Updated Production Schedule.

As I said earlier in the blog I would update my production schedule nearer the end of the project So here is a screenshot of how that turned out. I marked out what I hoped to achieve at different stages such as "finish the homepage". Overall I think I managed to keep on trakc and almost up to date with my schedule. 

The schedule was useful but with the problems that appear whilst coding and making a website it was difficult to keep up. 

Evaluation - iBook

I enjoyed making the ibook in this project it was the first time I had used the software or even heard of it. So at first it was tricky to get used too as some of the features were different to what I was used too. However it was easy to learn and once I understood what I was doing I found it easy to start designing my ibook. To start with I worked on the background images for the book thinking about what ones would work how to split them up and also how to keep them themed to the content the were behind. What I tried to do was use rocks for the background of the geology chapter, vintage canyon imagery for the back of the history chapter and animals for the back of the wildlife chapter. This way the images relate to the topic they are the background too. In the end I thought this worked well and the images work well with each other in the different chapter and provide nice backdrops to the content. 

Next on I looked at the different option I had to get some interactivity into the ibook looking at the widgets both in ibook author and the website Bookry. This gave me a range of the widgets to use throughout the book, I wanted to try and make it as interesting and interactive as possible. Overall I am happy with the widgets I have included I think there is a good range from pop-overs to image galleries, to interactive mazes. This hopefully will keep the book interesting for the users and give them the information in a unique way. 

Overall I am happy with my final product for the iBook I think it has a lot of content for the users to read and explore but keeps it interesting and interactive through the widgets and imagery. Now the layout are cleaner as well I am pleased with how it all turned out, I found the software good and easy to use in the end. 

Asset Register

One of the aims for this project was to have an asset register I had not created one of these for a project before so it was a interesting learning experience. The idea is to record all of the text and graphic content that goes into your website. To do this I created a number document and had three columns. 

• Asset 
• Source
• Use

The asset column is where I put a picture of each of the assets whether it was and image I made or sourced and even website where I got my content from. The source column is the URL of each of the images videos or website that I got the assets from, N/A was for the content that I made as I was the source. Finally the use column is where I explained where and what the use of the assets was, for example "Eagle in the bird gallery."

Overall I thin I have recored almost all of the text and graphics used in the website and the ibook with a source and a use. So I am happy with how the asset register turned out. 

Images and Graphics for the iBook

For some of the ibook widgets I decided to created cover for them whether they were videos or games. I went with the same theme throughout with a image in the background and the main colour form my colour scheme. Combined them together so the colour was a overlay with a reduced opacity, this way it looked similar to the website and kept the theme consistent. As well as this I think they are nice visual queues for the user in the ibook and fit in well rather than just having a youtube icon for example.

iBook research and layouts

Without an iPad it was difficult to do a large amount of research not ibooks however I did find some layout examples that were helpful. I had not used ibooks author before so looking at the different types of layouts you could use was helpful and I started to get some ideas on how to present my content.

The first layout here obviously is just a large image gallery but this could be useful in terms of my content as you can see it has labels to give information to the user whilst they browse the images. For me I could easily incorporate this type of layout and feature into my project on the grand canyon.

The second layout is a bit more standard but still useful. It shows that the basic layouts still look good on the iPad and can still involve some sort of interactive elements which again for me is useful and I could use this type of layout easily in my ibook. I like it because it is clean easy to look at and understand but as I said still involves the interactive elements of iBooks.

The third layout is one that I really like each dress has is own description and label coming of of it with other information in a scroll bar at the side. I think this worked really well for an iPad layout and I could use this in my work by replacing a dress with and animal for example.

Changes after Crit

After the crit there were a few changes to the iBook that I could make, so I did and what I changes were : 

• Edited layouts - to make them more balnced and even 
• Added in the table of contents so users can navigate through 
• Edited some graphics to make them clearer for the user
• Highlighted the interactive elements a little bit more so users can find them easily

So with these minor changes I think my iBook has improved a lot even though many of the changes are small they do make a difference.

Crit Feedback

For the crit I showed the class my almost finished ibook, this was useful and I got some good feed back on the good and the bad parts of the book. The positive part of the feedback was mainly on the interactive side of the ibook will people liking the different interactive elements on each page.  Another positive was the background images of the iBook people thought these worked and looked good throughout the book. 

The stuff I could improve on in the iBook was mainly the layouts of certain pages as they had little structure to them. So these needed improvement which was fine and I expected this anyway as I mainly focused on getting all of the content into the book. Using a grid and putting more time and effort into the layouts should improve them a lot so it ill be worth it. 

Overall the crit was useful and helped me to identify some issues and problems with the ibook so that I could now fix them.