27B. Decathlon Design 2

Solar Decathlon - DESIGN (Google Project: Team 6)

As part of our first group project in Software Engineering class, we were tasked with creating a full mockup of the solar decathalon house management system using Balsamiq.

My previous post described our group dynamics and how it related to issue-driven project management. This post will focus on the design aspect of our mockup project.

Overall the design process was pretty smooth. I think it really helps that all three of us have had extensive web design experience. We also seem to agree that clarity and simplicity are priorities when it comes to website design.

Noah designed the template, and I thought we did a good job of making thing consistent. We also took great pains to implement rounded corners where possible, as well as trickling down changes from the template down to the individual pages.

Below are some differences between the first and final iterations.

Energy 1st Version:

Energy 2nd Version: Rounded corners, standardized alignment, and some borders have been removed around charts. I think that this has produced a much cleaner look.

Aquaponics 1st Version:

Aquaponics 2nd Version:

Although we all had different ideas of what makes effective website design, I thought we were able to compromise and provide constructive feedback effectively. Since Noah has the most design experience out of all three of us, we usually deferred to his judgement in the end, even though he was still open to suggestions from the rest of the team.