CSS: Testing the waters

With a whole new project comes a lot of resources to keep track of. I created a wiki that holds links to websites that I liked, disliked, or just found interesting. I also added a list of links to resources that the CSS group can refer to while working on this project. This wiki will organize the many different links to websites and our thoughts about them.

Some things that I liked about these sites I found were the layout, text, and color. I generally think that simple sites that are easy to use and easy on the eyes are what attracts me the most. I like plain, but not too plain. There needs to be something that catches my eye and draws in my attention. I like colors that match the feel of the page and what the site is trying to convey.


Wiki: link

Remix: Hello, CSS!

Some inspiration: style that is clean, simple, and beautiful to look at


CSS
With the end of mockups and saying goodbye to the Design Group, I have decided to try out something new. I am now a part of the CSS group. While I don't know CSS and have a very basic knowledge of HTML, it is really something that I want to learn. I borrowed a couple of books from the library and I am going through the tutorials on W3Schools.com. I love how W3Schools allows you to "try it out" every step of the way. I usually can read something say from a book and think to myself "oh I got that" or "seems easy enough" but when it comes time to actually use what I read it is a whole other story. I think I just need to sail away from the safe harbor and just jump right in.

Pinax
I am in the process of getting George Lee's Kukui-Cup project running on my computer. The CSS group is working mainly with his project. I initially had problems with permission issues but after emailing George he added me as a collaborator to the project and I was able to download the project. The CSS group is meeting with him tomorrow where I hope to ask him more questions about getting the project running as well as the CSS structures in his system.

Milestone 2: The end...of mockups

Milestone 2 is here and the end of making mockups is near. This past week the Design group has been refining our old mockups from previous weeks to ensure that they are all cohesive. I changed the goals section to fit the requirements and I took out the user mockups for the period before the competition because even though it said in the Wiki that there might be curious students, our group felt that this was a bad idea to include these mockups. We also took out the billboard tab because it will not be in the actual website. The billboard mockups are in a separate window now and are not embedded in the Kukui Cup website.

Although it seems as if refining mockups would be easy, it became very time consuming because of the number of pages the user mockups have. One small change requires changing all 19 mockups. I then had to go back and make sure the mockups for each time period matched so that the look of the website didn't change every week.

Wiki: link

Mockups and Prizes

Continuing with our mockups we are now in the middle of the competition phase. I created the mockups for the user pages again and it is pretty similar to the previous mockups. The only big change included is the content such as different events going on during the competition and the amount of Kukui Nuts the user "Maile" has acquired. I also added more information to the profile pane because it was a little plain.

In addition to these mockups I came up with a list of prizes for the competition with the proposed budget of $2000. At first I thought that this was a lot of money and we could afford to give out many prizes because of it. However, after looking up prices and calculated the costs in a spreadsheet it actually took me a while before I could create a list of prizes that fit into this budget. What made it difficult was that if we gave individual prizes, that is about 22-24 people per floor which would come out to 44-48 people in total because of two dorm towers and that is for only one round. I tried to come up with group prizes such as an ice cream party that not only provided an incentive, food, but also a kind of social aspect with a group celebration. After all, those who win that prize would have had to pull in a team effort to win. I also created a prize for active participation, meaning that anyone who has the minimum number of Kukui Nuts (determined by an admin) has a chance to win the prize. That person is chosen at random at the end of the competition and the purpose of this prize is to give everyone who participates an equal chance of winning something. So even if you don't have many Kukui Nuts or your floor is not "gung-ho" about the competition, you still have an incentive to participate.

• Lowest EC Score for Dorm (final round): 32" energy star HDTV for the lounge
• Lowest EC Score for Floor (final round): $10 iTunes gift card per person
• Highest KN score, Individual (1st-3rd rounds): $5 Jamba Juice gift certificate, one winner per floor for the each of the 3 rounds.
  
• Highest KN score, Individual (final round): 4th generation iPod Nano for one winner per dorm
  
• Highest KN score, Floor (final round): ice cream sundae party for the winning floor
• Highest KN score, Dorm(final round): pizza party for the winning dorm
  
• Active participation through min KN score, Individual(final round): 3rd generation iPod touch

Wiki: link