The first exam in the first semester in which its based on our own process portfolio, a presentations portfolio coded from scratch and a poster. Andrea was the one to kick off the project in which he explained what the exam is and what we had to do. A project description was also available which I later translated it to English for further comprehension.
I created a timetable in which would showcase what needed to be done on certain days. I did this to allocate different sections of my exam on different days to ensure I am not overwhelmed with work but to also have it organised.
The weekend coming up to the silent feedback I worked on my moodboard, style-tile, wireframes, and a mockup to showcase who I am and who I wanted to work with. Even before taking this education I generally wanted to work for an International company as my dad does currently and it gave him unique experiences. International in the sense that it operates around the world, and globalised in which combines culture, understanding, tradition, and ideas. A company I had in mind during the creation of my style.tile was actually Lego. Over time summer I worked at Legoland (Lego doesn’t own Legoland) and every morning I walked by the Lego HQ and was inspired in general how globalised the company was. But I later refined the areas I wanted to work in in 3 distinct areas.
- Travel and Tourism
- I have had the great opportunity to travel a lot with my family, and have come to appreciate all the different cultures and communities I come across. I take photos all the time when travelling especially urban and landscape photography and I thought I could do something serious with it when I won a competition one time with a set of photos I took in the USA.
- Food and Beverage Industry
- As a mixed and third culture kid I have appreciated food so much. I love to document the things I eat, try out need recipes, and in general make food. I recently gained experience working in the food and beverage sector in Legoland and understood the importance of design, advertising, and other elements in attracting customers.
- Sports Industry
- After a serious knee injury last year which ended me playing football, I switched my focus on weight lifting full time. I was so keen on creating a fitness brand myself, taking inspiration from the recent reboot of gymshark with David Laid. Combining something I love passionately and perhaps even work with it in the future with others or independently.
Keeping these 3 areas in mind I then created my moodboard and style-tile. My style tile consisted of simple typography which is legible. I also aimed to keep the colours neutral and dark as I did not want so much commotion going on. I used a logo I created myself on my Ipad some time ago, I thought it gave that personal touch as the lettering was imperfect and has it flaws which itself gave it character. I used some sample photos to display the sort of vibes I wanted to give out. I included mainly photography that was taken outside of this education as I thought it would fit my vibe and personality of the website more than the ones I took in Hamburg. I knew I wanted my ToV to be simple and personal as I wanted to establish a special yet instant connection with my User as if they were talking to a friend.
Upon the silent feedback much positive and constructive criticisms were received. Upon reading the constructive criticisms I understood how cons of certain aspects of my website might hinder the experiences and look of the website.
When beginning to code, I would be lying if I said I wasn’t stressed. I felt very stressed about starting the project and overwhelmed as this was something I haven’t done before and something I don’t feel confident in doing. Upon looking at my mock-up the main thing I needed to learn is how to create a navigation menu. I took some research to learn how to create it and then implemented it into my code. Along with this I used my own knowledge from class to create the rest, the containers, text, and images. However a big problem I ran into was I wasn’t using the right heading, instead I was using overlay texts in different numbers. This is when I ran my second trial, I used the correct headings and at the same time try to make it more responsive. In all the attempted I tried to make it responsive I then decided to take it all from scratch and start the third time. I was short on time but still very eager to learn and get this done. I first created the navigation menu but scrapped some things from it such as social handles. One reason for doing is that my social handles don’t display any of my work so it doesn’t make sense to have it on my portfolio, but the second reason was that I had hard time actually linking them up and responding. I also scrapped much the other things from my mockup and stuck to a very simple layout and design. My website now looks tacky, but that is because I did not believe in myself in doing so, and got demotivated along the way. I got incredibly stressed when trying to make things responsive as I kept experimenting and doing countless research. I turned to both my peers, supervisors, and my dad for help. However it was something that still carried on in my final project and created an inconvenience.
Writing the reflection was another kind of stress as I really had to think about what I did, what I learnt from it, and how it has made be change and become better. It was also in this time I had to be honest about my work, saying that there were areas I lacked because I simply just couldn’t do it and was not motivated to do it. I then started to reflect on how I could have spent my time more wisely, or if I should have worked outside of my home. But while writing a I learned a lot of valuable lessons not only in relation to coding but also reflecting in general.
The weekend prior to handing in all of the posters, papers, and website I consulted my study group for extra guidance. We sat down together over discord and discussed the things we were missing and creating our own checklist separate from the one that was provided to us. It’s nice to have a study group to rely on times likes this as most of us are very new to this and are probably also struggle, and a great way to learn is from your peers and we tried our best to help each other with what we knew.
One instance for this is actually uploading the materials on the FTP servers and github. As outgroup was english speakers, we had a hard time following the instruction currently and was left confused and stumped. Most of the actual coding part was done individually as we felt we had things under control or things were working out for us. But in times it was nice to get feedback, help, and even sympathy for the things we did. We could have met together in reality at school to boost morale and motivation, but I think in terms of future projects the english speakers of the class might stick together more as we can benefit from each other a lot more and express yourself a lot more than with the others but to hold each other accountable too.
The kind of stress and challenges I have came across in this exam project is nothing I have ever came across before. I am mostly used to the stress from taking IB but this education is more practical than anything I have ever had. I think this was an important step in my education to realise that this will not be the last time I will feel like this. I cried to my dad are some points due to me not being able to achieve what I wanted, but he was there for me all the time to help. I have learnt so much about myself in the 2 weeks, about how I handle stress, how I might still be burnt out from my previous education, and how I need to pay attention more in class and speak up more for help. Even with a time plan created, there were times I felt doing nothing at all because it scared me that I had to create something I didn’t know how to create. Though there are some things I feel proud of doing, it’s nothing compared to all the things I can improve in. One of the ways was just to follow the correct headings when coding instead of writing overlay text which wasted a lot of my time. I enjoyed coding when I understood what I was doing and things were working, but becomes so motivating when things don’t go to plan, especially when you don’t know what you did wrong, and you don’t know how to fix it.
In preparation for the actual exam day, I made a plan of what to go through and to also practise my presentation in front of my boyfriend. I firstly was very nervous about my code, not that I couldn’t explain it, rather that I would forget and freeze on the spot. I wrote in paper what each line of code did and what is consisted of along with how it could be improved in my presentation. I also made my speech in English because I knew if I explained it in Danish it would go wrong in so many ways. I made sure to be very direct and to the point in my speech to make is go smoothly and use the terminology related to our exam.
When the actual exam day came, I came to school in good time to revise and practise my presentation. The overall exam went a lot better than I expected. I tried my best to compensate for my website through my design and presentation and how to improve. They loved my presentation and how I laid it out to show my improvement and is actually one of the reasons I got a good grade. I notice that coding isn’t really my cup of tea but can see how it is enjoyable for some. The teacher even said that they can tell I am more of a design student and that I have an eye for design rather than code, which they aren’t wrong about. I left the examination room with the grade 7. Proud of the things I have done but also recognised the things I needed to work on.
Link to my presentation:
https://xd.adobe.com/view/0619b9fe-762f-467d-b506-23a8e81bd75a-534a/
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