STA Blog

TBH: Rusk County Map Update Pt.4

By

TBH: Rusk County Map Update Pt.4

Project: Rusk County Map for TBH
Client: Steve Black & Emily McCuistion
Completion Status: Done!
Staff Guidance: Suloni Robertson, Estella Sun, and the WebDev team
STA Team Members: Cristina (c’est moi)
Description/Plans: Develop an interactive image through Canvasser for a new Texas Beyond History page, add it to the TBH server, and create one of the pages linked to the interactive image in question.

And, we’re back. Thank you for tuning in to part 4 of this rollercoaster of an experience, but in today’s news, let me give you a little update on what’s happened with this project since last time I wrote about it…

 

So, if you don’t remember, the conclusion on the previous update was that we pretty much finished working on both the Landscapes site and the Ware Plantation site with fulfilling all the requests and just needed to wait for feedback… Well, change of plans…

 

A few days afterwards, we got a response pretty much saying that the Landscapes page looked fine, but that someone accidentally overwrote the Ware Plantation site, and all progress was deleted from it. We didn’t have any backups for that, so my next task was to recreate everything I’ve already worked on and everything the team was able to help me fix that site, pretty much from scrap and following the feedback from the most resent communication round (at the time). So, long story short, I got down to business and did this… [See image to the right]. Like they say, “it ain’t much, but it’s honest work”…

 

Anyway, it seems like we have more to come on this project, so it’s not over just yet. So, I’ll keep updating y’all on this later…

 

Edit: Things are a bit ambiguous, but I would say we are done with this specific project! The map and all the external sites have gone live and are up and running to the best of their abilities. (Check them out here: https://texasbeyondhistory.net/rusk/landscape.html) But, we do have a new TBH project going on now, so check out my upcoming posts on that…

Austin Design Week 2021

By

Hi blog, it’s been a bit.

 

Yesterday, I spent part of my usual shift time at an Austin Design Week event with Maddy and Valerie, about web accessibility at an office called Microassist near Shoal Creek. This office specializes in providing trainings to public and private organizations as well as running accessibility checks. It’s the official tech training firm for the State of Texas as well as certain federal offices.

 

We listened to their Lead Accessibility Analyst give a presentation on what web accessibility is & why it matters. He kept it brief and to the point, but some points that stuck with me:

 

  • Maintaining accessibility is the right thing to do. But for public (and private!) organizations, compliance is a big issue as well.
  • The web content accessibility guidelines (WCAG) are exactly just that… guidelines. In a manner of speaking, they are the bare minimum.
  • It’s imperative that accessibility be a continual point of reference throughout the development process (this means including designers, web and software developers, quality assurance specialists, and everyone else involved in the conversation). It’s much, much easier to resolve issues as you go rather than retroactively “correct” things.
  • Never make visual cues the sole means of conveying information.

Anyway, all in all very interesting and inspiring event. More blog posts to come soon!

Week 11

By

Project: COLA Website Refresher
Client /Prof: N/A (College of Liberal Arts)
Completion Status: Started August 25, 2021
Staff guidance: Michelle Vanhoose, Chris Rankin
STA team members: Ingrid, Adrian
description/plans: Final Touches
To be completed: TBD (long-term)

Hey everyone. A quick update on the projects I’ve been working on. I’ve mostly just been fixing broken/internal links whenever they are found and linking it to the correct site. As of now I think the Dean’s Office pages are live!

Project: Blanton Website Migration
Client /Prof: Blanton Museum
Completion Status: Started August 23, 2021
Staff guidance: Ruben Garza
STA team members: Asmita, Marianne, Angie, Abriella
description/plans: Work on migrating the current Blanton museum website pages to the WordPress site
To be completed: TBD (long-term)

 

Last week, along with Marianne and Asmita, I’ve been finding alt text for images in the Blanton website. This was a little cumbersome, as sometimes you had to manually look for 1 image within 1400 others so it definitely was a process.

 

 

STA Hiring Poster

By

STA Hiring Poster

project: STA Hiring Poster
Client /Prof: STA Department
completion status: Started November 2nd 2021
staff guidance: Maddy
STA team members: Sheryl
description/plans: Design a hiring poster for all of the STA departments
To be completed: N/A

Notes:

For this project, we want to include the design, web development, audio, and video STAs all on one hiring poster.

  • Make sure they know each department is a separate application
  • Grab the viewer’s attention
  • Contains all the important information about the STA program
  • Showcase that it is a UT job – branding, Header

 

Things to consider:

  • What is the best way to fit all the information on the page?
  • What will grab someone’s attention?
  • What information NEEDS to be on the poster?

 

Design Evolution:

Version 1: create a distinction between the different department that they can apply to. Different layout?

Version 2: Don’t use lighter versions of the STA colors. Find a new expressive way to get their attention.

Version 3:

 

Version 4: Like the swirl of color. How to adjust the megaphone and the typography.