Mikko´s week 17

Mikko´s week 17, hours:

Review meeting : 1h 30min
Planning: 4h
Design: 5h
Blogpost: 30min

Week total : 11h
Project Overall Total : 165h


Hello again,

On this week´s Wednesday we had a meeting with our teachers from UTA and TUT. The TUT teacher was very concerned of our documenting and our relationship to our project partner.  Reza seems still chocked after this "purgatory", but luckily he´s still able to work. I did again some more color design and a new banner, because for a while I was a bit stunned myself also that what am I supposed to work on next. But as we talked with Reza we came to agreement to start design some additional features for the main page , such as placements for future Facebook (and other social media) connections and possible feedback widgets. Also seems at the moment that next week we could have the first implementation of the player to the page.

p.s. As vappu is coming I think I will not work much on the coming weekend either, so I uploaded my weeks hours now, but if I will, I will compensate them on next weeks hours.

p.s.s. I hope also that I manage to take some pictures of my vappu activities to please Tero´s (TUT teacher) request of not all work all the time but also do some party. 

Here´s the banner I made today:

And a current screenshot of the main page:

On Pitching

First of all, I would like to apologize for the lack of posts lately. I guess we have been so focused on the actual design process of the project that our priorities have been elsewhere. Anyway, this is a fresh start. Mikko already posted some design ideas, and here are thoughts on pitching.

Last week we had our mid-pitching event, which was truly an eye-opening experience for me. Obviously, I was curious to see other groups perform, but I also wanted to know what these events are all about, as I had heard so many stories about them. Our little show was OK, but there is always room for improvement. Afterwards, I started thinking over the constructive feedback we got from our audience. One thing they wanted to see was the actual player. This was totally understandable: I would have wanted to see it too in their position. Unfortunately, the player was not ready to be published yet. There was also another crucial question regarding Music Cloud: how are we going to stand out from other existing services? This is what it all comes down to. While our team may know that Music Cloud will be a unique product in the sense that no similar service exists, we still need to come up with a decent marketing strategy.

Niina's hours

Week 9

• Sick week
• Design and other meetings 5 hours

Total 5 hours

Week 10

• Client and design meetings 7 hours
• Design and research 8 hours (mock-ups etc.)

Total 15 hours

Week 11

• Service design workshop 3 hours
• Project plan review meeting, client and design meetings 5 hours
• Learning HTML5 and other tools 6 hours

Total 14 hours

Week 12

• Client and design meetings 5 hours
• Learning HTML5 and other tools 8 hours

Total 13 hours

Weeks 7-12: 63,5 hours

Getting back on track

Getting back on track
hours and stories from last five weeks! 

Week 12

Planning & Design : 9h

Week Total : 9h

Week 13

Planning the cloud player  : 8h
UI design : 6h

Week Total : 14h

Week 14

Planning & Design : 14h

Week Total : 14h

Week 15

Graphical Design : 6h
implementing frontend/css/and frontend design: 6h
Learning Diem system : 6h
client meeting: 1h

Week Total : 19h

Week 16

Graphical Design : 15h
implementing frontend/css/and frontend design: 8h
pitching and preparation : 4h
documents : 3h
Blog updatng: 1h


Week Total : 31h


 TOTAL HOURS : 154


We have indeed been quite lazy updating our blog. Maybe we are just bad bloggers or then maybe we have been just concentrating more on the actual progress of the project. Nevertheless many things have been happening! We have taken in use the Diem system, which allows us all to work on the project remotely and collaboratively together, so this will fasten our project development significantly. I have now also took more of the part of the front-end implementing and Vanuhi can now concentrate more on the player design. I have also been desingin the logo several times and came up with several versions of it. Also noticed that logo design is not easy! it is not just making the picture, because that is quite easy, but coming up with a solid and simple idea that will hold till the end , that is hard. Also I have been studying some Photoshop tutorials with the idea of creating more visual outlook. I have been designing several banners and because the layout kept changing quite frequently not all of them are usable. Also we have been doing some interface design of the player, which is a hard part to do in a way that it would truly stand out from the existing services and be new and exciting...this was a very good question from our pitching audience. "how are you making it better than the existing services?" ... that indeed is a question to answer!

Diem system webpage: http://www.diem.fi/
Our project can now be found from: musiccloud.demola.fi
note also, that not all browsers are yet supported but in development mode the pages work fine. We will do also something for this in the future!

Three different versions of a "vinyl cloud" banner idea:

New ideas for register and log-in buttons:

Older desing drafts:

The cloud player idea:

Some old abandoned banner ideas:

The new logo (which I can aprove myself also, at least for now) :

And a screenshot of the current phase of the project:

This week on Wednesday we are having our second review meeting, which I am looking forward to! Also I will try to be a better blogger in the near future, because now I think something important might be missing from this post as well. And of course there is always more deign ideas existing on this laptop, but some of them are just some random psd. files and such, so I don´t consider downloading them too important at the moment. But these that I download should be the most important as for now!

Also Demola is about pitching and pitching and more pitching... I could maybe get good in this, but still require more training... There would actually be an interesting event today (Monday 23.4) about Demola success stories and their pitching, but unfortunately I had already arranged other things for this time considering another project so unfortunately have to skip it for today.

May more things follow, now I will continue working!

- Mikko