Evaluation

Below is a draft of my evaluation. I have never been any good at evaluations. I would appreciate the some constructive criticism on it is possible.

Amended 15 October 2007 : 11:38

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Evaluation
The main down side to my unit is the difficulty I have had with planning my time. It is certainly the first time I have had to plan my time in such an accurate way. I found it easier to produce a production schedule at the start of the project than I did for my detailed weekly time plan. I think there are two major reasons for my somewhat inaccurate time planning. One thing being, the un-expected lectures and tutorials that take place in college time. I believe it would have been beneficial to not just me but to colleagues to have a schedule for lectures and tutorials at the start of an assignment giving approximate times. The other discrepancies being un-documented work; when I have been working on something that leads unexpectedly into another area of study which isn’t included into my time plan it becomes in accurate. I will take this into account on future projects and include time unforeseen tasks.

I am happy with the final design of the web-plan as a whole, in particular the choice of colour. The colour scheme used was chosen to both fit in with accessibility (the use of web safe colours) and to match my target audience. I have tried to limit the amount of different colours used on the design to create a more professional and contemporary feel to the website. This project has given me the enthusiasm I need to continue producing similar work whilst boosting my confidence in designing for someone other than myself with a subject or target audience which I would not normally design for.

One thing that disappointed me during the design process was the impractical use of the font Edwardian Script ICT initially planned as a drop cap within the primary navigation. I planned to use Edwardian Script throughout the design to coincide with the calligraphy style writing of the time period that my subject lived in. There were several factors I had to think about before incorporating it into my final product such as the accessibility on the most valuable asset to the website – Navigation. One possible way to overcome this problem would have been to encode the font into an image file. This however would have bumped up my global file size, breaking my 50kb per page aims set out within the project goals.

If I had more time and was to produce this website I would animate the header with the use of a flash movie to create a gentle flow to the waves. I think this would add a little interest to the website and appeal to children within my target audience. Again my concern with doing so would be the size restrictions, making the global page size much larger than set out within my project goals.

Although the small seminar groups I was involved in were useful to receive more personal tutoring I would like to use that opportunity to receive more feedback on the actual design and development ideas.

I am now more enthusiastic about posting my work on my online learning journal. I think the feedback I will receive in the future will help me in the development of my work and take my work to another level.
I shall document feedback more accurately in my sketchbooks in order to produce more evident development of my work. In producing more design ideas from the feedback I receive in seminar groups will give me more flexibility and ground when choosing a final design.

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