My Group Project for Web Site Design, Implementation and Maintenance

One of my classes this semester is “Web Site Design, Implementation and Maintenance.” That sounds like a mouthful. What does it mean? Basically, this class is a mock project with pretend clients. Simply put, you need to plan a site, put the design into action and maintain it. It’s very hands-on and very much like a real project.

The first thing we did in class was to divide into groups of four or five. Each group is a design company. We created a name, logo and website for our web design company. Every team member has a role. There is a project manager, creative lead, production lead and quality assurance lead. I’m the quality assurance lead for my group.

Next, we chose a client. We decided our client was going to be a local restaurant that needed a website. The client fills out a survey (we had to do this ourselves since it is a fictitious restaurant) so our company knows some basic information about them.

There are several phases a design company must go through to create a finished website project. By doing this mock project, I now understand why websites are so expensive to create. There’s a lot of work that goes into it! We have already done several reports including an audience analysis and competitive analysis report. Recently, we’ve created the project planning document. This includes things like the budget, schedule and contract.

This week we are moving on to sketching out the client’s site. We’ll be working on creating site maps and gathering information. In the future, we’ll be making a style guide where we choose color schemes, fonts and other visual aspects. In the distant future we’ll be creating a quality assurance plan and fixing bugs. Even after the site is built, there’s more work to be done!

There are many other things we’ll be doing between now and May. This is just a brief overview of a few of the steps in these phases. Every week we learn something new and get to use what we learn in our project. It can be intense, but it makes me feel more prepared for the real world when I start working with real clients.

If this class sounds interesting to you, check out the Web Designer/Developer program at Moraine Park Technical College.