STA Blog

March (Thang Truong)

By

Feb – March Update

Project: UT Instapoll

Started on: Feb 20, 2024

Staff Guidance: Chris Pittman

Description: In this project, I redesigned and implemented the look of the application. It looks much better now on the website, but I still need to work on getting this look onto the pdf. Currently, the pdf does not have the logo and every question appears on different page.

Before

After

PDF:

Project: Web Editor Help

Started on: Feb 24, 2024

Staff Guidance: Geoff Boyd

Description: This project involves designing a better retrieval system for the web editor of COLA website. The website serves staff member to search for information easily with the documentation in the database. There are a lot of steps involved with redesigning the retrieval step, starting with implementing the pgvector database, implementing sentence-transformers for converting text to embedding, storing these embeddings into the database and then using cosine similarity to match.

Currently, I have done the first step of establishing the pgvector database and input some fake data into it. The first stage takes me a lot of time to set up and transition into pgvector from sql. But it has been good for now. The next stage I am doing is how to make sentence embedding to convert text to vectors for me.

Feb 10 – 16

By

Project: UT Instapoll

Started on: Jan 27th, 2024

Staff Guidance: Chris Pittman

Description: The aim of this project is to incorporate the PDF integration into UT Instapoll. This features help student to download all of the poll responses as a study guide for a test. The PDF study guide comprises all of the questions, answers and the correct answer choices.

This is the continuation of part 1. In part 2, I implemented the library to generate PDF, customize the PDF, let user download the PDF to their machines, design the PDF and implement it.

  • Implemented the library to generate PDF
  • Design Figma
  • Implement the design

(27-31) Thang Truong

By

Project 1: Polls

Started on: Jan 27th, 2024

Staff Guidance: Chris Pittman

Description: The aim of this project is to incorporate the PDF integration into UT Instapoll. This features help student to download all of the poll responses as a study guide for a test. The PDF study guide comprises all of the questions, answers and the correct answer choices.

Documenting my thought process for this project. There will be two parts:

  1. Creating the route, the controller, the blade template.
  2. Transform the Blade Template into PDF

1. Create the route, the controller and the blade template:

Route: This step establishes the URL end point to let the user access to get the PDF. For this, I chose teacher/course/1/poll_pdf.

Controller: The controller part controls the logic of back-end behind this operation. It will get the polls from the database so that I can access the question, response and the correct answer choices.

Blade Template: The blade template displays the HTML with all of the poll responses and correct responses. The template for the PDF is still in consideration.

HTML Result: The result looks something like this.

2. Part 2 is still in progress

This part, I still need to integrate the library to get PDF integration working.

Project 2: Qualtrics-LTI

Started on: Jan 20th, 2024

Finished on: Jan 27th, 2024

Staff Guidance: Chris Pittman

Description: Adding key and value to facilitate the process of adding these values onto the page.

Woolley Labs Site Redesign

By

Woolley Labs Site Redesign

Project: UT Psychology Labs: Imagination and Cognitio Lab

Client: Woolley Labs

Staff Guidance: Stacy Vlasits

Tools Used: WordPress

Started: Jan 14, 2024

Completed: Jan 16, 2024

The Task

This week I was asked to redesign Dr. Jacqueline D. Woolley’s Lab Website. The outdated structure of it was not built on WordPress and was very hard to navigate and old. With many of the links broken and interested student/participants not able to find what they need this site was definitely due for a redesign.

Old Website:

Starting Out

The ask was pretty simple with some small requirements that did increase the difficulty.

  • Finish the redesign in the span of 2 shifts (6 hours)
  • Incorporate the current header image

The lack of direction and the short amount of time definitely gave me a interesting type of challemge which required me to think in a quick efficient way creatively.

To start this process I very quickly, setting a timer for 10 minutes, reimagined how the key pages could look experimenting with different layouts of the nav and how the content was organized.

Moving to WordPress

After having this rough idea, I went to WordPress to bring my idea to life. This run of using WordPress was very interesting because they actually updated their editor interface. Luckily after a quick tutorial from Stacy I was able to learn the Template to Page structure

Using my own “Imagination & Cognition”

One of the key parts of this site I wanted to come through is taking the colors and themes from the header into the rest of the design. By sampling these colors as my pallete and using rounded croners on most things I was able to keep a clean theme throughout the site

The Final Design + Reflection

View the final site here: https://labs.la.utexas.edu/woolleylab/

Overall this quick sprint of a redesign taught me a lot. In this project I learned:

  1. How to utilize WordPress’s new Editor interface effectively
  2. Designing in a quick timeframe
  3. Learning how think creatively efficiently without much guidance or restriction

December Projects ❆

By

December Projects ❆

Studio Course Graphics

This training walked me through the process of designing and curating my own graphics for a studio setting!

My vision…

⇢ Utilize the Museum that the students get to visit during the class

⇢ Incorporate the art style that is being studied in the class

⇢ Make the graphic monochromic

It took a few iterations to get to this point, but that’s part of the process! Originally I was pretty lost when creating this piece because I felt like every version looked really busy, especially for a backdrop. I then decided to tone it down and make the design a little more simpler!

My Steps ˚⋆｡˚

✧ Make the base layer a dark blue color

✧ Found a high-quality photo of the museum interior and desaturated it

✧ Played around with the blending modes for visual interest

✧ For more depth, I decided to duplicate the museum layer, change the blending mode & opacity, and finally offset the layer from the original

Health and Society 301 Course Graphics

Summer Courses Instagram PFP

Final Version:

Notes

  • Had to Incorporate UT branding and “Summer Online”

  • Debated whether or not UT crest should be included

  • Tested out different color variations for a “summer feel”

Drafts: