Breakdown for the last three classes (including today)

OUR FINAL IS ON:

Friday, May 10, from 9am-11am

Here is what is due for the final:

1. Your completed, public website
2. A 2-5 page paper, with this premise:

You are head of design of Facebook (congrats on scoring such a high-profile job while still in college!). What would you do to improve the design of Facebook, to give a better user experience? You should think of visual elements, but also think of all the design choices that don't have as clear a visual stamp – there are a ton of design decisions that go into user experience, from prioritizing what sort of content rises to the top of a news feed, to running algorithms for recommendations. You can even think of this in terms of institutional design – would there be ways that FB could change its internal aims and incentives to generate better user experiences?

You don't have to frame this is a completely "anti-Facebook" exercise (though if you think FB is indeed badly designed for its users, you can be completely scathing about its current practices). Maybe you think they're doing a pretty good job – and there can still be room for improvement. Facebook is continuously changing its user experience, and if there was a lead designer there who said "Yeah, I think FB is perfect as is, nothing needs to change," they'd be out of a job pretty much immediately.

Here's how the remaining classes will break down:

THIS WEDNESDAY (5/1)

By Wednesday, read the three linked articles in your subject area (see the blog post below). In Wednesday's class, I'll set aside an hour for all of you in your subject area to meet as a group, put your heads together, and put together a presentation summarizing what you learned, which you will actually present the following Monday.

We will also review websites-in-process that we haven't seen in class yet. If my notes are right, we still have to look at: Makenna, Elizabeth, Brea, Clayton, Harris, Ty, Savannah and Allie

NEXT MONDAY (5/6), last day of class

Each small group will present what they learned to the class (in a presentation of somewhere between 10-15 minutes. This will be a big info-dump to share our knowledge. Hopefully all of the information will help inform your 2-5 page paper on design improvements for Facebook – which, again, is due at out final, on the 10th. We will discuss your design recommendations during the final (as well as looking at your finished websites).

Homework links

We're going to break up some readings for small group work. Here are the categories (people who weren't in the class today have been randomly assigned by me - names in red):

Russian interference in the US election, using Facebook (Allie and Allie, Makenna, Elizabeth, Clayton, Kevin):

https://intelligence.house.gov/social-media-content/?fbclid=IwAR08V5UtoCB3fQist7sTonRRxAP_1YLmSUMuZhsuj83eb9HpGfs2fZE9qB4

https://www.wired.com/story/russian-facebook-ads-targeted-us-voters-before-2016-election/

https://www.wired.com/story/facebook-issue-based-ads-pages-restrictions/

How Facebook scrubbed ISIS content, and why scrubbing white nationalist content is harder (Joao, Vilde, Gabby, Kyra, AJ, Savannah):

https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/ryanhatesthis/will-silicon-valley-treat-white-nationalism-as-terrorism

https://mashable.com/2018/04/23/facebook-removes-terrorist-isis-and-al-qaeda-content/

https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/yw4pbj/facebook-white-supremacy-white-nationalism-hate-speech-policy


How Facebook deflected scrutiny and criticism (Kyle, Jamie, Alisa, Harris, Tyler):

https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2018/12/can-facebook-ever-solve-its-problem

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/nov/14/facebook-george-soros-pr-firm-discredit-critics-crisis

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/14/technology/facebook-data-russia-election-racism.html

Issues with algorithms (Brea, Nick, Grant, Allison, Deja, David):

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/dec/04/racist-facial-recognition-white-coders-black-people-police

https://www.socialmediatoday.com/news/facebook-rolls-out-news-feed-algorithm-update-to-disincentivize-controversi/542409/

https://www.brandwatch.com/blog/the-facebook-algorithm-explained/

Homework for Monday

1. Engagement is important for Youtube executives because they need to have an audience, without an audience they would not be able to have a business. Engagement is also important because they can see which videos are most popular and make algorithms so that when users log back in they are presented with more videos like the ones they clicked on. This increases user engagement and increases the success of the website.
2. The issue with the recommendations page is that it will show videos that you might be interested in based on what you have already watched, and therefore reinforces biases if you are looking at videos about conspiracies, hate speech, or extreme political talk. A way of solving this problems is to scrap the recommendations altogether.
3. As previously mentioned, algorithms are made to show you content you want to see, and often the content we want to see only reinforces our own bias. Sometimes the content we want to see is poisonous, and by watching the same types of videos again and again we continue to poison our minds with false information or dangerous content.
4. I think borderline content would be a lot like the Brietbart content on “black crime”. Yes, black crime exists, but this title is obviously racist and perpetuates a false image of an entire race. Also, conspiracy videos are difficult. It is free speech, if someone wants to believe something stupid then that’s their right. For instance, I met someone the other week who wholeheartedly believed that Barack Obama was gay and that Michelle Obama was a transvestite, when I asked him where he got this information he told me that he got it from Youtube. Obviously this information is so ridiculous that it’s practically comical, but whoever uploaded it technically has the right to do so. The moment we decide to hinder people’s freedom of speech when it isn’t technically hurting anyone, we make things harder for ourselves in the long run. Freedom of Speech is more important than someone else’s idiocy. If someone wants to believe conspiracies then they have a right to do so. I think as a society we should begin to teach our children how to detect bias and false information, we should be implementing classes in schools that protect future generations from believing false information by teaching them how to fully check their sources.

