Client Project - Wordpress upload

Well the beginning stages of uploading the site to Wordpress has begun so its full steam ahead and a lot of work in the next couple of weeks. Today Ashley showed me how to upload the site onto Wordpress and it's not as bad as I thought, obviously I received help (again thank you Ashley) but once you get the basics it quite straight forward and I think it will be a lot more user friendly for Jess.


As you can see in the left image the dashboard does look quite complicated however I intend to provide Jess with a user guide and will walk through the site with her to explain the different elements. The Dashboard is the first thing that Jess will see when she opens the page, I must clearly specify that the only pages that she will need to edit will be under the 'Pages' tab.

Each of the the pages will be provided with a simple text box where Jess could easily change the text.


I am still unsure as to how to edit the images yet but that will be next weeks job my aim for this weekend is to set the whole website out including the menu. I also need to test it across browsers but like I said the display of the site is the main aim.

I found it quite difficult to figure out the plugins but I think that this will be something that I will have to research further into. I need these plugins for the gallery, contact form and the comments page so this is definitely something that I will focus on next week.

I am pleased that its now on Wordpress as this was a big part that was worrying me however it is now up and technically running so fingers crossed I will make progress over the weekend but I will keep you all informed.

PRP - Fourth artefact, positive feedback

The results from the last artefact showed that the only reason the child continued to play the game was because he received positive feedback from me so it made me think maybe the game needs a reward at the end or positive feedback throughout. So I thought I would work around the idea of positive sounds.

I found an articles that discussed the issues between positive and negative feedback when playing a game. The article made a clear point that there has to be a balance between positive and negative feedback.

"While positive feedback has the effect of protecting a lead, negative feedback does the opposite. Negative feedback either constrains the player in the lead, or gives an advantage to the player or players trailing."

Positive and negative feedback differs in a multi player game (see example here). You have to make sure that you balance out the feedback. For example the players in the lead will have a more positive reaction because they have a chance at winning whereas the players who are not winning automatically lose interest because they are not gaining anything whilst playing.

When it comes to a single player game (what I will be testing) you still have to think strategically about balancing positive and negative feedback. If the game is too hard it could work in two ways; the player could get frustrated because of the difficulty of the game giving out a negative reaction or this could give the player more drive to want to complete the game.

On the other hand if the game was provided in an easier format where the player can complete the level/game then the player will perhaps be more positive towards the game and will want to persist in the game play.

Overall this is a tough subject to decide on and hopefully once I create and test my artefact I will get a clearer idea in the subject.

PRP - Fourth artefact ideas

When tested the the third artefact the results showed that the children enjoyed the interaction with the game but lost attention quite quickly in order to get out of this positive feedback was to given to the child, this made the child more enthusiastic and more enthusiastic to continue the game. In previous blogs you can see that in my previous artefact I created not only a matching game but I also created a digital version of the matching pairs game.

As the coding is quite technical I could only create a matching pairs game where the child had to match the pictures together as opposed to my hand made game where the child had to match the picture to the word. Giving that the results showed that children need positive feedback to keep playing I thought that I can test sounds/rewards. If I added sounds to when the children match the cards (make a pair - positive sound, make no pairs - negative sound) my aim is to see if the children show more of a response to the game if a reward was at the end, this could be animation for this artefact.

From doing this artefact I hope to see what the childs next response will be, whether adding positive sounds/feedback will change the childs reactions at all to the game, I am not too sure on what the outcome will be as I thought the child would enjoy the game in the previous artefact. The results could also show me that this game isn't even the right game for the age group (even though research suggest this game)

I have started updating the game now so shall blog my next designs shortly.

Client Project - Website CSS

The CSS has now been pretty much put in place and the images on each page are fitting in nicely but like the background this wasn't an easy task either. Having started the designing last week I thought it would be a simple task. I had managed to set the master div up but this went wrong.

I had not tested the coding in Internet Explorer and when tested the layout was completely wrong. (Please ignore the background as this was test)



The alignment was all wrong and so after many attempts I came to the choice to restart from scratch, I knew the layout but I thought it was best to restart the site and test it on both browsers. I managed to get the layout look correct on both browsers however the CSS for images I still had a few problems with.

