April Fools! We are proud of what we’ve built so far and are looking forward to sharing this with the client next week. The last few days have been busy. Many challenges and successes. Our site is up and running – alivehistory.ca. We’ve been busy merging the art and tech to get it to a semi-final state. Luckily we received the set of images from Kelowna Museums and have integrated these along with their descriptions into the database. Searching works!

All that is left is refining the art and making the appropriate buttons for all the content. With a long weekend we have 3 and a half days left until completion.

Naming the site was the biggest challenge we faced so far. The initial name our client gave us, Un-shelved/Revealed, didn’t evoke the right response; it just didn’t feel right to the group and to those who we talked to about it. We also had to keep in mind that this name wouldn’t work well as a URL. As a team we spent a couple afternoons coming up with words and potential names for the site. Most of the “good ones” unfortunately did not the accompanying URL free.

In discussing the list of names team Ogopogo generated Gabe mentioned he liked “Alive”. This sparked Debbie who mentioned Kelowna Museums’ slogan is “Alive with our history”. From that the group evolved to “Alive History” which we all felt an instant connection to. Ryan notes that it can also be read as “A live history”. This works so we decide to grab the URL – alivehistory.ca it is!

The final part of the meeting was dedicated to Daniela showcasing her art. The abstract, hand drawn style was eagerly accepted. With a strong positive reaction Daniela is now confident to continue on with her work. We hope to integrate the art and tech early next week.

As a team we are encouraged and ready for the final stretch of the project.

Tony has continued his hard work on the CMS. Every time we check the website there are a number of new things. It’s nice to see the My Gallery / My Collection, pop-up bar and the admin features working. It’s all starting to come together.

On the art side Gabe and Daniela work to create a document that defines our stylistic choices and our inspirations. Our plan is to present this to our client next week. Daniela and Ryan also sit down to make a list of what art is required. We realize we need to finalize the page names and what subsections each houses. Referencing a site map document Shao created earlier this week, Gabe and Ryan complete a document that outlines our pages at the end of the week. Another document to forward to our client. We are at the stage where input from the client is integral to ensure we are on track with their vision. The challenge that faces us is how to make it clear that this is not the final version, that what they see will change. More on this next week after we meet.

Next week we will start building the final layout for the site and attempt to integrate some of Daniela’s artwork. Starting to skin the site will allow us to test early.

Our working prototype

The My Gallery pop-up

The admin side

Tony and Derek have been hard at work building the CMS and we now have a functioning site to play with. Ryan has started working closely with Tony to arrange the elements on the page and start creating a proper style sheet.

Daniela has shown off a number of beautiful works of art she’s designed and we hope to test integrate this into the site design next week.

The Google group Gabe set up for the team has been our outlet for sharing the work we have been creating while at home. We have a large thread now, “Tech + Art Updates”, filled with information and images from our independent work. That plus a Skype meeting has keep the group busy.

Daniela continues her work on finding a look and feel for the site.  Shao works closely with her to make sure the elements will fit with the tech and be user friendly. Tony and Derek continue with building the CMS from the ground up.

First we work out our sitemap (see image). We know what our pages will be, how they will connect and what elements will need to be built for each. Daniela introduced us to the MoMA website a while back and we use this as inspiration for how our “My Gallery” and “My Collection” elements will exist and function. Tony brings up the admin side of the site and asks how we plan to proceed with this aspect. Great question Tony! Something we overlooked but something that is integral to the project’s success. We decide to make an admin and a regular user account. Admins will be able to upload and edit photos, monitor user collections, and manage user accounts. This leads to a breakthrough as we initially wanted to have admin check each My Collection creation to make sure there is no objectionable content which means the user would have to wait to see their published collection – not something we would be happy with as users. We decide, that with the addition of the Admin side, we can give admin the ability to see new My Collection pages and remove them if they are inappropriate. Tony believes making the admin side of the site will alleviate some of the potential problems we were discovering and enable greater independence for the Kelowna Museums staff once we hand over the project.

With this settled Tony and Derek have a clear vision of what needs to be built (and invented) on the tech side. Happy tech guys make for a happy team! Smiles all around as a solid and very productive day is done. Did I mention it was Shao’s birthday as well?

The symposium was a nice opportunity to get outside our project room and gel as a team. One thing we notice is how well we get along. These outings along with good, open communication are leading to an excellent team dynamic.

When Debbie arrives at the school we first go over our ideas and concepts we have developed so far. Debbie is excited about the side scroll rather than vertical scroll the My Collection page will have (great idea Daniela). She agrees with the team that this simulates the museum experience. We introduce Debbie to the mocks Daniela, Shao and Ryan created and she feels we are on track. While we have Debbie here in person we discuss deadlines that both we as a team and the Kelowna Museums will meet. On our side we plan to have art examples and a functioning mock of the site online for the client to see at the end of the first week in March. From the client, team Ogopogo needs the photos by the beginning of March. At the end of the meeting Debbie surprises us with a stuffed version of Ogopogo. We now officially have a mascot for our room!

Overall we are very happy with the meeting. We are lucky to have such a reliable and friendly client. We look forward to our Digital Heritage Symposium at the end of the week.

At the start of the week Daniela, Shao and Ryan spend time working through user stories to determine the functions and features we want out site to have. Tom Frisina introduced the process of creating user stories to us in our Foundations of Digital Media class. We start with “As a user I…” and then list the features that make up this action. This proves to be a great way to organize our thoughts and get a list of features started for our tech team to explore.

Once our user stories were finalized we moved on to the site architecture – what are the pages we need to house the features we discovered in our user stories?  Our main feature is My Gallery / My Collection which is where the user will add their favourite artifacts. Daniela likes the MoMA gallery system and our goal is to emulate this bottom expanding box for My Gallery / My Collection. In addition to these pages we need a Home, About and Contact page and our main Search page (where the artifacts are browsed). We also discuss the possibility of having a User Collections page that functions similarly to the Search page. This will allow users to browse collections.

Our final task for the week is wire-framing. Daniela, Shao and Ryan work independently on a set up basic mocks illustrating their vision for how the features and content will be laid out on the pages.

A busy week but a highly productive week. We now have a solid set of foundations and are ready to start production.