Journal #12

Another journal entry…the big news is that I submitted all of my hard work to SMI this week. As you might recall from previous posts, they gave me a navigation change a couple of weeks ago. This was big. And I really felt like it was bad. Well, it was bad and good. The negative part was that I felt because it was so late in the game, it was really disorganized of SMI. The navigation is a huge part of the site, and it’s usually something that is done very early on. It organizes how users get to pages, the feel of the site, in general – it organizes the site.

Regardless, they submitted the new navigation…and wanted a few new pages. I completed the new navigation and the new pages within a couple of weeks and submitted all of my final work to them. I heard back a few days later that the project had been squashed. My supervisor with SMI mentioned that they wanted to do a complete overhaul of the site and implement a new strategy, make it a complete project. So, this was a disappointing blow. But – to be honest, it was not at all surprising. This project really took some turns throughout…from the beginning, it had been posed as a redesign of a couple of pages: the homepage, the real data page, and the technology page.

But as we went further and further with the redesign, the changes kept happening and happening…and some of this was definitely my fault. I felt like had I submitted a proposal of everything that would change and why (at the very beginning), then this would not have happened. But I think in part because the project was proposed to me so informally, I didn’t think much of it. I had worked with them before, I’m very familiar with the company, with the employees and the general way that they work. Anyway, long story short – they did wind up wanting me to change a few of the pages, but I’m still waiting to hear from them to upload these. And they did pay me for 5 months of work, which they later threw away. But – I got paid, so I’m slightly content.