What do you want to ask the FullCodePress teams?
Let us know any questions you want to ask either or both of the FullCodePress teams. Any good questions, we’ll ask and post the answers up to YouTube.
Archive for the ‘News’ Category
Early hours, less reports
We are all still awake here in the newsden but unfortunately there is still little I can report. The Aussie team assures me that they are going ahead, slow and steady but I fear they may be feeling a bit deflated as the fatigue sets in, along with the tedium. So for now, here’s some videos for you to enjoy…
Overview of the Kiwi Plan
Team Status Updates
Kiwi Coffee Break
Cheers for now, Renae.
The Importance Of User Personas
We’ve just finished a round of interviews with our two respective usability experts Ruth and Zef and it’s interesting stuff. I should point out that even though there is live blogging it’s been a gentle balancing act between revealing information that you are interested in hearing dear reader and respecting the privacy and game plan of each of the teams. If the blog posts have been slow it’s because it’s been difficult finding things that aren’t too sensitive to release in the public domain at this stage of the competition.Having said that, look forward to our next round of videos on YouTube. Zef from the New Zealand team has crafted very detailed, targeted set of user personas and scenarios with specific details that will inform the design based on user needs. For example, rating whether users are highly dependent on accessing the site, what kind of set up they may have at home - 56k or broadband? 1024px screen view or 800px? What essential tasks do they need to complete and what sort of accessiblity challenges do they face? I am confident that if they can follow this through to the finished product they have a very good chance of nailing this competition. The Australian Team have taken a slightly different approach to their user personas but they have their audience clear in mind. Let’s wait and see where it can go.In the meantime, we’re leaking the documents:
If you’re still awake, let’s take a vote. Tell us which approach you like and why.Renae (still awake for now)
Volunteer profile 7: Eric Li
Eric has been diving deep into the industry of photography by freelancing
with a number of different government departments, Non-profit
organisations and the paper. With a passion for photography in mind, Eric
does wedding, events, conference, portraits, news and sports photography
in Canberra.
Eric will be capturing the moments in FCP through a his bulky Canon 70-200
f2.8 telelens.
Trendsetters?
Do you know of any other example of an event that utilised live blogging, twittering, YouTube and Flickr? Perhaps, just perhaps, we are making history now. Can you prove us wrong? If so, we’d like to know.
Half Way There
We’ve just gone over the half-way mark and some strange things are happening in the judges room. Discussions about penguins not eating polar bears, accessibility being ’so old hat’ and plenty of the hard stuff and now Fiona is singing Advance Australia Fair. Someone shoot me, shoot me now. Not to mention the fatigue setting in for our two champion teams. Poor kids, they’re in there killing themselves for this comp and we’re turning into a veritable bunch of loonies. Many more hours to go…meanwhile, the Code Blacks are starting to worry about their designer’s sense of colour.
CodeBlacks at the 9hr mark
I asked Thomas Scovell, NZ project manager if they’re on track. The answer, “Yes, surprisingly!” The CodeBlacks are working to a timeline they’d drawn up earlier, and althought they knew it would change some, what’s pleasing is how little it actually has.
The team has found the client “awesome” to deal with. They’ve had a lot time with them and found them willing to come back and work through ideas, but also “go away” for a while so the CodeBlacks can work through the next iteration. What’s been especially pleasing is how amenable they’ve been to ideas, and how quickly they’ve picked up a lot of web concepts and made decisions on how those concepts would suit their audience.
Thomas sounded a little disappointed when he had to admit there really hasn’t been any tense discussions among the team on direction! I think he would have enjoyed the opportunity to have everyone put their point of view and then lead through a process of resolution. So, whilst team members do have final say in their area of speciality, because everyone has such a rounded knowledge of the web process, no one’s pushing the boundaries too far.
I asked about the challenges ahead. Key is going to be pulling all the pieces together. A lot of work’s been done in parrallel to date, but always looming has been how and when it’s integrated. Thomas thinks around midnight is going to be a crunch-time, when the HTML/CSS templates are started to be integrated to the back-end functionality.
And will there be any time left over at the end? The CodeBlacks hope there’s an opportunity to sit down a few hours before the end and make a decision about what polish they can add to the site, or if there’s any new features they can quickly add. But they know they’ve got to get the basics nailed first.