Week 6: Team Geek Ch. 2 Reflection

Chapter 2 of Team Geek mainly discusses the culture within a team.  In order to have a strong team, everyone must be treated equally and follow the culture of that particular company. If the culture of a company is not maintained properly, it faces the risk of a stronger personality ultimately introducing his or her own culture into the team, which could result in clashing.
Another topic discussed was how to write a successful mission statement that really highlights the direction and goals of a company. However, if the direction of the company changes, so should the mission statement. It was also mentioned about the different types of meetings, and how they should be carried out, such as the quick 15 minute standing meeting to assess progress and make announcements, but should only be about the important topics at hand, so as not to bore team members. For geographically challenged teams, different forms of communication were mentioned, such as email,  online chats, video chat, and phone calls, or simply jumping on a plane to see them in person. Today's technology has allowed people from all corners of the globe to communicate as if they are I the same room, making so much more productivity possible.

Week 5: 9/25 Client Meeting

Today we met with Audrey, our client again and presented her with our final personas, which she was fairly satisfied with, and didn't feel as if there needed to be any changes made.

Client Card Sorting

The next part was the card sorting, and as you can see instructions we had her put together the structure of the website how she saw fit using the color-coded index cards. We then gave her separate index cards giving scenarios of how to complete a task.

Week 5: Rough Personas, Card Sorting

Last Thursday we finished up our Content and Visual Inventories to be handed in on Friday by 5. Over the weekend we worked on our cards for the card sorting exercise with our clients as well as the personas.

We had a bit of fun creating these personas, and I found that on the way we got a much better idea of who would be accessing the website for Sven's Cafe.

Card Sorting with other teams

Week 4: 9/18

This week in class, Alyssa and I worked on our visual inventory, while our CS teammates finished up our use cases. Our finished visual inventory is due Friday by 5, which we have already gotten a good start on. We are also working on Content inventory which is also due by this Friday at 5, our personas, and cards for the card sorting with our clients, which we will have done by next Tuesday. I will post them upon completion.

Use Cases:

Visual Inventory:

Week 3: Team Geek Ch. 1 Reflection

Chapter 1 of Team Geek basically introduced the whole concept of why working in teams is better than working independently. It increases productivity and allows for more ideas to be incorporated to allow for a better final product, versus working on your own like a hermit, for fear of judgement of your unfinished work, and end up not having a good quality product. They also introduced the concept of HRT, which stands for Humility, Respect, and Trust. HRT is the key component in working with a team collaboratively and efficiently.

Week 3: 9/11

Today in class, we met up with our clients, Jeremy and Audrey for the second time (first time Audrey came). We discovered some depressing news about their troubles with the zoning for their business, so they can't set up the cafe right now. East Donegal Township wants $350,000 for zoning for Sven's Cafe, which is ridiculous! Luckily, Audrey and Jeremy are persevering and pressing on with their dream of having their own business, and we are honored to help them and be a part of their development in terms of the website we're creating for them. For the time being however, we will focus our target audience instead on catering to other businesses. We would still include their online ordering and menu, though. We have also talked about a possible place for users to sign the petition for East Donegal Township in support of the opening of Sven's Cafe. They are also thinking about a possible hashtag event for it too that I had mentioned (#freesven)!

In terms of the aesthetics for the site, we talked to them about the Use Cases and had them review the creative brief that Alyssa and I designed. They seemed to like it and were satisfied with the information on it. I had intentionally made the theme royal blue for Swedish colors and the coffee brown in the creative brief to give Audrey and Jeremy a feel of what this theme of colors would be like, and to push the idea of these modern, fresh colors for their site, and they enjoyed the idea. We also further discussed their inspiration site, Little Amps Coffee Roasters to see what exactly they like on it, and what they would like to see similar on their site. They particularly liked the fresh, open beginning to the site and the slide show in the background, as well as the navigation bar on the bottom of the page, but not so much the cluttered content as you scroll down.

Below you will see our updated creative brief that we have all signed.

Homework:

- Team Geek Ch. 1 Reflection due by midnight tonight

Week 3: 9/9

This past weekend, we worked on our creative brief. We wanted to create a simplistic, yet modern theme that would tie in the theme of the cafe.

Week 2: Team website

Today we finished the required components for our team website. As you can see, we got a bit creative with the extra time we had. It was a great bonding experience!