DUPLICATES

Yesterday and today I have been working on fixing 4 different PSD files that were duplicates. Maddy had done 1 of them and it had 3 different popups within in. Mine was one interactive with 1 popup and 2 popups separated out into still images. I forgot to take before pictures (darn!) but here is what I came up with. I tried my best to edit within what Maddy and had put together and what I had. New elements are keys in the still images, recoloring of the bars, lightening up of the graph lines, reformatting text style, and redoing the popups to fit within the style guide. Currently the STAs are waiting on some confirmation for uniformed styling on the Hypothesis and Quizzes, but hopefully I get to help out more in fixing duplicates.

 

DMA Dior Exhibit!

Well, this is not quite related to my work as an STA, but I got the opportunity to check out the Dior: From Paris to the World exhibit in Dallas last week at the Dallas Museum of Art and I felt like sharing!

https://www.dma.org/dior#field_programs

I was too in awe to take very many pictures but I snapped a couple quick ones with my phone to give an idea of the grandeur of this exhibit.

Upon entry, I saw a wall of cotton muslin prototypes used to test designs of famous Dior pieces. None are meant for sale but a really beautiful representation of the prototyping process. The opposing wall featured original sketches of these featured designs.

Another room showcased memorable pieces from each Design lead at Dior. I was especially drawn to Yves Saint Laurent’s sketches and design boards. It was fascinating to view the style transitions of different decades and designers.

Another room featured all floral designs highlighting the intricate embroidery work in Dior designs. I loved the Exhibit space and ambiance of this section, wish I had captured better pictures of it!

The final room featured Dior’s international designs, taking inspiration from each location of his headquarters. It also featured a Hollywood wall with gowns worn by the rich and famous. Gowns like Jennifer Lawrences white Oscar dress and Marilyn Monroe’s low-backed black number were featured.

UT Instapoll & Vue.js!

The past few weeks I was given the opportunity to take a break from Vlabs and learn something new! I worked with Chris Pittman to learn Vue.js and create a Vue component for UT Instapoll grading options… with a lot of help from Chris.

Vue is a progressive framework of javascript built for creating user interfaces, or as Chris called it, the “hipster” competitor of React.js. Vue allows programmers to create “components” (in our case, forms) which can be dropped anywhere into the site instead of recoding the component each time it’s needed.

To gain a better understanding of Vue.js check out the “Learn” section on their site: https://vuejs.org/v2/guide/index.html

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Here are some screen shots of my less than successful attempt to create this component. Thankfully Chris and I ended up walking through the full process together to accomplish this task. Still these shots provide an example of our final component’s appearance and function.

It was difficult for me to dive back into javascript after not writing in it for a year or so, but I really enjoyed the experience and am excited to dive into more coding and UX projects with Chris this fall!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

8-bit GIF!

This week every STA was assigned the task of creating an 8-bit GIF sized 80X80 pixels. This was my first time making a GIF and it was a lot harder than I anticipated. Working pixel by pixel is something I’m used to with CSS but not when creating my own artwork. I’m inspired to create more GIFs in the future and now consider going back to this original attempt and cleaning it up a bit!

 

Oh, this is a dog because I love them. They’re better than humans sometimes.. most of the time 🙂

Not much is new, except I’m still working on the Knowledge Base table of contents, vlabs, and also a new project updating some pages for the LAITS site (they aren’t published yet so I can’t post anything for that yet). Some other STAs have been making suggestions for things to add to the KB, so Ive been adding those, plus my own pages. I also did this assignment where I made a little 80 x 80 gif, which was really fun (I’ve never made one before). Here’s what I made:

And here’s an interactive I made recently with a fade animation:

More interactives…

LAITS Knowledge Base

Not much to add since last time… I’ve still mainly been working on Cascade and Vlabs. I also started making a table of contents page for the LAITS Knowledge Base site, which will be a resource for new STAs. It organizes the most recent and up-to-date posts so they’re easier to find and all in one place. Suloni asked me if there was anything I would add to the current table of contents, so I added a few new topics that I think should be covered (they’re grayed out until I create pages for them). Over the next few weeks I’ll be filling these in and updating this blog as I make progress. I tried to add topics that covered key information people need to know when they’re being introduced to Cascade/the Web Editor, to make the learning curve a little less steep. One thing that’s difficult at first is trying to figure out which things you edit in Cascade and which things you edit using the Editor, so hopefully the overview pages will make that clearer.

http://sites.la.utexas.edu/kb/2019/07/24/sta-training-table-of-contents/