This week I did a presentation on a website that was interactive and had many different components to it. The website used many different types of interactivity that allowed to be exposed to the company’s website and story. The main thing that I learned from this website and other ones that presented is that you have to be able to use multiple types of interactivity to keep peoples attention and to keep them interested. The websites include a bunch of different ways for a person to interact: pictures that move when you hover over it, videos that pop up by clicking on certain words or pictures.

This week my team continued to do our research and work on developing a full document of text that we would like to include on our website. We also finalized some media that we would like to include for our website, which mainly included videos and photos from our practice sessions. We have also determined that with our Coronavirus mishap, that the people who are local to Lincoln, can continue to meet and get more photos and videos if need be. I on the other hand living in Kansas City, will continue to do my portion by working on the website and with the research for our texts portions of the website.

The main thing I will take away from presenting this week was the idea of using 360 video in our project in some way. As I discussed in my during my presentation, I doubt many groups if any have had this idea and it could definitely set us apart from the pack. The cinematography was absolutely stunning in the website I chose as well. If our group can somehow get something even close to what I showed, it will be very appealing. In order to have an effective storytelling project, you have to be able to attract people and keep them there throughout, so we will have to ensure our media is as stupendous as possible.

The main problem we encountered, along with the rest of the class, was the coronavirus for obvious reasons. The cancellation of in person classes will make it very difficult to get our project done on the timeline we wanted. However, we have already started collaborating on how we can make this go smoothly. 3 of our group members live in Lincoln, and so we will be tasked with capturing most of the media. The out of town members will have to put in work on the website itself in order to be able to contribute.

I was supposed to present this week however I was sick. I did still learn a lot about interactive projects while looking for mine though. One thing I did learn right away is simplicity and functionality are key, I went through a ton of sites that were just super confusing and I had no clue how to use them. Mine had some location mapping which I think would have been really cool to use on ours to map out each hole and our shots on the course4.

This week with this whole coronavirus thing we really couldn’t get much done because we had to wait and see how it all played out. I think we decided to get out on the course within this next week to just capture as much media as we can. I think pretty much our whole group is planning omn staying in lincoln so meeting shouldnt be an issue the main concern is just capturing media without being able to check out from the lab

This week, I had the opportunity to present my interactive website with the class. Through my searching and finding of an interactive website to present, I learned a lot about them, and feel I took away some really good ideas for our project. The biggest thing I took away, both from the site I presented and from the sites that the rest of my group members presented, was the simplicity of them. All of them were very content rich and had many interactive elements, but they were incredibly easy to navigate, and because of how they were organized, the information sort of just kept coming, rather than you as the user having to dig around and look for it. I also really liked the 3D video that was used in Matthew’s website, and think that, if possible, that might be a really cool element to incorporate into our project if we find a need to do so.

This week, all of our contributions were similar in that we found and presented our websites with the goal of finding unique elements of each site that we can use for our project. I think we did a good job of that, and have a good plan for where we are going from here on our project.

It’s crazy to me that we are already half way through this semester, as it feels like it has gone incredibly fast. To this point, I’m really happy with the progress we’ve made on our project. The week before last, we went to the golf simulator at the East Campus Rec and made some really good progress. Each one of us received instruction and coaching in the areas we needed it, and it was really cool to see how each one of us had improved, just from the one training session. We were also able to get some good video of each one of us getting that instruction and making those improvements, which will incorporate very well into the plan we have for our website. Really, the only challenge we face is finding a time that works for everyone to meet. We are all very busy with classes, work, other involvements, etc., but we’re finding enough time to get everything done. We are meeting again at the rec center on Tuesday, and hopefully after that, we can start getting outside.

This week, we met in class and had a really good brain storming session for our project. We set a couple more meeting times and deadlines for ourselves as individuals as well as for the team, and put some solid plans in place which should allow us to make a lot of progress in the next couple weeks.

