Talking to the graphic artist

Michel and I talked today. She's a gem! She found the example very helpful to know what I like. We talked a lot about the types of artifacts that would be included in the project and how best to present them. Essentially, there are only a few. There will be html pages, links to external sites I've created for other purposes, and PDF files. There will be some image files embedded in the HTML pages.

I was having trouble figuring out if I wanted to start with the artifacts and put the reflection in a pop-up box for the user to call up on demand. My other idea was to make all links to the reflections and then call up the artifact. I decided on the latter and talking it through with Michel helped me make the decision. I've decided readers should see the reflection first. It is the reflection that tells them how the specific artifact fits in the bigger picture, what is notable about the artifact, and what I learned from developing that artifact.

Michel and I spent much of our time talking about the architecture for the site. I worked on that so I could get it to her. I used my Inspiration diagram to help me make an outline that would make sense to her. Hopefully it did.

As we were on the phone, we were pulling up some of the things I've done before. It turns out she was using that to assess my skill level. (I hope I passed!) She was looking at how I had made some of my headers and comparing it to the example site I sent earlier. We decided we would do something different. She suggested the background of the header area have a light color to separate it from body of the page. She's also planning to create something that makes the horizontal navigation bar more prominent - possibly a rollover?

We talked about how to handle screen shots for some of the artifacts I want to include. We also briefly talked about color scheme. She was looking at my EDF 6481 site and commented that the blue background had a lot of purple in it. That led us to link colors - the standard ones being blue for new links and purple for visited links. She suggested we use a blue with quite a bit of purple in it which would allow standard color links to look nice. Since Jakob Nielsen thinks link colors shouldn't be changed, this sounded like the perfect decision for me - usability and aesthetics, both! Isn't it great to work with someone who thinks to this level of detail!?!

Now that there's actually a weekend free of the distraction of a hurricane, I've been able to make good progress on my portfolio again. I was disheartened because of the lack of progress, but feel re-energized now that I'm back into it. What a relief that is!