Service Learning Project Worklog

Week 11: March 17-21

For our first week, we pilfered through the individual topics posted, and decided upon Ross' proposal for a Martini Bar deliverable. Having worked on the white paper group, we each had experience with our strengths and weaknesses, and this will serve to help us assign tasks efficiently and quickly when we begin work next week. As a surprise decision on Friday, Charu Patel joined our team by unanimous decision and will present a new angle to working as a group of four. While she will offer valuable insight to the group, it presents a refreshing challenge as to how work must now be distributed to bring out the strengths and efficiency of all concerned group members. Hopefully we will be able to accomplish this and deliver an even better report than before with one more asset to the group.

Week 12: March 24-28

This week, we assigned group tasks that would aid in developing project deliverables as efficiently as possible. I agreed to the task of leading the project writing demands. Given my areas of study in rhetoric and applied context, I hope to serve this group function well. Chris has agreed to lead the design portion of the group project, having a successful foothold in the area from our previous group project. Likewise, Ross shows enthusiasm in the editing process for both visual and textual production elements. Having proved himself in these areas before, he will be a fine asset in this regard. Ross will also be assisting Charu, our lead client liaison, in managing group relations with our client. After compiling a Gantt chart this week to coincide with our memo deliverable, we have agreed to meet with the client by the end of the week, or as soon as possible.

Week 13: March 31-April 4

As a group, we met with our client shortly before constructing the design proposal to narrow down any last minute deliverable decisions. It was decided that we should adhere to an informational brochure for students and decided we may wish to incorporate a flyer or two in order to help the advertising process. Our work has thus far coincided with our Gantt chart, and we are expected to meet with Barbara later this week to for pre-drafting conferences. However, due to "Windows" operation hours it has been difficult setting up a meeting time that all will allow all group members to be accounted for. We have thus decided to sent our group liaison, Charu, to see our client and report back any important decisions to us. As we have already discussed major design plans in our previous meeting, we feel any supplemental information can be mediated by our liaison this weekend. We hope to be able to work out a more convenient time next week for when we present our draft to the client.

Week 14: April 7-11

Charu reported back to the group this week after corresponding with Barbara via e-mail. We were informed by Barbara that we now have her total backing in regards to any and all project deliverables, and that due to activities and events taking place at "Windows," it may be more difficult to reach her for the next week or so. We find this to be a minor inconvenience at most, as we have already discussed major project deliverables with Barbara. After assessing project criteria, we set out to construct the brochure and flyer. Both were rather simple, thanks in part to the comprehensive "Windows" website we were granted permission to use for source material and visuals. As such, our brochure mimics the style of the website itself intentionally so as to generate visual consistency for aesthetic purposes. We met Wednesday to construct a simplistic flyer created in Photoshop on transparent background for easy printing. With major project deliverables now drafted, we are taking instructor comments from today's conference into consideration and hope to have a finalized draft we will forward to Barbara by early next week. We will then focus the rest of our time on the upcoming oral presentation.

Week 15: April 14-18

After meeting for instructor conferencing this Monday, we utilized in-class time on Wednesday to discuss any necessary changes to the brochure and flyer. Several aesthetic and design changes were incorporated, and we agreed to do more in order to make the flyer stand out as a wall-based deliverable. A decision to print the flyer in bright pink was made, and images were collected by Ross to fill our rough draft image holders. We also discussed the presentation, distributing particular presentation topics that we all prepared individually for out of class. We will be addressing the final assessment document over the weekend in preparation for the submission next week.

Week 16: April 21-25

Our final week involved a brief collaborative discussion on Wednesday detailing what final changes would be necessary to complete our deliverables for the client. Given the lack of feedback, but general acceptance of our work thus far, we anticipate that any last minute changes would be acceptable. The group constructed the postmortem after collaboration, and we focused primarily around our successes and failures that had only been touched on briefly during our presentation. This has allowed us to better reflect on our findings in relation to client relations and what we can do to improve such relations in the future. Ross and Chris were tasked with the finalizing of deliverable printing on professional brochure paper, and worked in Publisher to implement any final standardizations, such as brochure size, and other technical elements. This would ensure that printing could be carried our seamlessly and electronic sources would be ready for publishing when handed over to the client for the final time.

The group is overall satisfied with the project outcome, and everyone seems pleased with the results. Working as a group again with Chris and Ross has been a pleasure, now having established our strengths and knowing what each of us could learn from (and from each other), and Charu was a welcome addition to the group process. It was a process that I would certainly hope will be emulated in my future writing courses.