I think the main thing that is going well is the camaraderie we all have. We all have been sticking to our schedule and getting all of our material finished in an efficient manner. For example, for our interactive material that we had to turn in for today, we all collaborated super well and got it done really quickly. Things like this will make our project fly by and let us achieve the best grade possible. I think we need to work on getting to the nitty gritty and fetching more material however. This has mostly been due to the weather and so I am not too worried about it, but it will be a grind going forward. We will need to make sure our outdoor material is shot well enough, taking brightness and wind into account to make sure there is a little noise present as possible.

This week, we discussed what courses we were going to go to and what our price range might be. Since I do not own a pair of clubs to hit the golf balls with, I will have to collaborate with other team members to ensure that I can get the right clubs for each situation. We brought forward all the material we had gathered so far and we were satisfied with the results of what we have done so far. In the future, I will look into maybe buying materials to use for our project so I do not have to borrow constantly from others.

Our project is going great so far. We have been getting along as a group and haven’t had any problems there. For this week we met and decided a couple more times to meet to work on the project. We are also going out on Saturday to hit the driving range and capture some more media and get some more work done. Still our biggest foe on this project has been the weather although I think we are at the end of that. I am going to start the website this weekend. We kind of have a rough draft of the way we want it to look where each player will have a profile that you can track and see their progress and some of the media. Once I get the website done we should just be able to drop the pictures and videos in pretty easy so I am not too worried about that. At this point for us i think it’s just kinda getting out and capturing the media that we want then just deciding where we want to put it and how we want to build off some off it but i think we have some really good ideas were tossing around.

Throughout the whole project we have really worked well on communication and discussing what we have to do next. We have also had different people step up and ask if they want them to do something whenever we say that we have to do something.

This week I contributed by doing the rules portion of our preliminary research submission. I used my current knowledge to give a simple list of basic rules that every golfer will encounter on the golf course at one point in their golfing playing time. These rules are simple ones that are easy to follow. As we get farther into the process I will be adding more in-depth rules that are more of every-now-and-then situations. Next I want to talk about the the different types of golf that you could play and talk about the basics of golf like different clubs, other equipment and the basics of a golf course or game.

One of the challenges that we still have as a team is being able to find more time being able to meet up and practice or teach. This is the most important part but we will be meeting up this coming weekend at some point.

This week was pretty much like last week. We all did some more planning and such, but it’s still fairly early to be doing too much. We’re going next week for the interactive website presentations, so we might collaborate some and get some ideas so we know what we’re doing. For our project in particular the weather hasn’t been the best so it’s tough to get out on the course plus the fact that we have to find a time that works for everyone. We’ll get to that point though, and once we’re all comfortable with where we’re at we can make some good content for the video and website.

We put together our content submission for this week, and everything turned out great. We got some footage but I don’t think we can put it in a document without it being a YouTube link or something so we just went with screen shots. I like how our first pieces of content is at the simulator with Zach teaching us how to do everything. I imagine in the end we will be on a real course and looking a lot better than we did at the start. I’m looking forward to how that plays out.

I think our next steps will be going to the simulator again potentially, and then out to a real course. In the meantime I think it would be best to brainstorm more ideas for our website and plan out how we want to do that. That way once we have more content we know exactly what we want to do with it. I also don’t know if I mentioned this in my last blog post, but I made a simple logo for our group and I might try to add it to our blog.

The main component of the presentations that I will take away from this week are the appealing transitional effects. I especially noticed this in the first project with the colors changing to look like every animal shown. I’ve been researching how to get smooth movement on our website because it is a major component I want to incorporate. I want to do it at a more efficient rate to attract more eyes. I didn’t like, however, the blue background on the last project of the day. It honestly just wore my eyes out and distracted me from the actual substance of the website. I know I can’t be the only one that feels like this so we definitely want to make sure to have a more appealing format.

This week, we had our first meet-up of the semester and I honestly think it went really well. We had just as good of chemistry on the job as I anticipated we would, and it makes working so much more fun and quick. I was captured in many of the of the media captured as the one being photographed. I also took about 5 videos on my iPhone which can add a new component to our project. We, mostly I, had trouble learning the basics of the sport, but I learned gradually. I even got second place in a contest we had which boosted my confidence. In the future, I will do a better job of being more proactive, instead of going with the flow. It’s much better to be more prepared to get the best shots possible.