Sprint 7
This week, I took a bit of a different turn than what I had originally anticipated I would be doing. The first item on my task list was to create an online contact form that could be easily embedded on the site in order to let users quickly get in touch with the band. I accomplished this by using the website service Cognito Forms, which enabled me to design a form on their interface and then embed it. The information the users enter in the form gets emailed to the band’s official email address and also stored in Cognito Forms’ database. The band can reply to the email they receive in order to get back to the user.
In addition to the contact form, I had planned on creating a way to register for a mailing list and I was thinking about the possibility of integrating a search bar. However, I realized that there isn’t enough text content on the site to merit a search bar, plus the navigation is already super easy. As for the mailing list, since the band isn’t tremendously active, there would be no weekly or even monthly emails for them to send out. So, instead of completing these tasks, I chose to get a head start on some of the various extra fix-ups/changes that I originally planned to do in some of the following weeks. More specifically, I got started on consolidating all the various pages from my site into the homepage, based on feedback that I received from the in-class critique. People told me, and I realized myself, that since there isn’t a whole lot of content that goes on each separate page, it would make more sense to integrate the various content into the homepage, in order to make the site more compact and create a better user experience. As of today, I have put the info from all the pages into the homepage, and have begun refining the new design (padding, background images, spacing, etc) so that it’s formatted professionally and in an aesthetically appealing way.
Something I learned this week about my project was how to work with online contact form services. I have already had some experience with this at my current job, where I have set up several forms, but working on the contact form for this project helped to reinforce my skills. I also learned a little bit about formatting 1 page sites that are designed to be navigated by clicking links that take you to the different sections of the page, rather than taking you to the different individual pages.
Something I learned about my process was that it’s good to design things in such a way that they can easily be integrated in a different manner/context if need be, rather than creating them in such a way that they leave little room for possible change. The pages I’ve spent weeks creating can be transferred to the homepage simply by copying and pasting their code and then changing a few parameters to match the new format. The bottom line is that you don’t want to make things so set in stone from the get go that any possible change in the future will cause a major disruption to your design.
Something I learned about the design process in general is that you have to be willing to give up certain things you had originally planned to include based on new realizations that only come to you when you’re further along the design path, as well as be willing to completely change things you had originally thought were definite. When you first start designing, certain things seem like good ideas but as you get closer to finishing, you get a clearer picture of what you want your final product to look like, and those seemingly-good ideas may have to be tossed. In addition, you may spend a lot of time creating something, only to realize later on that it needs to be completely adjusted. This happened to me with the overall structure of my site. I spent a lot of time creating separate pages only to realize that the site would look better if all the content from those pages was integrated into one. Before I actually created these pages, I didn’t really know how much content would go on each page and how it would look, so I didn’t really predict the fact that consolidation would serve my site better.
