Week 8
10/11/08
Process
This week I've been spending a lot of time looking through all the sites that I noted down through the lecture relating to process.
Client Worksheets
The first site I checked out was stuffandnonsense.co.uk. This is the design studio of Andy Clarke. If you've been at any of the lectures you'll have heard his name mentioned a few times. I mainly wanted to take a look at the client worksheet that Chris and Nick had shown us. I have found it difficult in the past get everything I need from a client in terms of what they want. They more times than enough don't know what they want so I have to spend more time with them trying to get the project off the ground. With something similar to this type of system of a client worksheet future projects could be completed a lot more smoothly. I've saved a copy of it for future reference.
Another site that has a client worksheet is clearleft.com. Seems like it is something that not only helps the client get their visions down on paper but also the company. Something I'll work on when I'm the head of a big design house.
Project & Contact Management
I took a look this week at some project and contact management software packages this week in the form of basecamp and highrise. Both of these made by 37signals. I don't have any projects on at the minute so I don't see the point in signing up for an account. I tried an alternative to these two examples, called Central Desktop. This had a free 30 day trail so I signed up just to get a feel for the type of software. The user face wasn't anywhere as nice as the screen shots I looked at of Basecamp and Highrise.
I understand the need for such applications now I've done a bit of research into them. From what I seen in the lecture, the two apps looked very user friendly and had a lot of useful features. I use Microsoft One Note for keeping brief notes on projects but this is something to consider in the future.
404| Oh shit, what now?
I took into account the 404 problems with the university IIS server an how it doesn't support 404 pages. I created a mock 404 page and placed it in any of the weeks that have no content in them. I know it isn't strictly a proper 404 page but I understand the need for them in a client site.
