CHZMONGR

I turned in my grading presentation yesterday morning and was so excited to be wrapping up my semester and my master’s degree!!  

https://indd.adobe.com/view/6286288f-7c47-4385-9715-8a51ca70b14d

(as an aside, if you login to chzmongr.com and experience an Ajax error when rating a cheese, please wait 15 minutes or so, without logging out or back in, and the error generally resolves itself - I cannot explain this error)

You can see my presentation at the link above.  So, what’s happening now?!? What did I learn?  And Jen’s questions -- Project reflection: what would you do the same or differently working on this project again?  Weekend reflection: what did you think of the capstone weekend? What did you learn from the feedback given and received?

Ok, I learned I am not a hardcore Drupal developer; I think that’s obvious.  But I learned that I was successful in changing the user interface to provide users with a better experience and that was really the whole point of my chzmongr project so => SUCCESS!  If I was going to start all over with this project, I would a) begin w/ Drupal 7 and not waste weeks struggling w/ Drupal 8; b) hire a developer to assist with the Drupal implementation; and c) try to sneak in one more round of user testing.  I do plan on continuing to evaluate if Chzmongr can be a “real” project and am scheduling meetings with a consultant and a couple of developers for January.  :)  Very exciting!  

What about capstone weekend?  I loved it.  It was so amazing to see everyone’s projects.  Since we did two rounds of peer reviews, I had an idea of what some of my classmates were working on, but seeing everyone present and sharing time together was awesome!  The class was organized and led to allow us all to be there and provide positive reinforcement and encouragement to one another as we tackled very large projects.  It was very meaningful to then be able to see the final results for each person.  

And what else?  Well, I’ve given notice at my job and will be leaving as of Dec. 31!  This will give me time to explore my career options and the future of chzmongr in 2018.  I hope to land a role working with a team and improving user experiences and look forward to getting started on this new chapter of my life!  

It’s been a fairly productive but rough week at Chzmongr.  

The ups: my presentation and elevator pitch are basically complete.  Plus my marketing materials and poster are ready to roll for next weekend.  Well, the poster has to be printed but it’s basically ready to ship out.  

The downs: the cheese rating form on the website started throwing an error related to the javascript operating the autocomplete functionality and I don’t know how to fix it.  It’s very inconsistent (happens at times and not at others, not related to the cheese being rated, etc.) and is difficult to troubleshoot.  I’ve attempted to continue development on the site ‘around’ the issue but it’s hard to test and improve the social feed when you can’t create new ratings, so kind of a catch 22.  

Moving forward: tonight I’m just focusing on finishing the presentation and giving it a couple run throughs.  Tomorrow, I plan to go back to the web dev and fight the good fight.  If the cheese rating form isn’t working, I think I can disable it to complete the configuration of the social feed page and then turn it back on.  Then I still need to upload the blog entries and sort out the landing page.  :o 

Tonight I had cheese for dinner, after a productive day of working on the Chzmongr site.  I’m in a pretty decent place and should have the site up and going for user testing early tomorrow . . . that user testing is still to be scheduled, but will likely take place next weekend following the turkey holiday. Outstanding items on the site build are: -complete css for the social area and tie to main menu, -upload the blog entries and tie to main menu, -complete update of the cheese data, -adding a footer (how have I forgotten this for so long?), and setting the ‘landing page’ as the main home page after users are logged in.  

This leaves me the weekend to finalize my presentation and elevator pitch for capstone weekend.  I’m pretty excited about it actually.  My presentation is coming along and really just tells the story of why I undertook Chzmongr for my final project and what I’ve learned along the way.  I hope the rest of the students and everyone will find it amusing/compelling and that it will also be informative about the UX process I undertook this year.

Tonight I went to see my real cheesemonger, who never disappoints.  He was wearing an “Italian National Cheese Team” kit and had all my favorite cheeses!   He also gave me some cheese themed coloring books in case any little friends stop by on capstone weekend - seriously!!  Could he be any better?!  So amazing!    (Pictured above, Vault 5 from Jasper Hill, Black Label Cambozola, and Cowgirl Creamery’s Mt. Tam) 

This week I worked hard to get the cheese rating form to tie to the user badges and failed.  I also implemented a new cheese rating form to get the autocomplete to work (pulling the cheese names from the cheese database).  

