After our project presentation myself and Alex worked on the creation of the R&D Project File.

In order to make sure we was going to meet the R&D file deadline (13th March), we spent some time deciding upon who would be working on what aspects of the file, along with also deciding what areas we would work on together.

A content guidelines document was made available to us, in order to detail what was needed within the R&D file.

The file needed to consist of the following (R&D File Guidelines):

– Cover Page

– Contents Page

Section Headings:

– Project Proposal

– Planning

– Audience

– Budget

– Development

During the creation of the R&D file the first area that was focused on was the written content.

After the content had been produced by both of us, it was pulled together and worked through again, this time as a group (both myself and Alex).

Whilst Alex produced some more of the written content along with also working through the previous written content, I set to work with the stylisation of the file in prep for the final PDF document.

Using InDesign, the written content was copied and stylised in order to produce a document that matched the visualisation of the Planets of Change project.

Final R&D PDF File:

Michael Burton MED2024M

– Michael

To develop the project further I felt that the creation / mock up of a social media page (in this case, a Facebook page) would help boost the professionalism of the projects overall presentation.

The first step taken into this process was to look at the social media page of our main inspiration ‘Moon’.

This was done to see what type of information was present, along with what type of visualisation (e.g. logo, pictures, graphics).

Moon Social Media Page:

Planets of Change Social Media Page:

After researching into the social media present for ‘Moon’, I started work on the Planets Of Change Facebook page.

I downloaded a Facebook PSD Mock up file, which allowed you to easily change aspects of a previously default Facebook page.

After all the basic information had been changed (the texted based information), I then set to work on the creation of the cover page and logo.

On completion, the logo image and cover page was worked into the design.

Overall myself and Alex were pleased with how the Facebook page mockup was looking, as we felt it strongly reflected / related to the overall stylisation of the project (e.g. website).

After some slight changes had been made to the Facebook mock up, I then pushed to design further for the mocking up of the social media page.

The reason this was done was to get a clearer understanding as to what the Facebook page will look like.

To do this a website mockup file was downloaded and the final Facebook page was worked into the mockup.

After the completion of this mockup we were both extremely happy with the overall look of the social media page.

– Michael

I am now roughly mid-way through the development of the site, and now have a clearer understanding of what is achievable in the time frame we have been set.

One  of my previous aims was to have the whole site as one page and seamlessly transition into each view. I realised that this isn’t possible with my understanding of HTML and CSS. It would take too long for each transition to load, given that we need quite a lot of high res images and gifs on each page.

Since the last update, I have added more planets and a moon around the main page

I have also created a planet info page, and a comment page.

These pages include a 3D gif generated in Photoshop using its timeline function.

I next aim to create a prompt page, the planet design page, a page showing the final view of the created planet, and to work on the animation.

• Alex

Prezi Link:

https://prezi.com/mr1nwz0kawib/planets-of-change/

This Prezi was created with the intention of detailing the changes that had been made to the planets of Change project since the first realisation back in December.

Myself and Alex both presented, detailing different areas of the projects process, along with what areas still needed to be worked on.

After the presentation, it was said that the overall ethos of our project was extremely strong, and had moved away from the original idea through a lot of consideration / development.

It was also detailed that some kind of comment feature (e.g. leaving a moon on a contributed planet) would be another area that could be explored to strengthen the projects ethos even more.

After this was mentioned, it became apparent to myself and Alex that we had completely  left that out of the presentation.

We explained that the ‘moon comment’ feature was already an idea that we had explored and worked into the development of the project.

Apart from that 1 small hiccup, it was detailed that the future development of the project was to complete the website and produce a short animation / video to detail what the project is about.

– Michael

During todays workshop, myself and Alex wanted to develop the main idea/function of the project in order to create a strong ethos.

After developing and finalising this we would also be implementing the ideas into the design and functionality of the website.

The main issues that we needed to overcome was how the main basis of the project (a platform in which people can make contributions) was sounding like a redesign of the Moon project.

This was due to the fact that at the projects core, it was a contribution website where the platform is left completely open to its contributors.

This then lead to the idea that we need to find a way to direct, focus and funnel the users of the project in order to eliminate random contributions that seem to arise when platforms (such moon) are left completely open.

From the research carried out into particular topics, we wanted to make sure the projects basis was focused on the issues that are currently effecting the planet.

Between us, we came up with the idea the use ‘prompt’ sentences when entering the planet creation.

The prompts will be complete random but will be contained within 7 different topics.

The idea behind using the prompts will be to simply give the contributor something to think about before making their planet, maybe leading to the prompt effecting what their contribution will contain/be focused on.

We also decided on using tags (based on the different topics) in which a planet can be ‘tagged’ to a particular topic during the creation stage.

Once the planet has been submitted the tags will be used in order to categorise the different contributions.

Website Flow Diagrams:

Once we had agreed on the ideas stated above, we wanted to clearly construct a layout of the website in order to apply the ideas to the projects and gain a further understanding of how the website would work in terms of functionality.

Contribution Path: 

The first stage of the flow diagram (numbers 1 to 7) details how the website will be navigated from the welcome page to seeing our contribution in orbit.

At stage 3, the user will click the center of the galaxy in order to proceed to the ‘prompt’ page, which will then proceed you to the planet creation page etc.

Exploring Contributions: 

The bottom right section details how the filter list will be used to rearrange what planets will be visible in orbit.

Contributions Comment Feature:

This flow diagram details how the website will be used / navigated to add a comment or reply to a contributed planet.

In doing so a ‘moon’ will be created in the form of the reply, which will then be seen in orbit around the  contribution/planet in question.

– Michael