Project 2: Shark Tank Reflection
Our second project for WCP was about creating an idea for a product that would address on of the issues on the UN's Sustainable Development Challenge page with a team. However, there was a twist - we were not making a website for our idea, rather, 2 other teams that were competing, or bidding, against eachother would be making our website for us. Our team would act like the "sharks" and decide which team we would accept a website from on the day of presentation. Our team also had to compete against other teams and make a website for 2 clients, so we were acting like bidders in addition to sharks.
The first thing we did in groups was create an idea for our product. My group came up with an idea for a complex network of signaling systems that implemented cellular connections and AI to make subways faster and efficient, making public transport more enticing to ride and decreasing the amount of traffic on the road as a result of more people taking the subway instead, leading to less carbon in the air. We detailed business models and created a proof of concept for our product so that we were ready for the second phase, the interview. I was interviewed by every group about my group's business as if they were going to make a website for us. Questions asked things like what we wanted on our website or what about our product we wanted to emphasize. Part of my group interviewed other groups to gain information about potential companies we would decide to make a website for. Once we had information on every group, we chose 3 to wireframe and make a business proposal for.
The groups we would eventually make websites for, however, were chosen for us; for my group it was ClearFlow, a nonprofit that helps deliver water to villages in need, and Love, a nonprofit that donates to teachers and classrooms in need and petitions governments for higher teacher salaries. For each company, my group started by making a wireframe and storyboard based on the info we received from the group during interviews. For example, on of the companies wanted a way we can get users to donate to their cause so we wireframed a donation page and visuals on every other page that would advertise and redirect to the donation page.
Once the wireframes were done, we allocated responsibilities to each member in the team, the task of coding the site's template predominantly on my hands, the task of creating content and visuals taken by my other 2 teammates. Since this was a collaborative projects, we needed to communicate what we needed to do next and see what each other added to the code and project files. For this, we used GitHub, where we hosted a repository for the project and submitted changes we made to the code. Since GitHub stores every version of our work, when someone on my team made a big mistake, we were able to revert to an older version and restart from there. Also, since we're able to view changes other people have made, we were able to resolve smaller problems by looking at the history and we were able to see if our teammates were committing what they were supposed to be committing. GitHub made it easier to collaborate on a project where we had to make 2 sites, and since any teammate can download the work from GitHub, everyone uploaded the same work to their portfolio when the sites were done.
These skills are important for a web designer because they are useful in a collaborative web development process. Creating a basic wireframe and storyboard of your eventual site gives everyone a road map to work off of. The confusion about where the project is headed is limited and while plans may still differ in the end, the wireframes serve as something to start from. Allocation of roles is important since projects need to be done efficiently and having everyone work on the same thing greatly increases the time to finish a project. Knowing the strengths of everyone on the team and assigning roles accordingly saves time and makes development smoother. Lastly, hosting the project where communication and other's work can clearly be seen eliminates confusion during development. Without communication, it is hard to know where the project is at and what needs to be done next but using something like GitHub, which is widely used by real life development teams, helps eliminate that confusion by displaying who is doing what and what changes they've made.
The first thing we did in groups was create an idea for our product. My group came up with an idea for a complex network of signaling systems that implemented cellular connections and AI to make subways faster and efficient, making public transport more enticing to ride and decreasing the amount of traffic on the road as a result of more people taking the subway instead, leading to less carbon in the air. We detailed business models and created a proof of concept for our product so that we were ready for the second phase, the interview. I was interviewed by every group about my group's business as if they were going to make a website for us. Questions asked things like what we wanted on our website or what about our product we wanted to emphasize. Part of my group interviewed other groups to gain information about potential companies we would decide to make a website for. Once we had information on every group, we chose 3 to wireframe and make a business proposal for.The groups we would eventually make websites for, however, were chosen for us; for my group it was ClearFlow, a nonprofit that helps deliver water to villages in need, and Love, a nonprofit that donates to teachers and classrooms in need and petitions governments for higher teacher salaries. For each company, my group started by making a wireframe and storyboard based on the info we received from the group during interviews. For example, on of the companies wanted a way we can get users to donate to their cause so we wireframed a donation page and visuals on every other page that would advertise and redirect to the donation page.
Once the wireframes were done, we allocated responsibilities to each member in the team, the task of coding the site's template predominantly on my hands, the task of creating content and visuals taken by my other 2 teammates. Since this was a collaborative projects, we needed to communicate what we needed to do next and see what each other added to the code and project files. For this, we used GitHub, where we hosted a repository for the project and submitted changes we made to the code. Since GitHub stores every version of our work, when someone on my team made a big mistake, we were able to revert to an older version and restart from there. Also, since we're able to view changes other people have made, we were able to resolve smaller problems by looking at the history and we were able to see if our teammates were committing what they were supposed to be committing. GitHub made it easier to collaborate on a project where we had to make 2 sites, and since any teammate can download the work from GitHub, everyone uploaded the same work to their portfolio when the sites were done.These skills are important for a web designer because they are useful in a collaborative web development process. Creating a basic wireframe and storyboard of your eventual site gives everyone a road map to work off of. The confusion about where the project is headed is limited and while plans may still differ in the end, the wireframes serve as something to start from. Allocation of roles is important since projects need to be done efficiently and having everyone work on the same thing greatly increases the time to finish a project. Knowing the strengths of everyone on the team and assigning roles accordingly saves time and makes development smoother. Lastly, hosting the project where communication and other's work can clearly be seen eliminates confusion during development. Without communication, it is hard to know where the project is at and what needs to be done next but using something like GitHub, which is widely used by real life development teams, helps eliminate that confusion by displaying who is doing what and what changes they've made.
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