We did our last round of peer review/checkins for class and our final advising sessions with Jen.  While I feel behind and that I should be working hard now to make the site more beautiful and a better UX, I am giving myself this one last weekend to improve the form functionality.  If by tomorrow afternoon, the badges won’t tie to the cheese rating form, I will let them slide.  I’m checking my data this morning and doing a new import of the cheeses to include a few more details about each one.  Then I’ll need to re-establish the cheese search view, and tie the social feed to the new rating form.  

I have a test cheese form in place that is working successfully the social feed for the site.  The friends flag is causing me a little bug which I’m troubleshooting this afternoon so users will only see their friends’ cheese ratings, not everyones.  

The test cheese form is not pulling the cheese data from mySQL database so it isn’t feeding into  the user badges.  (However, all the badges, associated tasks, and flags are loaded in the system and ready to be activated!)  My plan is to troubleshoot that on Sunday.  Before then, I will finalize the configuration of the social feed and start updating the UX for it.  I’ve also begun work on my blogs for “The Daily Rind”.  I created 14 topics and have sourced photos for some and am flushing out the content for these.  

So, overall, I’m still behind my milestones but have the ability to do limited user testing and need to get that squared away.  My current work (day job) situation will be a lot more flexible after Nov. 1 in terms of me taking time off to do CHZMONGR.  (I took off yesterday and today but was given a last minute project so had to do work instead of homework . . . but this afternoon will be all for the cheese!)  

Ok - so I got the badges finished and the grading rubric along with the user testing script - now back to the delicious cheese data.  A code buddy is coming over tomorrow to help so I have all day today to work on the data relationships between the user submissions and badges and the social areas.  I don’t have any more travel for work and am taking many days off to get back on track with Chzmongr over the next two weeks.  I’m hoping after this weekend’s effort I will have all of the data relationships worked out on the back end so I can start beautifying things up front and then move on to user testing.

So, since deciding to use Drupal 7, I did a lot of rebuilding - and things were going great!  Then, Saturday night, I sort of blew up the whole site and spent a few hours Sunday morning getting it back to where it was . . . so now, I’ve got a sample form that is not connected to my database yet - not good.  I’ve got users that can create ‘cheese friendships’ with each other - so that’s great but I can’t set up the social feed until I have a way for those users to create some activity - i.e. rate some cheeses.  I have a cheese database that users can search - also great.  I also worked out how to create the tasks so users can earn badges and have finished the design of all but a handful of the badges themselves.  

Our final rubrics are due this week, so my focus will be on getting that completed and wrapping up the badge designs and loading them all in.  This is totally reasonable, but is causing me to flip out a little bit because I’m not on target with my deliverables.    

I had the last three days to really dig in and focus on my project . . . it seemed so daunting but now, it’s Monday night, and I’ve accomplished quite a bit.  The biggest hurdle that I dealt with was in determining which Drupal modules would be best to implement CHZMONGR.  After a lot of research and experimentation, I wound up going back to Drupal 7 (instead of continuing with Drupal 8) as the existing modules fit well with my site.  So many of the modules that exist for 7 apply directly to the functionality I need to implement things like the social features, badges, and simply uploading data.  Once I made the change back to Drupal 7, I’ve been flying!  I was really struggling with the decision but after 12 hours of working with 7, I had a searchable cheese database on the site and knew I’d made the right call.  

So as the long weekend wraps up, I checked back in with my milestones to see if I was keeping up and so far, not too bad!  

Original milestone deadline of Sept. 20 . . . but this weekend, I uploaded all of my cheese into my site with their associated data and built them into a database that you can search on the site.  I’m still working out how to tie this to a form where users can then rate the cheese but it’s progress! 

Original milestone deadline of Oct. 5 . . . completing the user badges.  I finished the list of ALL badges that can possibly be earned (as in, if you ate all 146 cheeses currently listed on CHZMONGR).  I created a spreadsheet listing each one, the requirements for earning it, and the various levels of the badge.  I also updated the cheese list I’m working off of to include which badges users would earn points towards by rating them.  For the badges, I found a basic image to be associated with each one and have been researching possible layouts before finalizing the badge designs.  Super excited about these - some are really cute!  

