Everyone is here now so we’re now going through the task list as it exists. We’re also going through the fundamentals to find out the needs of the organization itself. Clients, in my experience, often are fixated on the specific fixes they want to see, so designers / developers have to ask for the reason behind the requests.

• List of Organization Needs
• Contributing Factors to Program Success
• What “Interactivity” means to the Organization

One thing that came up is that EV currently isn’t sure how people are using the website. There has been very little feedback. Interactivity, from the organization’s perspective, means getting people to interact with the site. Me, as a former game developer, thinks of interactivity as getting the computer to respond to users, and so I tend to think about solving a particular information challenge with appropriate code and design.

Ultimately, EV would like to see more feedback, comments, and so forth. There are some comments on the site, but they are a source of mystery: there are actually NO comment forms on the site currently. This means that the comments are bypassing the interface by calling the scripts directly. Akismet, the spam filtering plugin, isn’t catching these for some reason. We could install more aggressive filtering plugins that try to detect robot behavior, but I find that sometimes these prevent legitimate comments from being posted.

LUNCH was wraps. I had a very good Italian wrap and an OK chicken wrap. Could have used some more mayonnaise. Had a tasty cup of clam chowder while looking across the Charles River at the Prudential Center. Feeling pretty New Englandy!

…

It’s now around 415PM, and we’ve been knocking of a few of the small changes:

• Facebook / Twitter Integration: FIXED (a weird combination of javascript script rot and Firefox AddOns)
• Reworking the front page layout
• Going through some CSS 101

We also got “Rip van Wafels” cookies, or Stroopwafels. Dutch syrup-soaked cookies, or something.