According to my project plan, yesterday was the day I conducted my focus group (used to gather information on the features the site needs to have), and starting Monday, I’ll should begin writing the project’s functional specification – based on the information gathered from the focus group.

The truth is that I’ve done it the other way around! For all purposes intent, the functional specification is complete, and yet the focus group is not happening until Thursday 17th! What’s going on?

According to my original project plan, this coming Thursday was indeed the day that the focus group was due to happen, but some last minute changes to the plan, including the removal of an interviewing stage, and the adding of a testing stage, resulted in the project becoming six days behind schedule.

The invites and confirmations for the focus group had already gone out, and it was just not practical to reschedule – so I had to make up time somewhere, which is why I started working on the functional specification.

Now it might seem foolish to try and write a specification before you know what the site is meant to do – but as this is my own project, I already know what the site is meant to do. Admittedly the results of the focus group could throw up some unexpected results, such as new features, or features that no one likes – which would obviously need to be modified in the specification – but the majority of the existing specification is unlikely to change.

So, what am I doing today then, if the specification is already complete, and the focus group is not until Thursday? I’m glad you asked.

Following the focus group and specification stages of the plan is a cognitive walk-through stage designed to help evaluate the usability of the sites interfaces. What interfaces? I hear you ask! The ones that I’ve been drawing all week.

(Wow, it does take me a long time to tell a story.)

Getting to the point, for the past week I’ve been using pen and paper to mock-up various layouts for the site’s interface. This includes (among others) the header and footer of the site, the homepage, the story database pages, and the chapter view page. The problem is, for me at least, it’s hard to represent an electronic medium on paper. I was able to successfully draw out an idea for the homepage (right), but wasn’t really happy with the results of any of the other pages I’d drawn.

So yesterday I decided to take a different approach. Inspired by a feature in this month’s edition of .net magazine, I’m going to use the 960 Grid System to mock up the layout for each of the pages required for the cognitive walk-through.

The 960 Grid System (along with other CSS frameworks of its type) have been criticised for their lack of semantics, and, while perfectly acceptable for use within a live system, are not truly the best option, especially when viewed from an accessibility point of view. But as I’m not planning on using them in the live system, only for the cognitive walk-through, the 960 Grid System provides exactly what I need.

So anyway, that’s my day – what do you have planned?

Update

I’ve now finished building four pages using the 960 Grid System, and I quite like how they have turned out. They’re still rough, and would not in any way be suitable for use within a live system, but they more than suitable for the cognitive walk-through (which according to my plan, needs to happen on the 25th).

Anyway, here is a screen shot of the homepage so you can compare it with the drawn example above:

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