Hello, and welcome to the moment I forgot how many weeks I’ve been writing this from some form of quarantine! I hope you are staying safe, clean, and healthy!

So like we talked about in our meeting this past Tuesday, everything is going pretty well so far! We’ve been able to get some write-ups onto to site along with some pictures and layout of the site itself done. Everything done so far has been in writing, we haven’t had the chance to do any videos or in-person stuff because of this whole COVID situation. That would be the main problem we have experienced with this whole thing. We haven’t had the chance to put 100% of the time and effort into this as we would want to simply because we can’t get into most places like we would want to for the safety of our fellow lincolnites.

I’m not sure what I would do differently next time simply because the situation we are in right now feels like a once in a lifetime scenario!

Contributions this week was making sure the site was in a presentable condition before our meeting this past Tuesday, just in case we needed to show you our progress. Like I’ve mentioned in the past, I’ve sort of taken the lead on the website end of everything.

This week we discussed as a group that we will be going further with our original plan of the coffee shop culture on college students. We explained how pivotal this topic is and where it could go in giving us a substantial amount of material to pick from. I think everyone in the group knows their role and how to move forward from here, considering the circumstances. The team meeting this also helped as it keeps us motivated to know we must keep on presenting our work. Plus, Swazy did a fantastic job on the website for when we had to throw it together before the meeting time on Tuesday. Unity became a big thing when we all agreed in our group chat about what needed to be done on time. Just another reason why this group works really well together. At our core, Sad Journalism Kids works towards solving the immediate task at hand. While this can be a bad thing, for us, it isn’t. We know how to work efficiently in the little time we may have to get the work done. This is a trait all of us will probably carry to the workforce and help inspire those who have gotten lazy in our generation. It was good work this week, and next week we will plan to stay on topic and work towards finishing the website early.

Finding photos from coffee places here in Lincoln that already exists has been relatively easy to do. Videos that already exist are harder to find and harder to really capture. This may mean that our site be mostly photography and writing focused with maybe some graphic designing. Finding more personalized content, like pictures from people we all know, has been slightly more challenging. Also, we had the idea to have them write something small with their pictures of what they think of coffee shops or what they mean to them. This has also been a little more challenging, just on a time aspect because they are also dealing with classes transitioning right now. This week we all reached out to friends to get permission to use photos of them and ask them to write a little excerpt for their opinion and outlook on coffee places. I think when we decide we may want more in the future, we need to ask earlier in advance to give others more time to compose something. I think as a group in the next coming weeks and days we need to plan more of our project out on how we want it to look, as well as narrow down what we include. Because we cannot go out and capture content like we originally planned, the coffee shop idea still works, it just need to be shifted in some additional ways than we have already done.

With the Coronavirus epidemic that is limiting our ability to capture the media we originally had planned for our project, I still believe our website will be creative and useful for college students. Even though we were not able to go to the coffee shops in Lincoln to capture the media, we will use our resources from our friends, their social medias, and media from online research to complete the project. We have done well with getting our ideas for the website going, including how we want it to look overall. We have contacted friends who frequent coffee shops, gotten their editorials, and started putting our plan into action. It is hard that we can’t meet as a group, because communicating via GroupMe isn’t always the most effective. The next time I ask a friend to send me their opinion on the topic of what coffee shops mean to them, I will set a stricter guideline of what I am asking for. Some people have sent us a few short sentences, while others have really gone in depth about why coffee shops are so important. We did have a plan for the media we originally wanted to capture, and it did help with the quality of media we were able to get from our friends and through different blogs online because it gave us a basis on what we should be striving for.

Obviously our collection of media is significantly complicated with the current covid-19 crisis. Especially with our specific topic that deals with the restaurant scene, we weren’t able to collect a whole lot of in-person media. However we are relying a lot on media we already collected and other pieces that we have found that pertain well to the topic. Right now we are putting together the website with photos and testimonies from people about what coffee shops mean to them and how they present themselves within the individual’s lives. These will then coincide with blog-like posts of the different coffee shops covered with photos collected of each respected cafe. 

I feel like this experience has been very valuable in the sense that even when a person has a plan it won’t always turn out the way it was intended. We never saw this whole covid-19 situation being this critical and we never intended it to affect our projects and classes. We had a plan and a list of things to do to make this project as easy as possible and we were still blind sided. 