Upcoming milestone for Oct. 15 . . . a functional cheese rating form.  I have built a simple form that I’m currently using for testing.  And I’ve found some sliders and other pieces that I may plug in to the final version.  This is very much a work in progress as it will have tie to both the social area, the cheese database, and the user badges, which is quite a lot to sort out for a Drupal noob.  I also worked with the Heartbeat and Flag Friend modules to lay the groundwork for the social capabilities of the site.   

Last week and this week was some back and forth with my Drupal expert, a friend of a friend, who gave me some super helpful advice on modules to use to achieve my objectives with the CHZMONGR site.  I feel like I’m a bit behind on some of my milestones but am finally ready to start digging in and creating the site.  Since I’m such a newbie to many of the development tasks I’ll be doing, I feel better moving forward knowing I’m using the right modules to achieve my goals, even though I had to wait for the advice.  Now I’ve installed all the modules needed to build in the social media type functionality and the rating system and badges.  I had also done a little work with a sandbox site and determined to use the Drupal Bootstrap theme.  I spent the last three evenings going through the final list of modules and mapping how they will need to tie together . . . there are a lot of pieces and I’m very close to figuring it all out - messages, rules, tokens, and flags, oh my!  

This week was a little frustrating.  I’ve been using a back up website as a ‘sandbox’ and implementing several of the drupal modules that I’d like to implement for Chzmongr.   I’ve learned a lot about Search API and views and feel like I will be ready to roll those out in Chzmongr when it’s time . . . but I’m not there yet.  I also watched the Agile lecture and redid my Trello boards once again.  I’m still shifting around my backlog but think I have it fairly squared away to move forward this month.  

This week, or rather in the past few days, I’ve accomplished several key tasks.  This morning alone, I believe I drank a half gallon of coffee.  So really, what got done since my last post:

Over the past couple weeks, I had been researching and researching and researching the multitude of modules and themes in drupal.  I created a chart which listed the various functionalities I require to build my site grouped into areas like “badges”, “social”, “mobile”, and “search”.  For each area, I noted my requirements and then found modules which met them and ranked those modules according to which I was leaning towards using.  This was based on their ability to meet my requirements but also on the available documentation - modules with more documentation make me more comfortable of my ability to successfully implement them.  

I met with Ed!  This was great; Ed was very helpful and encouraging about my current progress.  It’s nice to have another resource to reach out to for advice and assistance.  The downside, I wanted to query Ed about a handful of Drupal modules and Ed is a javascript expert, not a drupal guy.  No fear!  He gave me some tips on how to get started without being an expert and got me back to the basics of my good old Trello board of taking things one step at a time and breaking all these big tasks into small pieces.  Focus on one thing at a time!  

So my next action was to reach out to my cheese loving posse of friends and see if there was a drupal expert that could do a little advising before I jump in with both feet on my implementation.  I got a hit and am happy to report that this weekend, a pal is kindly reviewing my project spreadsheet.  He has taken under consideration that I am not an expert and will be advising on the modules I’ve chosen, how complex they will be to implement, and if they will interact well together.  He’ll also provide some feedback on themes and mobile functionality.  

What to do while I’m waiting on this feedback?  I felt like I would be delayed by not implementing something on the site this weekend.  Yesterday, I installed one of the themes I was considering on a test site and felt it out for mobile functionality and how well it could be altered to match my proposed branding.  Then I did a lot of research on the search API modules as I know I will have to use this module.  I spent many hours watching a video series that walks you through the entire set up.  While I’m still not 100% confident I can do it alone, I have a much better understanding of how this module will work and the way it should be set up on Chzmongr.  

Also, I went ahead and updated my grading rubric:

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1gWpLyJ_VY0ZwJRjHX-GYM_iz0w6lj3ZHp7y5L22zQnE/edit?usp=sharing

The areas highlighted in yellow are where I still have some questions for Jen about how to reformat them for grading.  I split the UI/UX area into one section that will be based on user testing and one section that will be up to the graders.  The yellow areas are somewhat subjective and I’m looking forward to sorting through them to see how to better state my intentions for grading purposes.  

