New course, new book, new event

It’s been a minute since I updated this site! During this gap, I have:

• started reading a new design-related book called ‘Design As Art‘ by Bruno Munari. It has been enjoyable so far. I like taking it slow and making sure to look up some of the references he makes. So now I know about Alexander Calder’s mobiles. It’s also good to know his thoughts about how design is different from art (and sort of feeling guilty because I realize that I often mix the two). The design of a product is not its style. The design of a product is the form, color, feel that it takes based on the product’s function. I intend to write a better reflect on this book when I finish it.
• started a new course in Coursera called ‘Web Design: Strategy and Information Architecture‘. I’m just auditing the course, so for the locked quizzes, I’ll try to just document it here. I do plan to hopefully finish the course before October ends.
• attended the World Interaction Design Day this week. The theme (for the Singapore one, at least) is inclusive design. We heard some case studies for involving persons with disabilities in the design process, the benefits and how-to of inclusive design, and lastly, some assistive technologies that SG Enable are working on.

Work Week #16 – Aug 13-Aug 17

Aug 13, Monday

• Started working on some initial drafts for the Newsroom revamp
• Prepared the logo assets for the school sites revamp
• Prepared the inner page banners for School of Economics
• Worked on the School of Social Sciences (SOSS) homepage mockup

Aug 14, Tuesday

• Worked on the SOSS landing page and inner page mockups
• Social Comms meeting
• 1:1 meeting
• Library site changes
• main site font sizes clean ups (landing page banners)

Aug 15, Wednesday

• Finalized Library site changes
• Prepared LKCSB inner page banners
• Introduction to Project Management seminar (half-day)
• Worked on tickets
• Created the PGR video
• Passed changes to PGR

Aug 16, Thursday

• main site font sizes clean ups
• removed 3 research items from main site’s research landing page
• amazing race invitation
• School of Law inner page banners
• School of Law video banner

Aug 17, Friday

• Half day AM – Staff Sharing Session
• Started on School of Information System‘s UG landing page
• Half day PM – Month end, last Friday session

Work Week #15 – Aug 6-Aug 10

Aug 6, Monday

• SOA Site changes (URL cleanups)
• SOSS Homepage (WIP)
• Commencement Analytics
• SMU WOW meeting

Aug 7, Tuesday

• Send PGR Banners + Request Access
• PGR Meeting
• OCC Meeting
• SMU WOW Save the Date
• Revise OCC Homepage

Aug 8, Wednesday

• National Day Ceremony
• OCC Inner Pages
• WKWC Meeting
• EE Ambassadors Meeting

Aug 9, Thursday

• National Day
• OCC Video
• SOL Moots
• OCC Impact

Aug 10, Friday

• Library homepage
• PGR Changes + Cleanup instructions
• OCC Interaction Design specs & source files
• Tickets (SOE video, PGPP trumba, SOA inner page banners)
• Extract OCC Assets

Work Week #14 – July 30-Aug 3

July 30, Monday

• 9:30-11 AM: Tickets (School of Law, Commencement, Survey)
• 11-12 PM: BSc CS content
• 2-5PM BSc CS content & fixes
• 5-5:45PM SMU Main Site Print Styles

July 31, Tuesday

• Added events in Featured calendar int he main SMU site
• SMU Wow help
• Newsroom (somewhat)
• SMU Homepage print styles

Aug 1, Wednesday

• PGR landing pges
• CABS new flow
• Newsroom
• LKCSB Changes

Aug 2, Thursday

• Team Meeting
• Nextweb Meeting
• PGR layouts
• SOL Changes

Aug 3, Friday

• Send LKCSB
• Changed AYOC featured event and added more events
• Font Sizes –  Main SMU Site
• SOL changes
• Add Careers to LKCSB Homepage

Work Week #13 – July 23-27

It’s actually August 1 today! I’m a little behind on this because I went on a holiday last month, but I will try to catch up.

Monday, Jul 23

• mostly worked on tickets in the morning
• added fullstory to PCE (this is a newly launched page) and Campus Life pages
• Bachelor of Accountancy microsite changes

Tuesday, Jul 24

• worked on charade terms for an upcoming soc comms event
• soc comms meeting
• applied curator.io to Commencement site
• worked on google analytics report for Academy site
• attended ‘UX: The Hybrid Designer/Developer + Designer Insights‘

Wednesday, Jul 25

• SMU WOW meeting
• worked on google analytics report for Academy site
• worked on charade cards for an upcoming soc comms event
• update PGR mockups
• team meeting
• SOA updates

Thursday, Jul 26

• Worked on tickets the whole morning
• Fullstory.io competitor review
• worked on charade cards for an upcoming soc comms event
• worked on more tickets in the afternoon
• PGR inside page

Friday, Jul 27

• Social Comms YOLO race event
• BSc CS content pop
• Add GA dashboard to CMS

Things I plan to work on next week/this week:

• Finalize BSc CS
• LKCSB
• SOL + SOE
• Library

Work Week #12 – July 2-6

Monday

Bulk of the work was spent working on the Bachelor of Science in Computer Science (BSc CS) microsite. I have started this in the morning, then ended at around 3PM in the afternoon.

This is a mockup of the programme microsite. The end user has expressed interest to have two different microsites for different majors of the same degree, but after deliberating internally, we have decided against it.

After this, I consulted one of our developers on how to edit the Google Analytics funnel for Academy.

In the middle of all these, I managed to squeeze in a ticket for an event called Digital: Works. The requester wanted to link certain parts of an image. I didn’t know this can still be done using the current HTML, but it turns out, with the <map> tag, I can do it pretty easily.

Tuesday

For Tuesday, I have work on the Commencement video listing. Doing this required some tinkering with the javascript created by our developer.

