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Evolution of the product, the Geoscience degrees website

First step, choosing the website editor

As I have never created a website before, I had to look up how I could make one. From going through domain attribution and hosting, I found 3 website creators with easy to set up website editors. As my project was more about the content then about the computational aspect of website creation, I decided to compare and use the free options these website editors gave me. I first went and tried out the GoDaddy website editor, but soon found out it was too constraining and did not allow me to achieve what I wanted. I then started using the Wix website editor, which I would end up using until the end of my website creation. I had an online meeting on the 25th of February with fellow student Lucie Pestiaux as she was also looking to create a website. She suggested the use of WordPress to me, but having already made a start on Wix and preferring the flexibility Wix offered, I decided to stay on Wix. Right now, The website is running on the free version of Wix, but can be cheaply upgraded in order to give it its independent domain, thus making it appear on search engines.

Evolution of the layout

The website is supposed to appeal to students aged 15-17 years old that are already curious about STEM subjects, but have never come across geosciences. In order to do that, I needed to include a lot of graphics (images and diagrams) and show that a geoscience career (and university degrees) are accessible to all Scottish students. The advertised highlight of the website was the interactive flowchart (Degree finder). This was completed rather fast (even though it might need further refining). What took the most time was setting up the home page as well as deciding the extend that I realistically could cover in this website. At first, I spread myself thin by writing short, paragraphs for most sections I envisaged. This lead to me having way to many pages on my website, that I would never have the time to finish properly in time, especially alongside an increase in workload from my masters thesis. This lead to me scrapping the sections about further career options (industry, consultancy, surveys…), as there are already good resources about it by the Geological Society of London (here), and that the main focus about my website was about geoscience degrees. The home page as well as the list of degrees (Degree explorer) went to many editing and review phases, as the layout must be as inviting and easy to navigate as possible.

This lead to the part where I had to design a page for each geoscience degree. I first wrote the geology page, as having done this degree myself, it was the easiest to talk about. I had presented it many times in the past during outreach events and prospective student days where I volunteered regularly. After finishing this page and settling on a “standard” layout, I moved on by using it as a template for the other degrees I was presenting.

Where were my shortcomings, and how to improve them?

My website ended up achieving most of what it was planned to do, but there is always room for improvement.

Firstly, in my website, I only cover the 5 main geoscience degrees as taught in the School of Geosciences at Edinburgh University. With more time (or better time management), I could include such section for each area of study linked to those degrees (like volcanology, sedimentology, oceanography, hydrogeology…). This would take an extensive amount of time, but would greatly improve the quality of the website by allowing it to show a more holistic view of the scope of Earth sciences. These additional options could then be featured within the interactive personality test.

Secondly, the interactive personality test could be more polished. As I created this quiz to “find what geology degree would suit you best”, with a broader range of possible outcomes, I could make it more targeted. A main shortcoming with this personality test is that, as I am using the services of a third party (opinion stage), I am limited by their business plan. If I learned how to create such personality tests from scratch, or subscribed to their services instead of using their free option, I would be able to make a more logic system between questions, allowing me to ask questions that take into account the previous answers.

Thirdly, the timing of my website was off. As I endured delays due to late responses from our client and an increase of workload from my master thesis, my website was live, but not finished, when we sent emails to schools to register to for Leonluca’s webinar. Looking back at the website statistics, this was the period when the most people actually used the website. Since the website has been finished (a week after the webinars), no significant number of people used the website, as it is difficult to find at the moment. This could be solved by changing the domain to make it show up in search engines, or putting a link about it on the relevant web-pages. In the future, timing of release will have to be at hart of the development of the website.

 

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