Final Report

ISYS100MQ
ASSIGNMENT 2: BLOG CREATION
REPORT ON OUR GROUP BLOG:
YUM! YUM! TASTE http://yumyumtaste.bloggerspot.com
Our Group: Georgia Hiatt, Margaret Page, Grace Ge
Practical Class (13) Wednesday 13:00 E6A.110

1. Explain why you chose the blog topic.
The choice of our blog topic – ‘great recipes for lovers of Vegetarian, Chinese, Italian and Sweet dishes’ was initially selected as we shared an interest in food and having a blog about great recipes with each of our favourite food categories was a mutually attractive idea. Yum! Yum! Taste was created in our first group meeting.
Yum! Yum! Taste shortly evolved into more than just a blog about great recipes as we also wanted it to be interesting, rewarding and fun for our followers. The recipes are the main interest factor and relevant to each category including special occasions such as ‘Mother’s Day’ coming up; the great lunch specials, explained below, are the rewarding factor; and the feeding of our ‘hungry fish’, located at the bottom of the blog page, is the fun factor which is incorporated in the final design.
The reward factor: A suggestion was put forward to Mark Parry from the Food & Beverage Campus Experience at Macquarie University that The Globe uni restaurant offer some ‘great lunch specials’ which we would then feature and blog about throughout this assignment. Mark thought it was a great idea and has providing three weeks of great lunch specials offered at The Globe at Macquarie University which we are now featuring as $5.00 meal deal specials that last a week at a time. A free 600ml bottle of water will be included in all of the deals we feature in our blog.
Another reason we selected the great recipes topic for our blog was that food and recipes are visually wonderful and enticing and from that perspective, would make Yum! Yum! Taste a great blog for our followers.

2. What were the largest challenges with a team assignment?
Working in a team is always a challenge, especially when compared to working individually. This is because, working in a team we have to be able to balance the tasks and coordinate meetings and other commitments. There were a few challenges whilst working together to produce the blog. The first challenge was that the blog only has one account and therefore we had to all choose times to post that wouldn’t clash with each other. Secondly, it is the first time working together and we didn’t have much time to get to know and understand each other. I think the most challenging thing was timing. Because blogging was not a habitual activity for us we didn’t have time to get used to posting every day. This was a really challenging task and we did not manage our time very well and we could have possibly posted some more interesting blogs.

3.How did you come up with the final design that you used?
Our blog has a very womanly touch to it. This can be seen through the use of pinks and purples as the main colour themes. We feel that these colours added a warm touch to the blog and were inviting to people who were coming to read our blog. Furthermore, the colours we used allow for attention to be drawn to the blog and the content being posted.
We used the right hand side bar as a place to advertise the University cafe, ‘the globe’. We posted adds for their weekly specials including $5 lunches and pictures of the food they served. We also placed all our major gadgets and categorisation methods on the right hand side of the page as we believed this to be the most obvious place for people to look for them.
All of our blog posts contain pictures of the food we have been discussing in the post so as to give the reader an idea of the kind of food they’d be able to create if they follow our handy hints and tips for cooking.

4. Compare your blog to one with similar content to yourself and critically analyse your blog.
The Food Blog (http://thefoodblog.com.au/) is a blog that also focuses on recipes like our own blog. This blog is very well produced in comparison to ours. The layout is flawless and runs smoothly and nothing is cramped and squeezed together. Our blog, in comparison is much more cluttered and messy, however, it is a good job for first time bloggers. I believe that had we of had the time and skills we could have brought our blog to this level also.
Furthermore the ‘food blog’ has many more links and posts compared to our blog. Our blog contains the bare minimum. However again i do believe that had we of had more time/ managed our time more appropriately we would have been able to incorporate many different themes rather than the bare essentials.
On a whole i do believe that we have made a valiant effort for first time bloggers, we have incorporated all aspects of design that we were expected to and we have made an effort to keep on top of our posting. In the future, if we were to repeat this task we believe to improve we would manage our time more effectively and possibly take a different approach to the way we format our posts and design.
The food blog is a professional blog, so in comparison to ours it is amazing, ours is very amateur, however we have tried our best.