Uncategorized 12:09 pm
After a long and hard process of development and programming, we can finally enjoy the fruit of our work. The website is online and working. All the translated pages are working and the …. wait a minute :p… I think words at this moment should be directed to more productive areas of the exam project that really require this attention, like the report :p
So here’s the link to the website. Enjoy 
Your friendly, The 4 Coqs
Uncategorized 11:34 am
The work has been running for more than a week, the problem formulation is ready and the page is actually starting to look like one:-) the process has been very exiting. We had great discussions about how the site should look. But it was all in a positive way and at the end we came up with the choice we consider is the best.
Research Phase 12:54 pm
Working through the Weekend
We had already decided on a schedule for the weekend and next week from Friday. It wasn’t the full schedule but we distributed tasks that we considered could be done solo in the week end.
Sarkis offered to make some early design considerations and maybe some sketches of the design. And that was good because we would have a starting point in evaluating alternatives. I was going to try and extract all the relevant information from the interview recording that Dzhavat made, as a start to the research phase. And things were coordinated this way because we could consider the info gathered at the interview while we would analyze possible alternatives for the basic layout of the website. Cata started to document and prepare some data for a questionnaire. We said that we would need some kind of feedback from the actual customers of LeCoq, so a questionnaire on this topic would be a good start to accomplish this.
Then aside of these, we needed to come up with some considerations on the problem formulation, as we had a meeting with Renne on monday. So we also needed to prepare something for that.
It was a nice week end. We had good weather, and best of all, we could sleep to our hearts desire. After 2 long weeks of hard core cleaning, we could finally get some rest. The problem formulation considerations went very well, as I got some good points from a material on Problem Formulation that Dzhavat found. But other than that we didn’t really do much. The questionnaire ended up being a bunch of considerations and the extraction of the interview data was postponed to the next week as I couldn’t use the format of the audio files because I couldn’t find a player to listen to them.
All in all, the week end was a very healthy break. We got to fill our batteries so we could make good progress in the week to come. And we got a really good start with the problem formulation. The materials I got points from as well as the Problem Formulation considerations are attached below
Research Phase 6:39 pm
Interview Day (thursday)
It’s been almost 5 days since I haven’t posted anything although a lot has happened. Partly because I had a lot to do (mostly work), but I’ve also been incredibly lazy in the two weekend days :p. I really thought like recuperating after a long week of hard work. But anywayz, taking things back to last Thursday where I seem to have cut the line of posts, this is what happened.
It was the day of the interview and we agreed on meeting at the Cafe LeCoq without first going to school. Me and Cata went anyway because we needed to print the interview guidelines that we had worked on the other day. So we got the material and went for LeCoq. It didn’t take long to find the place although it’s pretty well hidden in the streets. I stayed behing to wait for Sarkis and Dzhavat, while cata went to try and find a parking lot to leave the car.
Shortly after we were all gathered there and we meet with the owner of the place. He looks like a really nice person out of first impression. And we were surprised to find out that he finished the same education that we’re taking now, but a lot of years ago when the program first started and he was part of the first generation to take the course. Regarding this, it was really nice to be able to talk to someone who knew what we were talking about in terms of design and marketing strategies. He gave us a lot of useful feedback and in my opinion, the interview went really well. We got all the information that we needed and planned to find out and more. He told us about how he started and what’s usually going on in the local. He even gave us information about the target groups of the cafe and the restaurant. In all we ended up with more than we planned to asked for, and most of the extra information was very useful.
Thursday was a good day and we accomplished our goal. The stage is also open for a future meeting regarding solutions and propositions for the new design which need to be presented to the owner first before the start of the production phase. But that meeting is yet to come.
I attached the signed statement of agreement below.
Research Phase first phase 12:28 pm
Interview Preparations (Wednesday)
I’m sorry for the delay… but I haven’t had enough time to manage the blog these days as we’ve been working a lot of hours.
After we meet on Tuesday and decided on the client, it seems that Sarkis had a talk with the manager later that day and we got the OK for starting to prepare for the redesign.
Yesterday we met at 10 and got filled in on the status with the client by Sarkis. And almost immediately after, we started preparing the interview. Sarkis told us that he was able to schedule an interview for Thursday (the next day) from 11 am, so we really needed to get things going and prepare this first interview. We had a round discussion about general topics that we want to find out, and then, one by one, took every topic and enlarged to the extent that we could formulate questions. We used the materials about interviews that we were handed in from class to guide us through the process of preparing for the meeting that we had th next day. (the developed documents are attached to this post)
Sarkis made it clear that this was by no chance going to be something very formal. He suggested that we go there prepared for a relaxed atmosphere where we could all sit at a table and have a coup of coffee while we discuss (rather than interview) the things we want to know.
We prepared a briefing and a debriefing as well as the questions and topics that we considered that are needed in order to gather the information required for the research phase. We made a few copies of the interview guidelines and the statement of agreement document. Finally we planned the meeting on Thursday and made sure that everyone knows how to get there. The interview was going to be held at the actual restaurant, so we looked for the position of the place on google earth and documented ourselves on how to get there. all that was left was to meet at Cafe LeCoq on the next day…
The interview guidelines are attached below.
Research Phase first phase 1:16 pm
1st Meeting (Tuesday)
Today was the day we all met and had a discussion about the exam project. We’ve had some considerations before, but today was scheduled that we were going to begin looking for a client whom to cooperate with for this project. It didn’t take long and based on the research each of us made, we analyzed the alternatives and decided upon Sarkis’s suggestion. We’ve settled on a place called Cafe LeCoq. It seems that Sarkis has been in contact with the owners before and he was told that they would like a new site for their local.
It’s going to be a redesign of the existing page, but we don’t know yet if we’re going to use elements or themes from the existing site, or we’re going to try and make something new. All that remains to be decided. Sarkis said that he’s going to try and get in contact with the owners of the local today and ask them if they’re interested in a collaboration with us. If the the owners give us the ok for starting on this project, than the next thing will be to schedule an interview (preferably as soon as possible), which Sarkis will also have to ask about.
We also made a team contract in regard to working together for this exam project. I found a really nice material on making team contracts and we used that to shape ours. I uploaded the material we used as well as the signed group contract.
