Rhetorical Situation
We worked with Center for Civic Innovation (with Rachel serving as primary contact); our task was to point out any room for improvement in their audience reception (deliverables-wise). With this in mind, our group decided to create proposals for improvements in their websites, emails, and flyers via a style guide. We would not attempt to delete or rewrite any of their existing content in design; our goal was to point out potential changes in rhetoric.
Readings
I think the Universal Design article helped me best because I was in charge of web design; I had to propose changes to how the website was viewed in order to maximize user experience and accessibility. It led me to really think about what the audience wanted and how they would respond to it. Thus, I proposed to change the colors of the website and alter the page navigation so that they would serve to a wider audience.
Evolution
My webdesign draft was initially a website mockup. However, after some discussion with my group members, professor, and classmates, I decided to change it to a style guide so that my proposed changes and the edits were explained in detail. For example, the homepage had a clearer description after I altered it to bring out more intuition about CCI. While I wasn’t in charge of the other two deliverables, the emails and newsletter eventually became a part of the style guide rather than mockups like they were initially.
Overall Performance
(Done on scales of 1 to 10, 10 being the highest)
Our team worked very well with each other. We didn’t have any arguments and were all compliant with our due dates. The only thing I would think to complain about would be our ability to communicate; we sometimes took a while to respond to texts and emails.
Team: 9
Andrew: 10. He was our leader and very efficient with everything from communications to team management. Absolutely no complaints. He met up with me at least every other week to discuss whatever we needed.
Quivana: 8.5. She was on top of her assignments for most of the time. She sometimes took a bit long to communicate, but she did well to put some effort into her flyer.
Eryn: 8. She took the longest to communicate and had to be helped a lot to make the newsletter. Once she got the hang of it, she was fine.
Me: 8.5. I felt like I also took time to respond to emails and the like, and I felt like I could have done things better. I wish I worked harder to make the web mockup a lot closer to what CCI imagined. On the flip side, I think I managed to meet most of the CCI deadlines as planned.