Student Life Handbook Senior Project

 Today, I was able to start designing my first prototype for the design of this project. It was very hard work that required lots of thinking before each step I made. The design will be multiple 5-inch by 5-inch squares, which unfold until there are 5 to 9 squares. The first square will be the cover, with the proctor logo, the title of my project, and maybe a photo of Proctor's campus. It is very hard work that requires a lot of thinking because when each square is flipped, I have to think about the backside and what is revealed under each new square. This may sound less hard than it actually is, but it gets exceedingly hard the more squares that get revealed. Also, I did some more interviewing and information gathering to fill some of the gaps I had before. Tomorrow, I will continue to interview more people, and write this information down so I can use it in the design. Although the design work is very complicated, I am glad I got some of it down, because it finally showed some of...

Today, I covered a large number of topics and got a large amount of work done. I met with my mentor and Alicia at noon to get some help finding the correct fonts, font sizes, and Pantone colors, which are especially important to the designing phase of my project. We also talked about the printing of the project and how it would take many different prototypes before I would have a finished product. I had a realization today, that this project will not fit into a perfect plan. I had thought that I came up with a good plan for the whole project, but soon after, I realized that each day, I had to play it by year and do the work that was needed, not the work that was planned out to be done that way. I contacted the web designer further today, and I shared with her some of the resources we would need to create the first prototype, which I plan to have finished by this Wednesday. This week marks the first step of the designing phase, which will be very difficult and take a lot of patience. I ...

  Oliver Barkan 4/13/2023 First Week Reflection This first week of senior project has been a very fun and interesting process. I have greatly enjoyed being able to work on my own time and on a project that I find interesting. I find that I am the most productive in the mornings and by noon, so I try to get most of my work done around then. Throughout the project I will have had 4 different stages; Information gathering, writing and organizing, designing, and finally, editing. I have been able to finish two of the stages in the first week, and am ready to start the third phase, designing on Monday. The first stage, Information gathering, was very fun and social, requiring the opinions of many different students and people involved with Proctor. I had initially sent out a survey to all of the students with a ten dollar Jake’s reward that was randomly selected among the people who had responded. Because the survey was sent out to the whole school, I had expected to get a lot of re...

 Today, I was able to get a really good plan as of how my next week would turn out. Although I thought I had a plan for my project already set in stone, I now can clearly see what I will need to do for each day this week. The first three days, I will work on designing drafts of what the pamphlet would look like. This will be very hard and require many different attempts to get right, but once finished, it should be easy sailing. I hope to get this done by the end of Wednesday, but some additional time may be needed to finish this. Today, I was able to add more information to the “for parents” section, and further content the professional designer to prepare for next week. For Monday, I hope that I will be able to come up with at least one draft of the pamphlet just to see how one might look and see what I want to change. Total Hours: 25

 Today was exhausting. I contacted my mom's friend further to create a concrete time tomorrow and to prepare in advance for when I call her. To prepare for the meeting, I showed her some of the design components Proctor uses on their Website. For example, I showed her fonts, colors, logos, etc. Doing this should make the process easier and quicker on the phone tomorrow. I also continued to write and organize information onto a Google doc that I have writing on for the past few days. I have realized that the information-gathering and writing phases are something that will continue until the last few days of the project when I will be finalizing the finished project. Today, I was able to accomplish my goals by gaining information to put in a "for parents" section and communicating further about working with my mom's friend tomorrow. Tomorrow, I plan to start to create a place where I can place some of the writing that I have made so far, and fully visualize where I want...

Today was rather unproductive, I worked today mostly on communicating with others. I contacted my mom's friend, the graphic designer, to come up with plans to work together in the next week or so. Yesterday, I had planned to get in touch with my mom's friend and conclude the information-gathering phase by the end of today, however, after being given some friendly advice by my mother, I have decided to extend this period and continue to gather information even as I work on the writing and designing phase. Also, I have decided to add a section to my pamphlet that won't pertain to new students, but for parents sending their children off for the first time. To gain information on this section, I will be interviewing my mom, (Who has plenty to say about it) and Petra Shaw, who should be more than helpful. I also came across the realization that I will have to add a section for international students as well, because their experience going into Proctor is far more drastic. To add...

 Today was an extremely productive day. I worked from 11:15 until 1:45 profusely on organizing the data I had received from the survey and a few interviews. I was very proud of myself after this because I had accomplished a lot of work in the 2 and a half hours I worked. Today, I wanted to start the writing phase of my project, which I did do and even exceeded how much I thought I would get done. After a short break, I was feeling even more productive and was even able to conduct more interviews to gather more data and important quotes that I was also able to implement into my writing section. Tonight, I plan to work for another 30 minutes to an hour, contacting my mom's friend who is a web designer and can help me create good designs for the pamphlet/booklet I will be creating because I was so productive earlier and am still feeling ready to work, I will most likely conduct more interviews in my dorm to gather even more information. My goals for tomorrow are to conclude the inform...