Problem Log

Problem Log: 

Trying to figure out how to add a separate page that holds sub pages for the main pages while still remaining hidden. This will be for all the music.

I had to create a new page, hide it, then link the cover art from the music page to the hidden page.

I am trying to link text to a page, so when you enter the artists page, you click on the artists name then it will send you to its own page. 

I had to create a hyperlink that linked to the text.

My next issue was linking an Artist Union page to the download button so that we receive all the stats from an external site. 

I re-routed the download button with a separate link that connects to the external page, now all the free-downloads go through the Artist Union.

Creating a cover page for the entirety of the website.
Create a main page and hide the titles in the header from the sub page.

Problem Log - Allison Piccinini

Monday 4/15

• Got feedback on my homepage from the class and decided to take the "buttons" down as they were the same as my tabs in my nav bar so was somewhat redundant. 
• Started writing blog about my dog

Wednesday 4/17 

• Published my blog on Kaya to my site
• Changed color of every page to the same blue tone that is on my homepage to keep it consistent
• Messed around with my "social" (facebook, pinterest, instagram, twitter) links and animating them when you scroll through the website

Problem Log:

Monday 4/15
-Changed the background color to make it concise with the pictures
-Got all the homepage pictures up

Wednesday 4/17
-Hit a wall and wanted to change everything
-Picked a new blog template
-Going to work on my first few posts and add pictures to tie in with it

Jaime Edwards Prob log

Problem Log: 

Problem 1:

Trying to figure out how to start selling my book and deciding what to use to do so?

After uploading my PDF to Blurb and ordering my first copies the option to sell my book came up leading me to...

Problem 2:

are they the best for doing this profit wise?

After some research I realized they are pretty much the same as all other platforms to sell your book through. They take the amount out that it costs for them to make the book and then the rest goes to me as profit. The profit doesn’t get sent to me until the end of each month as long as the profit is over 20 dollars.

I ended up setting it up to sell through blurb.

Problem 3:

How to link it to my buy now button on Wix. I have only ever linked URLs on SquareSpace and it was never something where you can purchase an item.

I figured out how to change the link attached to the buy now button pretty quickly.

Homework for Monday, 4/22

Reading for Monday, 4/22:

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2019-04-02/youtube-executives-ignored-warnings-letting-toxic-videos-run-rampant

Please read the above article before Monday. I want you to type up and hand in your responses to these questions:

1. Why is "engagement" so important to YouTube executives?

2. What are the problems with YouTube's recommendation engine, and how would you propose to solve those problems if you were running YouTube?

3. What are some of the problems of using algorithms to filter content?

4. If you were drafting guidelines for what kind of videos would be listed as "borderline" content, what would be some of your criteria for defining "borderline" content?

Work from home Monday

Hi everyone. Just a reminder that I'm not going to be in class tomorrow - feel free to work on your website from home (though if you do want access to the lab during those hours, the lab will be open). Also - by this wednesday, you must have your homepage up! We'll be reviewing some of them on Wednesday.

Kevin Bishop 5 Week Plan


1.  Add background material and establish a structure with certain fonts, and colours.



2. Figure out what pictures and videos to show and where to put them.



3.  Break down pictures and videos to the most interesting ones.



4. Add descriptions to each picture and video to share the experience of those pictures and videos.



5. Finalize the site, make sure all pictures/ videos are sized properly, make sure everything works, double check grammar and post.

5 week plan/ problem log kyra kliman

Kyra Kliman

5 Week Plan/ Problem Log

week 1-  finish designing the home page

week 2- add all the articles to blog and pictures  

week 3- finish creating the homepage and info page
week 4- add all images and designs
week-  finishing touches

Problem Log:
Monday April 1
-fixed the navigation menu to make it look more concise
-changed the background shadows and colors including the menu
-the navigation bar was has a light blue and two light orange.
-replaced two photos on homepage
Wednesday, April 3
- picked a couple photos and added it to the first article
- added the second article: still working on the layout

April 8th
- I changed the background photos. I started off with four photos, that alternate. I choose one photo for the main background and deleted the three pictures.  I decided to use one photo for the background because the orange colors went well with the white title. In the three photos, the backgrounds were too busy and clashed with the title and the navigation bar.
- I edited the main background photo. This is the photo of Lake Aloha around granite mountains.  I edited this photo in photoshop. I lowered the brightness of the water to highlight the sky's reflection on the lake.  Also, I edited the sky making it more orange so it would look better with the colors of the title.

April 10th
-Today I worked on uploading all of my articles to the blog.
-After talking to Chris, he thought if I added photos to the articles it would be more engaging and interesting for the viewers. First, I added photos to every paragraph for the Bear Scratch story. I found some older pictures that I added to the story. One thing that took a while was laying out the photos. I  used different examples of photo layouts from other people articles and blogs which helped me form a good piece.
-Also, I added photos to most of my articles. I edited and fixed all of the writing errors in articles. I got all caught up and finished working on this page for now until I write new stories.

