Since I’m going out of town tomorrow morning, I thought I would update the class website early this week to make sure that everyone knows what to do before I come back.
Remember that this Thursday should mark the end of “data collection” for your team. If you need to interview your client again, conduct more surveys, or hold focus groups, please don’t delay. Thursday should be a productive work day for your team, and by this time you should be directing your full attention to drafting the report/proposal and your deliverables. Remember that I am NOT the primary audience for these documents; your client is the primary reader, so write the documents with him or her in mind.
Next Tuesday, I will hold a short conference with each team. You should bring drafts of all of your documents (report/proposal, plus any additional deliverables) to this meeting. I don’t expect these documents to be polished, but they should be real drafts, not just outlines or notes.
On Thursday, we will hold a document design workshop in the lab, which will give your team time to focus on the visual aspects of your documents. Before you come to class, familiarize yourself with the six phases of desktop publishing. Warning: this site contains a lot of sections and subsections. You don’t need to memorize every page on this site, and you may already know many of these principles, but please spend enough time on the site that you can converse intelligently about basic principles of document design.
A final reminder: Your finished proposal/report, along with all of your other deliverables, will be due on Tuesday, November 9. That may seem a long way away, but it will be here before you know it. Please make sure your team paces itself to avoid a last-minute panic.