Seminar

This element is approached in pairs. Find a partner from the group and together, select a topic from the list below on which you will give a 15 minute seminar to the other students in the class. Each presentation must be given using either PowerPoint/Keynote or a web browser based medium. Where appropriate, live demonstrations are encouraged. In addition, each presentation must be accompanied by an article covering all of the salient points of the presentation and including relevant links and refferences. This should be a blog entry that reads as an article. Your seminar slides must be made available online as a .PDF. Make sure you give yourself plenty of time to practice your presentation and to decide who will say what.

The assessment for your seminar will be based upon:

1. Quality of the materials used for presentation (clarity, design etc.)
2. Content quality (how well you understood your subject and how well you helped others to understand the subject)
3. Subject coverage (depth, breadth, focus as appropriate) of the presentation and accompanying article.

Both members of your pairing will be awarded the same grade, so it is in your best interest to collaborate effectively.

Seminar topics – choose one of the following:

1. Responsive images – what are the options? Jahnavi and Shreya
2. Micro-formats – what are they for and how should we use them? Paula and Qu
3. What is the HTML <details> element, and how is it used? Does it move HTML in a new direction?
4. CSS custom properties – what are they and how are they used? Nikki and Carla
5. What are container queries – will they change the way we design responsive pages? Anna and Julia
6. CSS animation – how does it work and what can we do with it? Katherine and Maya
7. What is CSS Scroll Snapping? How can it be used to build practical interfaces? Emily and Jenny
8. Does the CSS @support feature mean an end to vendor prefixes? How is it used?
9. CSS pre-processors, what are they and should we use them now? Crystal and Mary
10. There has been a lot of buzz about Tailwindcss recently. What is it and how does it work? Anoop and Vishnu AK
11. What is “atomic design”? Does it help with an understanding of CSS naming conventions such as BEM? Vishnu VV and Manu
12. What is “material design”? How can it help us create better user interfaces? Yinka and Peterson
13. What are the best tools for wireframing and prototyping? Umesh and Anjan
14. What are “Progressive Web Apps” and how do they work? Caspar and Alasdair
15. What is version control and GIT? How does it help team working? Antony and Shenaz
16. Page load speed is a UX consideration. How can we check the speed of our pages and improve it? Jyothisha and Dennis

We have 14 pairs of students and 16 topics to choose from. No duplication of topics allowed – each presentation should be unique. Claim your topic on Slack in the #webbies-21-22 channel. First claim bags the topic!

Seminars will take place on 16th and 23rd February 2022.
Submission date (slides and article): Friday, 11th March 2022
You are advised to submit the slides and article shortly after giving your seminar so that the topic is still fresh in your mind.

Seminar schedule

16th February (morning)

• Yinka and Peterson
• Anoop and Vishnu AK
• Emily and Jenny

16th February (afternoon)

• Jyothisha and Dennis
• Umesh and Anjan
• Crystal and Mary
• Anna and Julia

23rd February (morning)

• Jahnavi and Shreya
• Caspar and Alasdair
• Katherine and Maya

23rd February (afternoon)

• Vishnu VV and Manu
• Paula and Qu
• Antony and Shehnaz
• Nikki and Carla

Deliverables

1. 15 minute seminar presentation in class
2. Slides made available online and linked to from your coursework homepage.
3. A blog article covering the seminar topic, linked to from your coursework homepage.

Small Business Website (revisited)

This is an opportunity to demonstrate how far you have improved and how your understanding of web design has developed since completing the first project. This project requires that you critically analyse the website you created during the Design for Web Content module and redesign/reengineer the site using all your new skills and knowledge.

In addition to good visual design and coding, the new site should also demonstrate good findability with well-considered SEO features (e.g. description meta tags and appropriate text content incorporating key words and phrases). The improved site should also be responsive with a mobile first approach to layout. You should also improve the ease of maintenance by applying some modularity with PHP server-side includes for common page elements (e.g. separate header, footer and smart navigation). UX features such as custom error pages and favicons should also be added. You may also like to include a sprinkling of JavaScript (e.g. is the shop open or not). Finally, you should add accessibility features such as Landmark Roles as an aid for assistive technologies. Your analysis of the original site and a summary of improvements made should be included either as a blog entry or as a separate document saved as a .PDF file.

Please ensure that both versions of your Small Business Website remain live and linked to from your coursework homepage so that a comparison can be made.

Interim crit: 23rd March 2022
Submission date: Friday, 1st April 2022

Deliverables

1. A revised version of the small business website, linked to from your coursework homepage.
2. A short analysis of the original website and a summary of all the changes/improvements you have made in the new version, linked to from your coursework homepage.