Responsiveness of pages and creating of the about page

During the last presentation of our group, we had some issue about the responsiveness of the web pages. So we decided to use bootstrap to make our website responsive. I was working together with Akanksha on this, she tried to use the bootstrap template, but in this way we basically have to code the website all over again. So I searched web see if there are other alternatives, I saw some one mentioned to simply add bootstrap container class to our divisions. So I tried to do this to our website but it provide me some awkward effect and I couldn't figure out what's wrong, so we decided to use Akanksha's method. After the job on this is basically done,  I started coding the about page of our website which explains how our website works and provides the definition of some key terms.

I also worked on creating a simple voting mechanism which increase the likes of a rough cut when user click on the like symbol.

Web Development

We did a good job in part A of the major project and now we need to build a useable draft of our website, and I developed two main webpages of our site.

User Interview

To help us deciding the content and interaction methods on the website, and also support our background research, I interviewed two potential audiences of the website about their preference in this kind of website.

Annie Wang(China) – UQ Business school student

Q. What kind of DIY stuff do you usually do? Why you enjoy doing it?

I enjoy doing some simple stuff I can use in my daily life, like paper boxes to collect food waste while dining. By doing this, I can reuse newspapers; it is economic and environmental friendly.

Q. Do you go to any website to find tips about how to do the stuff you want to DIY?

Not really, because I don’t make very complicated stuff, how I usually DIY are taught by my mom and friends.

Q. Would you like to spend sometime on it if there is a website which show you how to DIY those little stuff.

Yes, for sure. I‘d love to learn how to make some interesting stuff

Q. Would you like to share your DIY experience and works in an online community?

If I can make something looks great then I will.

Q. Do you think it is easier to share your work in your own blog and link it to the community?

Yes, if it support all my social networks, so I can always open my Facebook or blog, upload something and share to the community.

Sissi Zhou(China) – UQ MIDes students

Q. What kind of DIY stuff do you usually do? Why you enjoy doing it?

I like to cook dessert myself, because sweetness bring good mood to my friends and myself.

Q. Do you go to any website to find tips about how to do the stuff you want to DIY?

Yes.  I usually browse a Chinese website called “Taste the World”, it provides you a lot of recipes and classified nicely with different ingredients and cuisines. Different users can upload their recipe about same dish, so you have your choice to use whichever recipe you like. It also allows you to comment and rate the recipes, and there is a top chart for the recipes.

Q. Have you ever shared your DIY experience and works in an online community?

Not really, because I don’t cook very well and I don’t feel like spending the time to do it.

Q. Do you think it is easier to share your work in your own blog and link it to the community?

Not really, because we are all used to upload to the community and link to our own blog.

Journal Review

To support our background research, I  did a journal research on the relationship between a commenting system and the taste of audiences, and wrote the review below.

One problem with sharing information on a web community is that if we do not know the preference and taste of peers, it may not be useful to read their opinion about something. Thus, if the users of a community have very different preference or taste, the quality of information shared in the community is questionable and maybe the community does not worth to be formed. However, our website is only for a small group of people who love to DIY and the content will be narrowed down to a specific kind of DIY, so I believe the user of our community would share identical or similar preference and taste. Moreover, our registered members would not be anonymous, and our aim is to let them conduct a lot of information exchange or communication to allow them knowing peers better. By doing the above, members of our website may establish a shared view of value, which would help them to build valuable database like top charts (Demange 2010)

Demange, G 2010, ‘Sharing information in Web communities’, Games and Economic Behavior, vol. 68, no. 2, pp. 580-601.

 

Site Map

As we moving forward to the Major Project Part A, we broke down the task to sub tasks and assigned to different person, and my main task was web development. The first job I did was the site map.

Group initial brainstorming

After establishing the group of DIV Trove, we all agreed that we need to work out a small range of content to include in our website. So we brainstormed in a very interesting way. Firstly, we worked out five possible topics that we may use. Then every body have to write an idea about each topic, then you pass your sheet to the next person and they will add something more to your idea. We got some very interesting ideas from this process. Lorna also showed us the website Ravelry to provide us some more inspiration. Finally, we decided to make craft to be our main content on the website.