User Testing, Started and Finished but it’s not over by any means! Leading up to the User Testing day, I wanted an almost finished website, so I could get all possibly niggles out of the way and concentrate on making it better rather than still building it. And fortunately I did this, which enabled me to get feedback, and act on it…soon, that is.
Moving round the room however I was surprised at the amount of websites still not completed, for me personally I saw user testing day as a mini deadline to get my website up and running before that date, so that the feedback I would receive was actually going to help me improve my website before the hand-in date. But it was pretty obvious that every one in the room didn’t see it as that, or if they did it didn’t show, but by saying that I’m not in any means trying to offend or criticise the websites, as in my opinion there are some great websites around the room, I was impressed with the different ideas that people had imagined and put into practise.
It was a long morning however and I hope everyone had the desired results they were hoping form but I know that it gave me bits and bobs to work on, and I gained the feedback I wished for in certain areas, such as my images. I now have many opinions pointing me in the direction I need to follow to improve my website, and I aim to get these improvements made, and get further feedback on those. But that’s enough of that, let’s get into some bombing. The infamous task bombing.
Two tasks to be exact on Thursday morning, there was a part one, and a part two, which when completing task one, task two was not mentioned, to keep the “Surprise” aspect. The order of the day was to create a layout for a newsletter “All That Jazz”. In this hour the main goal was to chose a suitable column layout to stick with, that would be suitable to use for many issues, and to create the page header. It seemed a fairly straight forward task but when time is ticking down, and your sketching roughs, you just cant wait to get an idea to click, and then to produce this on the computer, with this being sort of a newspaper style, white space had to be filled, and this proved difficult for my initial design, when being told this I had about ten minutes to correct, and in fact change my design, which put the pressure on me but I worked it out and got the work in on time!
The second task was then to fill the page space that was surrounded by our previous design. We were given the content, and an image in which we could crop and resize to how we liked, but as is the case with the newspaper designs, getting all the text to fall in line, leaving no Widows, Orphans unnecessary gaps is a real pain at times, and you end up changing font sizes and leadings over and over, it really puts the pressure on you when you’re having to do this minutes before the deadline. But I must say I enjoy it, it surprises me how many different designs people come up with in such a short space of time, when you think that the designs you have down on paper is pretty much the be all and end all, is fantastic. There are some really talented people in the group and that shows when they produce something different than the simple kinds of stuff that I do. It also surprises me at how quickly you can actually produce something, its all definitely good practise for us. Jamie
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3 comments:
Sometimes simple is the best way to go about it. Especially something like a masthead design, you've gotta be careful to not over-complicate things.
I thought that creating the grid would have been quite a simple task but it definately wasn't! Like you I was also needing to change things with only minutes left but I feel that it will benefit us in the long run and we should be able to do tasks like this much more efficiently.
Yeah without doubt Ben, really get's your heart pumpin when you've got to adjust something that doesn't go as smooth as you thought with minutes to go!
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