The Fastball Special

Creating a User Testing Form is a lot harder than it looks. My first problem was finding the right questions to put on them as when I first started creating it my questions sounded 'childish'. Having researched this on the Internet I found a good website to help think of questions so armed with a better User Testing Form I went to college on Wednesday with the hopes of getting good feedback.

After the initial testing phase had finished we went back to our machines to see the stacks of feedback. I was surprised to see only a few people found problems, the major one being that some pages did not link up properly. An easy task to rectify and I have to admit I had to laugh at some of the silly mistakes like putting a Term on 2 separate pages.

So Wednesday afternoon consisted of website adaptation to which I have hopefully finished. The last part that needs to be completed is the feedback form could do to Post somewhere and the 'word' PHP was mentioned. I am wanting to have a dabble in PHP but I'm sure that if there is a Post section there may need to be a 'Get and Display Comments' section.

Thursday started of the normal tension it has managed to sustain, with the imminent dropping of a task. This time we were issued two short tasks rapidly one after another. The first task threw me a bit as it was to complete a grid for an article. Thinking to my self I thought 'How do you create a grid if you do not know where things are going?'

After completing this immediately after we were issued with the second, or part 2. This was the content and this was about the Jazz Star Don Weller. We had to think of a header and a few of my peers went for a humourous one. I on the other hand went for "Don is the Jazz Man".

Finishing off the day by carrying on with the typography presentation.

I am happy to say I am well on course to completing these units on time just as long as there are no more Fastballs.

Hi My Name's Colonel Fury and I'm A Plant

Team work is an effective way of getting tasks done and this Blog is a 'themed' blog stating which role I would take upon in a group. (According to www.belbin.com website).

In effect I think I have several qualities that span across a few of the roles but I am most likely to be a Plant. This is probably because I can be creative and imaginitive, if not a little too imaginitive, but there are times when I have been known to "communicate ineffectively". However I do think that I could be an Implementer because I can turn ideas into practical actions.

Another category which I think I could partly fall into is a Specialist because I can be dedicated and I can provide knowledge and skills, but I do not think that I "contribute only on a narrow front".

I have had experience of working in a team and some of these times worked out good, but I have been known to let my concentration slip whilst working with friends. I do not see this as a weakness but that a little extra guidance could have been injected into our team. I find working in a team is a good way of getting people closer together and when work is split between people the workload gets done faster.

In future assignments I have been told that there will be team work in this part I have been asked who, or what type of people, I would like to work with. At the moment I feel that there would need to be a co-ordinator as I can get distracted. I think the final members would be 'Plants' and 'Specialists' as these look like they are effective team members (I would be a plant-specialist).

A Lion, A Witch & A Powder Blue Samurai

I'll start with Thursday and it appears that I have my wires crossed with what a 'Task Bomb' is. Thursday was actually a really good and productive day. The first 'Bomb' was 20 minutes long and we had to replicate a page design, using page elements about the Jazz player Jonathan Gee. I was pleased to finish this on time but then it turned out that this was just a test, and the real one was issued straight after. Using the same elements we had to construct the page again but we had to design it ourselves.

In the afternoon I was hoping to be doing more presentation work but we were hit by another 'Bomb'. We were to create a label for an Oriental paint tube which I really enjoyed and it allowed me to get creative although a bit limited as it was only a typographical solution but seeing the size I don't think that much coyuld have been done. I selected the rather oriental powder blue colour and wanted to end with a label like this but apparently the colour would bleed.

Back to wednesday now and a rather long day it was as I live light years away from college I have to be up at 5:45am and get to wakefield at 8:00am but yesterday we went to London for the day to go to the Tate Modern museum. Unfortunately all we got to see was a few slides, as in theones you slide down. It was a bit of let down but it didn't stop us having a good time sponging in all of the art around us ending up in a brightly lit famous square having photos taken with the local wildlife to which I fell off and hurt my ankle, twice.

Whats that about learning from your mistakes?? They day wasn't lost though for if anything the group managed to gel together even more and I had a really good time.