End of course evaluation

I have now almost reached the end of my HND interactive media course which I have been studying for the last 2 years. In my initial blog post I talked about my desire to produce “high quality, professional work in a large range of programs”. I knew that this was a long term goal, as I was unaware of the specific pieces of software I would be learning on the course, or what they were about.

When the design work started towards the halfway point of the first year, I felt a lot more comfortable with how the assignments were marked. This saw my grades getting better with each assignment, as I knew what was expected of me. I think my ability to understand what is required is one of my strongest skills, and is needed when creating websites for clients.

My initial pieces of design work were very tough for me to create, especially when it came to designing web pages. My first and second website design always felt forced and uncomfortable. I felt that because I did not know how to create web pages, that I could not be sure that the designs I had come up with could be made. This changed with the first major project of the first year, when I designed the Ambient World website. As I had only 2 colours, I could order them simply using boxes, to create a strong and simple design.

When creating this website I decided to try making it with XHTML and CSS. This was the first site I had made using this technology, and needed a lot of research and self management for me to get this completed. This was a forerunner to what the second year would hold, and I felt proud that I had got a good finished product to show after putting in a lot of time to creating the website.

Many of my pieces of print work which I created in the first year still look strong even now. I felt that the accurate nature of the programs used to create them gave me a lot of control over how the pieces would look. My ambient music CD box is one of my favourite pieces of work, as there is a lot of depth and thought as to how the product should be made.

At the start of the second year I set myself a goal to get 4 merit grades. So far, every grade I have got has been a merit, and I think I may have overestimated how difficult the second year would be. This is not to say that this year was easy, but it proves that the skills I had learnt in the first year as to providing what was required were well used in the second year.

With the CSS Beauty project I felt that the ideas for the website were not coming to me. None of the themes that we were allowed to use gave me any strong ideas. I then decided to see which idea I could think of the most ideas for, and then work from there. This technique worked well, and I created another solid piece of work.

The team project was a very long and testing assignment. I found that working in a team could be both rewarding and frustrating in equal measure. Our project was very large, and would need a lot of organisation to complete. I felt that as a designer in the team that I did not have much design work to actually do, as a lot of our website had been provided by college. Instead, I took on a more PA based role, where I would help arrange meeting and take minutes, as well as doing other pieces of work such as the usability test preparation. I was relieved to get the assignment over, but on reflection I think that I performed well in the team despite some difficult moments.

The reverse design process assignment was an interesting assignment, which left me with mixed feelings. I felt that my final piece of work was strong, but often felt that my creativity was not particularly deep. I often felt that I was just producing lots of ideas, but none of them were particularly strong or imaginative. When it came to making the website and piece of print work I knew the best direction to go in was simplicity. Even though my product was well made, it was rather simple. I believe that the process of producing work for assessment makes me cautious about what ideas I would pick, and that I needed to do larger project in the future.

The self managed learning plan was by far the most difficult project of the course. I chose PHP because I knew how important it was to job prospects after the course. Setting up the PHP took a large amount of time, and I had a lot of problems getting it working on a local machine. I eventually decided to use a tutorial in a book, and then modify it to what I needed for the project. I feel that this is what I would do in a job situation, because unless developing is your main job, using pre made scripts and modifying them is what is done when creating sites to tight deadlines.

I was proud that I got a good finished product out of the assignment, and it really tested me to the limit. I think the site looked clean and professional, and the function of my upload page was also pretty slick.

The interface design project always felt as though it was in the background as it ran along side the self managed learning plan project. As I felt that the learning plan assignment was more difficult, I needed to put more effort into it to get a good finished product. The designs for the interface project were simple and functional, and again unspectacular. I felt that I managed both projects well, and got merit grades for both.

The portfolio website was one of the most pleasurable sites of the course to make. I believe that this is because it was for me, and that I had a lot more control over how it worked and looked. I used a simple corporate identity, which I used on the website. I also used the Textpattern CMS system so that I could update my site easily.

The final project of the course was easily the largest website of the course. My choice to do a website on a collection of musical instruments and equipment gave me a lot of ideas about what I could do. Again, I created a simple CID which I applied to the website. This gave me practice of both creating a CID, and applying it to a website. I also did a accessibility test of the website, which taught me a lot about how to create websites with the guidelines in mind. It required a lot of analysis to find out how accessible my website was, and I was pleased that I had the opportunity to do this.

My development over the last two years has been much greater than I could have ever expected. Before the course I had a very limited knowledge of a lot of the programs, technologies and issues that the course would teach me. I am now able to manage my own time much better, as well as teach myself new pieces of software or programming languages.

I still feel that there is a lot more development to come. I still understand that I will need to be better at the programming languages, as I think this is going to limit my job opportunities in the future. I believe that I need to create some project for myself to try out new ideas. I also feel that my creativity is still limited, and that I need to find more ideas generation techniques. Again, I will have to create or find new project for me to experiment and develop these skills with.