Weekly Blog Post

Week 3: Museum 1:1’s, Quarters, and Build Progress

Overall, Week 3 was relatively productive. On a technical level, 2 core systems of the website were identified from the Use-case diagram and were initially prototyped in the Pantheon environment. At the request of the project coordinator Ana, the team also planned presentation materials in preparation for meeting with each museum partner 1-on-1. The goal of these meetings was to introduce partners to the new team, renew partner buy-in/engagement with the project, and answer specific questions from the team. Additionally, presentation materials were prepared for Quarter walk-arounds with faculty on Monday of Week 4. 

By discipline, progress this week looks as follows. 

Production
-Prepared and reviewed Museum 1:1 materials with Ana 
-Met with Fallingwater 1:1 
-Prepared and reviewed Quarters Materials
-Team Logo and initial description approved by ETC design staff 
-First poster concepts received feedback from ETC design staff

Design
-Participated in Poe House Baltimore Virtual tour
-Narrative use-case/Wireframe begun 
-Met with Accessibility expert Cecile and received contact information for accessible groups to playtest with 

Tech:
-Gold spike completed (Online, collaborated on by team)
-Progress begun on 2 systems: User accounts/Logins and Upload. 

The team is positioned relatively comfortably for Quarters. The build is indeed online, if lacking the complete core user loop of login-upload media-put media in list. Because of this. we will likely not feature the build in quarters. In getting the build this far, the team discussed in great detail whether to expand our development tools from just WordPress to include front-end/back-end specific tools (i.e. React or Node.Js). While Bryan recommended against any sort of Frankenstein-ed/hybrid framework, combining multiple frameworks is an option. This question of whether to remain pure WordPress or hybrid will be posed to Mosswood Creative next Wednesday. 

Broad goals for next week are as follows
-Meet with each Museum 1-on-1 (Mattress Factory, Westmoreland, Frick Pittsburgh, August Wilson African-American Cultural Center). 
-Conduct Quarter Walkarounds with ETC Faculty and integrate Feedback into next steps 
-Meet with Mosswood Creative web developers 
-Move forward with implementing Build systems towards a playtest-ready MVP