And how am I feeling?  Well, I’m anxious to hear back from the drupal guy . . . without a professional opinion, I’m nervous to just start plugging in modules and going for it BUT if he is slow to respond, I plan to begin with setting up the “join” page for users to create their accounts tomorrow afternoon/evening.  I started creating the content for the landing page this morning.  I also thought back to my original CMS course with Jen and am focusing solely on getting the content in there and letting it ‘look ugly’ for now.  Once I have a few pages built out and have started adding the functionality for cheese ratings, then I can begin making things look like the branding guide.  

September 18 - 20 . . . all the modules!  

I’ve spent a lot of the past four days finalizing some research for drupal modules and themes to use in my site.  It seems like the user badges are going to be the tricky piece.  Other accomplishments so far this week are getting the cheese data 90% finalized.  I realize I may have to do some templating to get into a functional API to utilize within drupal, but it’s very close.  Now that I realize it may be tricky to implement the badges, I have slowed my roll on development and design of them.  I still hope to finish creating the badges list and requirements by Oct. 5th - just not committing to any design work until I know how these are going to work with the site.  

Ok - so I feel a little overwhelmed and a little behind, but I think after my advising tomorrow with Ed I’ll be ready to commit to moving forward with some themes and modules and be able to get back on track.  I’m also planning to take a day off (from my job) to focus on getting Chzmongr rolling along in drupal so that by the middle of October I’ll be ready to test some cheese searching and rating functionality.  I feel like I have a good idea of how to make it work but realize it will be a challenge to make it beautiful, so I want to have time in the bank to put into that since it is the core functionality of the site.  

So this week has been total crunch time for me in terms of my ‘real job’ and life stuff.  For work, I plan a two day educational conference each year for 250 attendees and it is taking place in Cambridge on the 14th and 15th (next week).  That means I’ve been working extra hard all this week to make sure everything is in place, ready to roll, and there won’t be any avoidable issues during the event.  I’m a team of one so it’s basically crazy town - finalizing all speeches, awards presentations, educational presentations, menus, rooming lists, travel lists, agendas, signage, website, etc.  Also, as I’ve mentioned, I signed up to run my first full marathon, which is this weekend and which is also crazy town - in terms of timing (b/c of the work stuff) and all the training over the summer, which took me away from my fabulous Drupal lessons.  

Okay then . . . what did I get done this week?  Peer reviews - which were great and super helpful.  I also had my advising session with Jen which was amazing.  From all these I have the following takeaways: guidance on how to improve my grading rubric, some suggestions for plug ins/modules to use, more thoughts on my rating system options, and lots of encouragement (which is much appreciated).  

I’m on my way to PA now, via Amtrak, doing some research on modules and trying to finalize my cheese data.  There are so many options for plug ins to implement my design in Drupal, I’m trying to use my travel time effectively since other than these 10 hours on the train (round trip), I won't have much time for homework until next Friday.  And, I really need to update my Trello boards.  :( Like with my event planning, when there are this many moving pieces to a project, having a one stop shopping spot for tracking all progress is vital.  It may seem like busy work to set up sometimes and manage, but it always pays off to have this organization on the back end of any project.  

Oh, oh, oh!  And the buttons came in - and magnets!  The yellow color is less bright than on the wireframes but I’m mostly thrilled with how cute they look.  

I completed user testing interviewers with a group of eight fabulous volunteers and recruits.  I’ve been reviewing the recorded interviews and logging the key takeaways.  One item there is a split on is the actual rating profile, so I’ll ask for feedback on this during this week’s peer reviews.  Overall the testing went very well and there are not many significant changes needed to update the wireframes and begin building in Drupal.  As this week and next week, my world is crazy busy with non-school related stuff, I’m going to focus on getting the cheese data ready to roll and assessing badges and badge design.  I’ve already found one classmate to partner with for peer reviews and hope to find a second partner tomorrow.  It was a busy but productive holiday weekend.  

Here’s my overview video about the CHZMONGR project.  When recording my intro for class I realized I had made a CHZMONGR user testimonial for a class this past spring so I’m including it here, too.  (My pals are amazing sports at participating in this whole cheese thing!)