At the risk of sounding too existential I feel like this kind of concept is very common in real life, especially in media and journalism. One can always plan ahead but we also have to be ready to adapt when circumstances outside of our control occur. It may be inconvenient now but it’s a good trial run for the real world.

I think the main features of a good website are good visuals, organized aesthetic and quality concise information. Over the past few weeks we have seen a lot of interactive analysis projects that solidify this idea of heavy reliance of visualization and concisity. With this in mind, I’d say that’s a pretty good indicator of a pattern. The specific story that we are trying to tell doesn’t rely too much on narrative but more testimony. 

We want to show the meaning behind coffee shops and how they act as an integral part of the college experience. With this in mind, I feel like we are going to really utilize smart navigation and simple media expression. Lots of pictures and portraits with the testimony of people who are at coffee shops and have something to say about it. Aside from portraits of people we are also going to use a lot of pictures of the coffee shops. Even with the complications brought about by Covid-19, we want to use the photos to really make visitors of our site feel like they know what it’s like to be at the coffee house. 

This strategy also makes it nice for both mobile and desktop access. Simplicity doesn’t mean poorly-done and I think that our use of minimalism will really aid in its ability to be accessed on multiple platforms. 

Hello hello and welcome to my Week 11 blog where I am trying my best to keep my grip on sanity at this point.

I hope you and your family are doing everything they can to stay safe and away from any trouble during this scary time, now lets talk about this project!

For me, I think to make a good website comes down to 3 key factors.

• Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
• Brand Recognition/Identity
• Ease of navigation

I feel as if they are all pretty straight forward in terms of how they make up something great but I’ll explain a bit just in case. SEO so the brand can be found, recognition/identity so people know they are on the right site when they go to it, and ease of navigation so the site is user friendly and doesn’t cause issues for those not as “tech-savvy” as the rest of us.

Thankfully with my software development minor web design was one of the first things I learned so I’m sure I will be taking the lead on the website side of everything as I know it all like the back of my hand!

In terms of contributions this week everyone is just trying to get things figured out and setting up our check-up meeting.

It is essential to make sure the story of something conveys well onto a website. A website must be easy to read and very user friendly. Formatting must be crucial as well, so we can give a significant advantage to what we need to happen. It seemed a big idea between all groups was that the projects needed to be easy to maneuver. An example like mine where it had lots of moving parts and was slow can deter a reader from it. That is something else which has always been emphasized, but its bright appearance is a common characteristic we need to follow of design
Not too much has gone into the website right now as we are still trying to figure out what exactly our best course of action for the project will be. Great examples in class showed our group pretty close to how we want to design it. For the group work, we just figured out when we will be meeting and talking about the project with Elle. SO so far, it seems we are going on the right track and move from there. I still believe the task at hand will be difficult bu time remains to be seen.

I think that a good website is easy to navigate. The links, or the way the website is organized makes sense and is not too difficult to figure out. I think this is the most important aspect to think of when creating a website, along with other more minor things. The look of the website must also be appealing. If there is too much going on, like too many graphics, its disorienting to the users. The balance of the media on a website is also important. While some heavy video sites can work, for our website I think it is important that there are various kinds of media. This makes the pages more intriguing longer. I think the story we tell could translate a lot through written portions along with photos. Overall, for the change of format from a desktop to a mobile device the concerns are the same for a site in general. It needs to stay easy to navigate and be appealing to use. This week we have been focusing on getting organized with the new changes and moving forward with the new format of the project. We have all been brainstorming on how to continue on with our project and collaborating.

In my opinion, a good website is easy to navigate. Poorly designed websites that confuse the user will leave them unsatisfied. When I am online on different websites, I notice that they always have eye-catching headlines that make the reader want to keep reading. Usually there are other advertisements in the website as well that draw the reader’s attention. For our group, we will transform the story of the importance of coffee shops to college students by having different testimonials with pictures of this particular person, and why coffee shops are so important to their life. I believe easy navigation will be key, and different forms of media to keep the reader entertained will add an interesting perspective. Personally, I have not considered how our website might appear differently on a mobile device versus a desktop, but this is something we will have to keep in mind. To make it accessible on all platforms, we will have lots of pictures and videos that will show up and play on any device used.

Currently, our group is trying to decide when we will have our weekly Zoom meetings to ensure the website is on the right track. We are all busy people, so this is definitely a challenge. In the future, we will set a time aside for group discussions so we don’t have to worry about this weeks before the project is due.