April 15-18th
- These two classes I completely changed my homepage and title.
-When I first made the title the letters were all white and the text under the title the letters were orange. I changed the title text colors to mid-ton blue that match the background on the lake aloha photo. Also, I changed the "personal travel & adventure blog and my name" to white. I changed the text colors because the orange, did not seem very professional and it did not flow well with the overall theme. I changed the blue because it is more of a solid color that goes with the whole entire picture and theme.
- I moved the title from the middle of the page to the left top corner and made it smaller. I moved the title because in the middle the title clashed with the rocks, so when it higher up it looked more natureal with that placement in the clouds.
-Also, I moved the "personal travel & adventure blog and my name" under the title, shrunk the font to make it look more appealing.

April 22nd
I spent today working on the page about me. I edited and re-wrote the my bio to make it flow better. Also, I edited the photo on photoshop. I fixed the grainyness and also the colors. I added a filter to make the photo.

April 23
I spent the day editing all of the photos on photo shop. I tried to use the same filters for all of pictures to try and make the photos similar.

Five Week Plan:

Week 1: Create the general layout for the main page. This includes downloading all music for website and create all separate music sub-pages for the “Music” section. 

Week 2: Gather all the cover arts for the music and upload albums/ singles to each page. 

Week 3: Create artist pages and gather any photos of the artists featured on the Missing Links. This means creating an about section for each artist. I might include each artists releases on the individual sections. Add the contact section as well. 

Week 4: Connect all external links including social media and other platforms to website. 

Week 5: Finished website. Share it with the Missing Links collective and finalize any last edits.

https://gdiedrich8.wixsite.com/mysite-4

5 Week Plan (Allie Engberson)

Week 1: 

·     Finish homepage 

·     Name all tabs

Week 2: 

·     Add content to drop down tabs

Week 3: 

·     Add about me page 

·     Contact page

Week 4: 

·     Continue to add external links 

Week 5: 

·     Make sure all links work 

·     Make finishing touches

Problem log 4/17:
My menu bar was not working when I would publish my site. I figured out that there were overlapping items and once I deleted the overlapping items the menu bar starting to work.
I had a few pictures that did not look right with my site and I edited them to make them fit better with my site.

Ty Casey 5 week plan

5-week plan - Ty Casey 

Week 1 - Create a website domain and establish a structure/layout plan. 

Week 2 - Section off each page of the website. Come up with specific pictures to show and where they would be incorporated.  

Week 3 - Compress drone footage. 

Week 4 - Add blog posts to each picture. Personalize the website with my experiences and thoughts. 

Week 5 - Finalize the aesthetics, make sure each picture is sized correctly for the page, double check writing, and grammar. Post. 

5 Week Plan

Week 1: Write an about me page

Week 2: Organize all the photos 

Week 3: Get started on the homepage, figure out the colors and fonts 

Week 4: Put in all the photos; finish homepage

Week 5: Finalize all the little details and publish!

https://kehbarnedt.wixsite.com/tesphat

5 week plan - Allison Piccinini

Week 1 - finish creating each tab on my page and figure out fonts, colors, layout, etc.

Week 2 - start writing blogs and inserting them into the page

Week 3 - get feedback from others, go take more pictures to put on my page

Week 4 - start publishing and finishing the website, making sure everything works

Week 5 - publish!

5 Week Plan

 Week 1: add a background video and style the main page

Week 2: finish about me

Week 3: link the gallery and style to match the main page

Week 4: add photos to the gallery

Week 5: finalize styling on all pages and make sure videos work

Problem Log:
#1- The background video stops playing when the page is resized. I found the css which makes it do this and changed it so the video stops and is replaced with an image when the width is 760px or if a phones portrait mode is detected.

#2- Some of the pictures I have are different sizes so I had to change the css so the layout would look the same.

5 week plan J.M. 4 Official Blog

Five Week Plan for My Website

Week 1: Choose the best layout for my blog page, and also work on the title of the page

Week 2: Create the four different section of my page and focus on each one individually. For the photo gallery, I need to gather all the soccer pictures I want to put it there. Also, I want to add a stats section (Stats section is done, maybe I will add some more info into that)

Week 3: Work on my highlight’s videos. I believe this is the most important part of my website, I already have 2 highlight videos, but they are from a long time ago. My plan is to create and edit an updated highlight video and post with the other 2. (Problems solved: I found out that for the highlight video I can use quicktime to make the cuts. I just need to finish collecting the best parts and get a good edition. The second problem was opening the videos in the website. The solution for that was adding a link that would take users to my youtube page.

Week 4: When I am done with the highlight’s videos, I plan to put everything together end finalize each section

Week 5: Revise every page, make sure all the pictures and videos are there. Once, I feel the page is ready I will publish it.

https://joaotfm.wixsite.com/jm4profile