Though I think the main issue was with the image I tried to use.



Once I had all of the CSS put together I found it easy to create the rest of the pages. The main layout is pretty much all there however I have to add a couple more templates before I can will put it into wordpress.

I am quite happy with the outcome so far, its still looking a bit scruffy but I intend to work on the CSS to add shadows and jazz up the font a bit. I am deciding on how to display the timetable so some designs will be put up shorty. The colours as you can see are still being worked on but its slowly getting there.

I am still a bit anxious about inputting the site into wordpress but I have planned to have the site finished in three weeks...looks like a lot of hard work to come.

Client Project - Website Background

Today has been good progress on the website though it has been a very long day full of coding and editing the pictures but I am happy with the progress made. One of the issues that I had to deal with today however was the background.

In the final choice design Jess liked the design with the current leaflet background. This was all well however, actually doing that was a lot harder than anticipated. I started off with the basics by putting it in the CSS background however as you can see in the picture below the image just repeats itself. This would make it look unprofessional so I needed to find I solution that would prevent the background image from repeating.



Myself and Ashley researched into a number of different methods that could work. Looking at pure CSS codes, it gave the user a full image but the image was stuck to one size, so the user would not see the whole image.

A piece of code that Ashley has been using is called 'supersized' its a piece of Javascript that stretches the image to any size resolution.



As you can see the image has been stretched,it works well in Firefox but I could not test it in Internet Explorer. The images that I was sent from the designer would not be excepted so I need to email Jess to get hold of the designer of the graphics to see if he can send me anymore files.

Client Project - Website Update

Well the website is underway and I'm hoping to get the main template of the of whole website finished by this week ready to start WordPress next week. I have had a few little gliches that have not only been annoying but frustrating to try and work out but I think I have managed to solve it...well at least for now I have.



As you can see I have added a temporary background just so you can get an idea on what it will look like but I am unsure about this at the moment, it just seems a little too much red. I have tried not making the picture of the girls not red to try and tone tone it down which makes it a little better but it still needs tweaking.

I would also like to try and make the navigation bar stand out so maybe add a bar behind it to make it more obvious to users that it is the navigation bar.



As you can see in the image above I have tried to make the background darker and I have had mix opinions. Some like it and some don't so again its something I will be playing around with.

I have be having problems with the layers, as everything overflows the container div alot of the div's have margins. I was struggling to align the text with the image and getting the master div to move in according to the amount of text being inputted. I tried changing all of the CSS settings but for two days I was just going round in circles. My final outcome that actually works was putting the picture div in the text div, making the image aligined with the text and the container div change with the amount of text used.

I have started reading up about the Wordpress and so we start with that next week giving me three weeks to get my head around this new program.

PRP - Third artefact evaluation

Artefact 3 proved to be more of a challenge to decide as the results from artefact 2 resulted in a number of different outcomes. Through discussions it was decided that the best route to take was to create a game to test how a child would react throughout the game play. Research showed that a ‘matching pairs’ game was a good game to use in research, this game was created both computer/non-computer based. This was to see how the children responded to a game in different format.

Conducting this test showed me there are other elements to the game that have to be taken into consideration. From the start of playing the game the children enjoyed the interaction with both games (trying to find the pairs) yet after a few attempts the children began to lose interest. Positive feedback was continuously being used to give the children the incentive to continue the game play. The outcome shows that perhaps the game itself is not the only main aspect but other components need to be included in order to make a successful game.

The results collected were useful and showed that children respond well when receiving positive feedback however looking back the artefact, ideally more test subjects were needed to gain stronger results. Working with children was always going to have constraints however more test subjects would have provided solid evidence and would be a lot clearer.

With the results showing that feedback was needed for the child to stay focused the next artefact will look into this issue. I intend to use the computer version of the pair’s game but add positive sounds and an animation at the end of the game, giving the children an incentive to complete the game.