Blog 24 - Exit Interview

1. What is your essential question, and what are your answers? What is your best answer and why?
• EQ: How can a website's design make content more engaging?
• Three Approaches to Design:
• Marketing
• Visual & Outlook
• Programming 
• My best answer would be 
2. What process did you take to arrive at this answer?
• At first it was difficult trying to figure out a focus when it came to my topic. Even coming up with an essential question was difficult. However, I just kept reading various articles, blog posts, and the few scholarly articles that did pertain to my topic and pieced together the three approaches or methods to design that kept popping up in most of my sources.
3. What problems did you face? How did you resolve them?
• The most difficult problem was trying to find a focus. With this topic, there were a multitude of ways I could have gone, but I felt as though they were either too simple or out of my league. For instance, I initially tried to focus on the programming aspect of web design which would have been more "web development" and while my mentor could have helped with that, there simply wasn't too much to go on or I would have needed to learn all the coding languages and that would have been impossible to do in one school year. So I just kept reading and doing more research until something clicked when I began to notice the three methods mentioned above and how they kept recurring in many of the sources I used. I also asked different people such as my mentor other experts on their opinions as to what I should focus on.
4. What are the two most significant sources you used to answer your essential question and why?
•  Business 2 Community: A website that that strives to be an open community where business professionals can establish their thought leadership, increase exposure, and network with others. Their aim is to provide a balanced view of the current business landscape based on industry news and trends, as well as the real-life experiences from expert contributors. This site has provided me with numerous articles that pertained to all three of my answers that were helpful because they almost always came with a personal touch/real-life examples that made things a lot easier to understand.
• Google Web Designer Community (+ other communities): While most would not think that forums would be the most credible sources for information, these helped a lot in figuring out what works and what doesn't work. For instance, many programmers/designers would need a help and pose a question where a number of people would provide possible solutions and it is still up to you to decide which solution is best and will help your cause in the long run.