Response 10_Photoshop

I really enjoy the critique process. I was first exposed to group critiques last spring in my Intro to Digital Photography course. Before every class we would display the work we did for the week and then spend the majority of the 3 hour class talking about it all. The first few were awkward because no one wanted to potentially insult a classmate, but we all quickly learned that that was never the intent.

Yesterday I had a conference call with the group I'm working to make the site for (The Boys & Girls Club of New Haven, CT). It served as my first critique so far of the site and I got a lot of feedback from them. I had been working and interacting with the site so much that it was nice to hear from a couple of people who hadn't seen the site and who also had a vested interest in it. While working on the templates a couple weeks ago, I had my roommates look at them and give their opinions on the color and layout. Right away they suggested to give it more color which prompted me to add the landscape background. On the conference call yesterday, the Director of the Club suggested making the black template a bit smaller to show more of the background and the other person on the call suggested changing the black to a different dark color. So I definitely have a lot more work to do on the project and I'm looking forward to hearing what the class has to say tonight. Hopefully I have the chance to make the changes the Club suggested before the class has a go at it with their opinions.

In regards to the Design Process piece, I think this project is especially challenging because it isn't just designing a website... it's designing a website while learning how to make a website at the same time. In the beginning of the process, I was mapping out the design while trying to become familiar with the application I'm using, Yahoo Site Builder. It has definitely been a trial and error experience for parts of it, realizing the limitations of the program as well as the limitations of my own technical ability. In the same vein however, one of the Club's main requests was that they could easily learn how to make changes to the site themselves. So in a way, the fact that I have limited technical ability may work out in the long run because everything I'm doing is really straight forward and user friendly. Anyway, there's still a lot to be done so I better go and get to work on it!