I got some idea of how the .append() function works. The original table listing had the schedule of each ceremonies in a separate <td>, but I had wanted to combine it. In the end I just appended the date variable to the name variable, and added the class and html tags manually, so instead of:

dtName.addClass("time");

it became:

dtName.append("<td class="time">" + dtDate + "</td>");

I also met with some members of the marketing department regarding subscribing to Curator.io, had a 1:1 with my boss, and lastly, I had updated a few things on the SOA site.

Wednesday

Spent the morning doing the Commencement video, this time adding some bootstrap tabs to the different years. There was a meeting with the social committee. Spent the afternoon trying out UXPin.

Thursday

I was on sick leave.

Friday

Changed the logo placement in the Commencement site and started working on the print stylesheets for Academy. In the afternoon the team went out to explore Gardens by the Bay.

Work Week #11 – June 25-29

Monday

• Worked on some tickets (PGPP Teaching Excellence page update, granted access of the Giving site’s google analytics, updated the MPA homepage with new videos, FBS changes)
• Mocked up the new accolades for the main SMU site
• Create the invitation for our new upcoming social committee event

Tuesday

• 1:1 meeting
• Spent the rest of the day making changes to the EXD site
• Started on the draft for recommendations for better webmastering experience in drupal

Wednesday

• Spent the whole day making changes to the EXD site (I managed to clean up almost all the public programme content!)

Thursday: I was on leave

Friday

• Quick meeting prior to the launch of the EXD site
• Last minute changes to above mentioned site

• Changes to the Commencement site again (namely the logo, and the Photos & Videos page)
• Social committee meeting
• Post-launch EXD fixes
• Changes to the SOA site again (namely the Alumni Entrepreneurs and Featured Events pages)

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Next Week

• Meeting re: curator.io
• Start with kickboxing
• Finish SIS*
• Start with newsroom designs*
• Take care of error pages for main site
• Research print stylesheets
• Get Google CSE and Analytics/funnel help*
• Send course/conferences information

*important

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Here are my overall goals for July:

• Error Pages (week 1)
• Print Styles (week 1)
• Search & filter experiences (week 1)
• BSc CS / IS (week – 1)
• Newsroom (week 2)
• Better webmastering experience (week 2)
• 404/403/500 x Information for… pages (week -2)
• SIS (week 3)
• Google Analytics report/research (week 3)
• Accolades page (week 3)

Work Week #9-10 – June 11-15 & 18-22

Work Week #9 (June 11-15) Breakdown

Monday: Commencement homepage demo, BAcc changes, tickets (SOA), updated SIS mockups for meeting, Created banner guidelines, Created PCE mockups

Tuesday: BAcc microinteractions and content migration & clean up, meeting re: Web Guideline updates, meet with SIS, SME Showcase

Wednesday: FBS ‘Edit Search’ UI, tickets (USAEI category, Google Analytics to SIS and ISE, Finance), Campus Development layout mockups

Thursday: BAcc Curriculum, Why SMU BAcc, and Campus Life changes, Web Guidelines updates

Friday: Hari Raya holiday

Work Week #10 (June 18-22) Breakdown

Monday: Designed a better listing for SOA Alumni’s Stories & Achievements, and a better alumni entrepreneurs page, Commencement site minor changes

Tuesday: BAcc site changes, start with SIS’s BSc Computer Science programme mockups, SOA events widget changes

Wednesday: 1:1 meeting, finished SIS’ BSc Computer Science programme mockups

Thursday: updated SIS’ BSc Computer Science mockups, minor revisions in the BAcc site

Friday: sick leave

Work Week #8 – June 4-8

Here’s what I set out to do for this week:

• SIS site – done
• PGR site – done
• Finalize BAcc as much as possible – done
• Support with EXD – done-ish?

..and here’s a quick rundown of how the week went:

Monday

AM: BAcc Content Changes (testimonials, correct linkings), PGR analytics and menu review

PM: Commencement IG feed, tickets (scholarship sidebar, CME new microsite), Fixed Masters homepage banners, Masters site speed optimisation, and other fixes (footer brochure), Accountancy site banners optimisation

Tuesday

AM: BAcc links & other comments, School of Law changes, Accountancy site changes (added links to achievements)

PM: Started on School of Information Systems design, ‘web’ team meeting, 1:1, started on PGR

Wednesday

AM-PM: PGR design & research (5hrs), BAcc mobile comments, SIS design

Thursday

AM: PGR design, tickets (typos, PGR update, GA access)

PM: EXD new menu, finalise PGR and send, work on SIS

Friday

AM: EXD Meeting, SIS landing page & send

PM: Social Comms meeting, Academy Google Data Studio dashboard

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Work Week #7 – May 28-June 1

Today is Tuesday of the ff. work week outlined here. I neglected to list down what I had intended to accomplish for work week #7, but I think it was a pretty productive week overall.

Monday

The funny thing is I can’t remember! I think some last minute changes for the SOA site.

Tuesday

Vesak Day (holiday)

Wednesday

SOA Site launch, Bachelor of Accountancy review, Send new Trumba styles, tickets (replace SMU Engage), send sitemap of BAcc, GA tested regex

Thursday

Team meeting, Fixed some SOA menu things, Giving Form & Giving Campaigns page design, Provide the other BAcc pages, Masters at a glance

Friday

Giving homepage and 1 inner page, Finish SOL Mockups

For the week June 4-8, I plan to do the ff:

• SIS site
• PGR site
• Finalize BAcc as much as possible
• Support with EXD

For the week June 11-15, I plan to do:

• SOCSC site
• PCE site
• Revisit & reinforce guidelines