TEAM PROJECT

Team Project Milestones

Team leaders please report your team roster online as soon as possible.

The site you build must have PHP and database usage. And the requirement is for the site to have some appropriate features such as:

1. customer login with password
2. session control
3. customer profile storing customer accounts with info such as name, address, shipping address, billing address, email, ...
4. customer will have the ability to request forgotten password which will be sent by email and to visit their account to retrieve or update info
5. Support for a "MyPage" feature
6. Dynamic features that give the site a fresh feeling: automatically displaying different pictures/images, different looks depending on seasons or time of day, or allowing web clients to customize the look and feel of certain pages or displays.
7. A bulletin board where customers can post messages
8. A site admin facility is a must where you allow non-programmers (the site owners) to securely update and revise/change the content, music/video/flash, images/pictures, on the site.

Your site must also incorporate audio/video features to demonstrate Flash/Actionscript and other multimedia content.

Import Note: Any HTML forms you put up on your web project must carry a large warning at the top ``Student Project Page, Not for Real Use" so people on the Web do not get confused and try to fill out your form. This is even more important when a form collects credit card or other personal information.

Milestone I (2/19)

Milestone I is monitored by the instructors. Each team will submit a report addressing the 4 items and the instructors will give guidance and suggestions to revise the plans for your project.

• Project definition --- define your teams project, the scope and nature of work, the design and programming tasks involved, resources and information needed and any problems you foresee.

• Requirements --- what exactly will your finished website (or subsite) do for the client

• Team organization and task division --- who will do what. (Generaly, VCD students are expected to generate all visuals and actual graphics is Photoshop. Beyond that, designers are expected to generate the initial HTML (Dreamweaver or any other way) pages indicating position, layout, margins, ect. of all text and images)

• Site architecture --- site map outline completed, flow chart and rough thumbnail designs for: homepage, major sections and sub-sections for the site completed. (Designers must provide a "rouch direction" for the project. More specifically, you need to present at least 3 different conceptual directions for the site. This can be done in clear, neat, black and white thumbnails)

• Server side features of site: security, dynamic pages, multimedia, databases, on-Web administration, E-commerce.

• VCD Students!

  1. Please include 20 thumbnail sketches; b/w on layout paper
  2. Choose 3 most successful sketches and develop into layouts in Photoshop. Please show at least three different levels of pages (global navigation, local navigation, subsequent pages that follow) for each of the three directions.
  3. Explain how and why audio and video will be used in your site. Provide written examples of how you will employ each.
  4. In your report, please indicate all the VCD features to be included in the site.

See this milestone one report as a model.

A ``content-only site'' is mostly complete. Your site now includes the textual content, pictures and images that are part of site content (as opposed to graphics for the site graphical design). The information architecture, textual navigation links, and site organization are done to provide a skeleton for the final site design and production work. To complete Milestone II, all the links on your site must work, each page must be filled with text and picture content as much as possible.

A design and code integration scheme has been worked out for the project. At this stage the code and design are still tantative. But page templates for major parts of the site need to be established where the tentative design is integrated with the emerging content and code. (This means that "rough" graphics need to presented separately in forms of JPGs or PDF to the instructos. Most importantly, main, secondary and tertiary naviavigation needs to be explored. It is expected that designers will present at least 3 differnt possibile naviation options showing the "look" and the functionaly of all levels of the site. If you are unsure what this means, please see Sanda BEFORE the milesone is due.)

Work out a scheme where improved code and improved design can be "dropped in" to the project without much effort. This way a slow-in-coming design or code will not hold up the project. This will also put more import on thinking about how the code will integrate with the design early on, before it is too late. This milestone requires teams to show the text-based site with tentative design.

TA to meet in the lab with the students and go over the site and check it against requirements set forth in stage I.

The project should basically be as close to a fully functional 2nd generation site as possible.

By this point, banners and constants should be in place. System for navigation and forms roughly designed. Any major problems need to be addressed here. TAs must disclose a whole report for each of the teams and report any red flags.

VCD Students!

1. Explore color options on your site
2. Show that you understand your competition
3. Write a brief paragraph explaining your brand positioning statement
4. Develop TWO different viable art directions for he site; complete with variations on all three levels of pages.
5. Have Flash elements developed for the site.
6. Show where and when audio and video will be used. State size, time frame, links and content.

Now your site must give a good idea of the final graphics and design ready to be analyzed by the instructors. This is you last chance to get input before your final team presentation. Pls plan for that presentation and your team and individual reports. See Guide for Reports for more info.

VCD Students--VCD Templates completed and ready to hand off to CS students.

• Site XHTML has be validated and hyperlinks checked. The appearance of pages has been tested on different platform/browser combinations. Forms and server-side programming all have been tested under different conditions. The site is deployed and fulfils the intended purposes and fulfill the requirements set earlier.

• Final Presentation:
  Each team will make a presentation of the completed Web site.

  • The team leader will make an openning remark -- indicating the team name, the team number, the members of the team, briefly overview the team's project, and indicate who has done what jobs for the project, briefly indicate the features (boasting) achieved. The team leader must make sure each team member has enough time to talk about her/his part of the work. How well each team member does will directly impact on the individual's final grade.
  • The presentation must demonstrate that the site works for major browsers (IE and NN at least) and passes XHTML strict and CSS validations.
  • Each team member then identifies her/himself and gets a chance to talk about his/her part and any difficulties, achievelements, and lessons learned.
  • The team will remain for instructors and others to ask questions and make comments.
• Follow the report guide for writing the team project report and the individual report required.
• The final submission package from each team will include:
  1. The entire site, web pages, and art -- including all reports, photoshop and Flash files, image files, style sheets, javascript files, PHP files, database documentation, and cgi programs, should be uploaded to the team WebDAV repository.
  2. hardcopy team report
  3. hardcopy individual reports