I’ve made quite a few changes since last posting on here (oops!)

Last Friday, I had a client meeting with Giuseppe (client), Lesser (designer) and Stacy. We mainly spent the time answering my questions, and it helped A LOT. I have a pretty clear understanding of where I should be headed with the site now, and I’m spending my time focused on fixing things one at a time.

Some notable updates:

• We’re taking out the map & switching it to a dropdown of regions instead. The map will just be shown for reference when the actual currency conversion occurs.
• Took out the second amount input field, so there’s only one place for the user to enter the amount of money they want converted. This simplifies the usability and the coding on my end.
• Lesser should be sending the UI design some time this week! So I’ll be starting on implementing that CSS soon as well

I also made my Bio graphic for new STA Orientation! I had a lot of fun with this assignment 🙂 It’s kind of wild, but I feel like it represents my personality quite well haha

I’ve made several changes to the site since receiving the base code:

1. I fixed an issue where the search bars weren’t actually receiving the entire text input (ex: if I search for “ab” it would only use “a”).
   
2. The currency conversions weren’t being displayed, so I fixed the error that kept them from showing up.
   
3. I added a placeholder “About” pop-up. I’ll style it when I receive the full site design and further information.
   
4. I also fixed the formatting on the title at the bottom that displays the selected currency & time period.
   

Next Steps:

• I need to ask Stacy for some clarification on the wireframe he gave me to reference
• Meeting with the client soon to see where they’re at
• Continue fixing bugs that I find

Project: Ancient Currencies Web Development

Completion status: in progress

STA team members: Me, (prev. Rodrigo)

Description / plans: 

Working on implementing functionality to new Ancient Currencies website. Site basically is an ancient currency converter & I’m taking over from where Rodrigo left off. Website design is still in the works, so for now I am coding the functionality for the site. Using Stacy’s wireframe to help me out.

Current site in the works:

Stacy’s wireframe:

Today, I mainly just got set up and briefed on the project. I spent some time getting myself familiar with the code and added small adjustments to the Time Period Search function.

Wow! It’s been a whole semester and what an eventful semester it was! Before leaving LAITS for the spring, I had secured a marketing internship at KMFA 89.5, and I was super excited to start.

KMFA 89.5 is Austin’s classical music radio station. It’s a small nonprofit with a small staff that’s been operating for 40+ years. My favorite thing about working there was getting to meet everyone running the place. I was by far the youngest one there, so it was REALLY cool to learn about all kinds of radio things from these professionals who’ve been at it for years and years.

My supervisor was super cool too! He graduated from Rice with a masters in cello performance and played in a chamber group for a while before landing at KMFA. I played violin in orchestra for 8-9 years before college, so it was really nice getting to revisit those roots after not playing for several years.

My task as a marketing intern was to help out my supervisor, the marketing coordinator, with his tasks and come up with my own semester-long project.

One thing that I liked doing was “Media Scans”. Every morning, I had to come in and research news that was going on in the classical arts world and send my supervisor interesting articles that could be used to social media. I learned a lot about classical music and all the various things that were going on both internationally and in Austin. I also did various other tasks such as compile weekly newsletters and draft social media posts.

My semester-long project was the main thing I worked on. It’s actually quite funny because it really aligned with the kind of stuff I did right here at LAITS. So my project was to mock up a new design for KMFA’s current website. It had a looooot of problems (especially in terms of navigation and overabundance of irrelevant information). I first went through the website and wrote down all of the things I wanted to fix right away, then I creataed a google feedback form to send to the rest of the staff. This form was my way of getting as much user input as I could to inform my design. What I ended up turning in was an Adobe XD prototype and a Website Design Audit that listed all of the issues I found with the current site.

Feedback Form:

Mockup: https://xd.adobe.com/view/b3abd3f5-8ad7-4d3c-5d5c-abec687abf08-c59a/?fullscreen&hints=off

Original Site: https://www.kmfa.org/

Due to the uh.. state of the world, my internship ended off kind of abruptly. I had to relocate back home to Houston and I ended up finishing the website design on my own. Normally, interns would have a project presentation at the end of the semester, but I didn’t get to have that. Luckily, my supervisor suggested I come back in the fall to give it at their new building (Oh by the way, KMFA is moving to a new modern building).

Another thing I did this semester that I’m really proud of is a COVID-19 Relief Fundraiser! Me and my Bible Study group came up with the idea of collectively raising money for the pandemic. Everyone offered to do things like dares or silly tik-tok requests if people donated. All the proceeds we made went to an org called Modest Needs Foundation who gives emergency financial relief to lower income families in need.

I personally did drawing requests and I got 50 requests and raised over $500 just on my own!!! Collectively, we raised $2100+ for Modest Needs Foundation!!! It was such an amazing experience and I felt so honored that so many people liked my art (even people I didn’t know reached out to me!)

Here are some examples:

This whole experience really gave me a lot of confidence in my art, and honestly, I can’t believe the response I’ve gotten so far. Hopefully, I can keep doing similar fundraisers in the future. Using my art for good like this really heals the soul haha!

Anyway, that’s what I’ve been up to this semester! It’s been a crazy couple of months but I’m super stoked to be back 🙂

 

 

Vlabs is in its final stages, so I mainly worked on vlabs canvassers and PSDs. The vlabs home page got a temporary graphic that we pulled from the flash site and I still need to get the icon from Jac to put in the header.

I also got put back on the learning persian project. I worked on this site before leaving for the summer, but now I’m back and putting some finishing touches. We had a long talk with Stacy about the navigation and decided to move the side menus to the top with the rest of the navigation. This will also make for a better mobile responsive site. https://learning-persian.la.utexas.edu/persian-of-iran/

Finally, I finished up my psy 352 powerpoints. Those were pretty simple and quick, so not much to update there (besides initial issues with updating keynote and whatnot)!

Like the past few weeks, VLabs has continued to take up the biggest chunk of my time at work. I’ve continued to make changes like being able to click out of the dropdowns/sidenav, tweaking font sizes, and mobile responsiveness. Some next steps include talking to Jac about the icon and home page image. https://anthro-virtual-labs.development.la.utexas.edu/

Other than vlabs I’ve done several COLA IDs. This round was a little rough because many of the pictures that we got were poor quality or too small.

I’ve also done some Cascade help requests like helping Joe and Joe (haha) with editing their pages in Cascade. I’m also guiding Thuy how to create a new web presence for New Writers Project. Finally, I’ve done a banner update and other minor cascade changes.

Upcoming Assignments: I’ll be starting to help with Reformatting Abnormal Psychology PPTs. Continued COLA IDs.