all of these assets.

In my research one of the most important things I had realised was the way WIX converts the website when put on different sized screens. I already knew about how it affects it for phones, and I had already started to calibrate my website for a mobile phone. However, I was unaware that when put on different sized computer screens, the WIX website would be viewed differently. In order to have my WIX website completely viewable on any sized screens, all the work I had inputted would need to be inside the guidelines that WIX shows you while editing the website. This was a large problem for me as I had spread my work across the whole page, meaning much of it was unviewable on smaller screen sizes. Correcting this problem was a huge must when going into my production. So over the course of my production, I visited all of my old pages and re-formatted all of my work in order to fit into the guidelines. This was quite a monumental task as this was about three previous projects that I needed to calibrate. However this task was incredibly important if I wanted to successfully complete my website. As it didn’t matter how good my website looked if the content on it was not viewable to all the visitors. Thankfully, now that I have completed this task my website is now functional which will allow me to get better use out of it, especially if I wanted to use it in the future for a portfolio to show off my work.

That part of my production was the main thing that focused on improving the functionality of my website, and a lot of the rest of the work was more focused on improving the form of my website. My previous set up was heavily focused on functionality over form and so to improve my website it was vital I brought the form up to match the functionality. This included improving the design of buttons and drop down menus all the way to giving my website a completely updated colour palette. This production took quite a while as similarly to the guidelines I had to go and reformat all my previous pages. However, it was definitely worth all the work as presenting the work in a pleasant format is vital in keeping viewers attention. There would be no point in a website with all my work if the visitor instantly got bored upon seeing it.

The final piece of production which I undertook was the addition of new pages to my website. Most importantly, this included the portfolio, contact and new journal pages. This was a good way to expand my website to show myself off as a growing practitioner. The portfolio and journal pages were important in better showing off my work and making it more easily accessible for all visitors. And the contact page was vital in allowing visitors to potentially contact me, which helps create a link between myself and the WIX website, which sometimes may be all people see of me.

Effectiveness of production

Reflect on the effectiveness of your web site and how meaning is created and supported via your application of interactive media design codes, conventions, theories techniques and practices (Unit 7 LO3 3.1)

With most of my project pages the aim of production was to make the work on them more easily accessible as well as being more visually appealing and keeping the viewer interested when they’re viewing all of my work. I believe the functionality of my website was already pretty strong, with my pages including buttons to take the viewer back to the navigation pages, buttons to take them to the headings of different sections of work (e.g. pre-production). And the use of anchor menus to allow the user to easily access every single piece of work on the designated pages (e.g. storyboards, production schedule etc). As well as a main drop down menu to access every page on the website. So, the main part of improving my website fell down to the form needing to be improved. On my project pages this included, updating the colour palette and shape of the decorative boxes. As well as an updated design for the buttons, which included a relevant image on what the button took the user too. The colour palette was updated to more lighter pastel colours to make the website seem more inviting and a more visually appealing website. This matched with more square decorative boxes instead of rounded ones behind my text made the website seem more professional.

Within my website as a whole, I also added a social media link to my youtube as well as a contact page. This makes my website appear more as a basis to showing myself as a media practitioner, and from the website you can continue to discover me as a person. This helps to give more of a purpose to my website and make it seem more relevant to the work that is presented upon it.

My home screen is one of the most important pages on my website. I feel this page is one of the best as an example of a good relationship between the form and function of a website. Initially, it opens as a page introducing the user to the website. However the form of the main page acts as a way to show myself off as a media practitioner. The whole background of the initial home screen are photos of my previous and developing work. This form is one of the first thing visitors will see and acts as a way to instantly show them what sort of content I create and how I work as a practitioner. This initial page also contains a start up animation that also finishes in becoming my logo. The animated startup logo also ties into showing what sort of practitioner I am as well as very briefly showing off some of the stuff I can do. Then once the viewer has seen the initial page, they can look at the top of the page as well as scrolling down to see a drop down menu, social media button and brief descriptions of my projects with buttons to take them to their pages. This acts as the functionality of this page and helps lead the user into the rest of my website. Giving brief information into the projects entices the user and makes them want to explore more of my website, and the drop down menu is created to make the whole website easily accessible.

My portfolio page acts as a good example of CRAP. Contrast, Repetition, Alignment and Proximity. The page has a relatively simple design and layout with it being the title of the project, the final video and a brief description near it. The user is then able to scroll through the page and view lots of examples of my previous work. This layout shows a good use of repetition and proximity, as all the videos are laid out in the same format and placed equidistant apart from each other. The colour palette of this page also differs from the rest of the website but also presents good contrast within this page. The page makes use of black and white which makes it seem more professional and important as well as the contrast between the colours highlighting the work that is presented upon the page.

The journal pages are one last example of the purpose of my website. Within these pages are day by day updates on what work I have done and what’s happened to me. These journal entries allow a good link between me as a practitioner and the person viewing my website. The pages make use of contrast as well as repetition. With most entries containing images alongside it and a coloured decorative square behind the text. However, some of the texts have slightly different layouts with the images either being beside the journal entries or underneath, or even sometimes within the body of the text. The journal entries are also split up into months and each month has a different colour palette, with four different colours repeating every four months. This helps the user differ months from one another, but also creates a repetition of colours within the viewer's mind, which is also repeated throughout the website and makes a good synchronisation of the colour palette within the website.

The main thing that went wrong when going through this project was me incorrectly judging how long the production segment would take me. I had initially given myself three works in which to complete the production stage in. In the end, the production process took me just over four weeks to complete. This was not a major problem although it’s definitely something I can learn from as being able to correctly plan work and make sure I stick to deadlines is a very important skill. But from this project I’ve also gained a realistic understanding of how long it takes to complete certain tasks within my WIX website and using this knowledge, I’ll be able to better complete WIX website work in the future.

If I were to go through this project again there are a couple of things that I would have liked to improve. One of these would have been going through more primary research when I first started my research. Having a questionnaire or focus group would have allowed me to gain a better understanding of what other people wanted from my website. This would have allowed me access to other people’s opinions of my website and may have led to a better website overall. The last thing I would have wanted to do is experiment with more ways to change my website. When going through this project, I was going off the basis that I had to update and improve the website that I already had. Although if I was doing this project again, I would have wanted to take into account the possibility of creating a whole new website. This may have allowed me much more creativity when creating the website. Although I am very happy and proud of what I created in this project, but this alternative method may have led me to a completely different result.