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Online portfolio repository for students of architecture
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Online portfolio repository for students of architecture
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INFORMATION TO USERS This manuscript has been reproduced from the microfilm master. UMI films the text directly from the original or copy submitted. Thus, some thesis and dissertation copies are in typewriter face, while others may be from any type of computer printer. The quality o f th is reproduction is dependent upon the quality o f the copy subm itted. Broken or indistinct print, colored or poor quality illustrations and photographs, print bleedthrough, substandard margins, and improper alignment can adversely affect reproduction. In the unlikely event that the author did not send UMI a complete manuscript and there are missing pages, these will be noted. Also, if unauthorized copyright material had to be removed, a note will indicate the deletion. Oversize materials (e.g.. maps, drawings, charts) are reproduced by sectioning the original, beginning at the upper left-hand comer and continuing from left to right in equal sections with small overlaps. Photographs included in the original manuscript have been reproduced xerographicaHy in this copy. Higher quality 6" x 9” black and white photographic prints are available for any photographs or illustrations appearing in this copy for an additional charge. Contact UMI directly to order. ProQuest Information and Learning 300 North Zeeb Road. Ann Arbor, Ml 48106-1346 USA 800-521-0600 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. ONUNE PORTFOLIO REPOSITORY FOR STUDENTS OF ARCHITECTURE Copyright 2001 by Bean Ching Law A Thesis Presented to the FACULTY OF THE GRADUATE SCHOOL UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree MASTER OF BUILDING SCIENCE August 2001 Bean Ching Law Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. UMI Number: 1409594 _ _ _( J > UMI UMI Microform 1409594 Copyright 2002 by ProQuest Information and Learning Company. All rights reserved. This microform edition is protected against unauthorized copying under Title 17, United States Code. ProQuest Information and Learning Company 300 North Zeeb Road P.O. Box 1346 Ann Arbor, Ml 48106-1346 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA The Graduate School U niversity Park LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA 900894695 This thesis, w ritte n b y E5EAN C n iM C y L N W U nder th e d irectio n o f h jL J k . . Thesi s C om m i ttee, an d approved b y a ll its members, has been presented to an d accepted by The G raduate School , in p a rtia l fu lfillm e n t o f requirem ents fo r the degree o f J f e f f V o f A a ild in g Science D ate THESIS C O M M ! VC- ~ r urperson N i t t y k a le . )T P Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS “All you need to do to receive guidance is to ask for it and then listen. ” - (Sanaya Roman) The success of any project requires the help and guidance of many people. I was very fortunate to have quite a few people who constantly inspired me and supported me even when everything was looking really bleak. In those times in the process of my work, where I felt very low and lost, the presence and attitude of these people lifted my spirits and made the challenge worthwhile. I would like to thank a whole list of friends and well-wishers who have in some way or the other meant something to me. I apologize to anyone I may have missed out. It does not mean that I am not thankful to them, it is just that I got tired and careless. To all my friends and well-wishers, “You mean a lot to me, more than I can put down in words". The list is not in any particular order. My heartfelt gratitude and love go out to all those people who mean so much to me, even those not mentioned here. My parents, who have always been there by my side unquestioning and unconditionally. I hope that I am able to fulfill your dreams and live up to your standards of life and values. There are no words that can express my feelings for you as I write my thesis report. You have been a source of inspiration and have given me the strength to go the extra mile. Your complete trust and confidence in my abilities have given me the courage to do and achieve what I have today. I am what I am because of you. ii Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. My sister Sweety Law, without whom I would not have been here in the first place. I owe a lot to her love and affection. My brother Ben, He is the backbone on which I depend on in times of trouble. My sister Lily, She’s the best anyone can ask for. I love you dearest Lily. My cousin Robert, Your faith in me has always kept me going. I pray that our dreams are fulfilled one day. Prof. Marc Schiler, Director of the Masters of Building Science Program School of Architecture, University of Southern California and my thesis chairman. I am grateful for all that you have done for me. I hope that I can live up to your expectations of me. I will never forget the good times we had at your Thanksgiving parties and the dinners in the MBS LAB. I apologize for any of the times that I may have been totally unbearable and hope that I can make you proud of me. Mr. Steve Bucher, Faculty Advisor, lllumin. School of Engineering, University of Southern California. You have been one of the best guide and mentor I have had. I am thankful for all the good times we have had in putting together the magazine and my thesis. I have learnt so many things from you without your knowledge. Ms. Jody Cherry, Director of Admissions, Department of Architecture. You have been very sweet and helpful all through my application process. I am thankful for all that you have done for me. Mr. Nitin Kale, Lecturer ITP, Department of Engineering, University of Southern California, for agreeing to be my advisor at such a short notice and giving me so valuable feedback. Mr. Bill Lennartz, adjunct Professor, Marshall School of Business, University of Southern California, for all your encouraging words and guidance. iii Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Karen Kensek and Doug Noble, for helping me critique my work. My friends in the MBS school, Maili Sekiguchi, Nazanin Zarkesh, Nazneen Sabavala, Manu Juyal, Sreemathi Iyer, Jim, Sui Fang, Felipe Hernandez, Khaled Mohammad Al-Jammaz, Ghosson Al Khaled and everybody else for the excellent times together. My roommate Manu Juyal deserves a second mention. He has been a sweet all round, all weather friend and brother to me. I am lucky to have him as family. Judith Leuppi, my dearest friend, my family, here in USC. Maili Sekiguchi, for pushing me on when I was feeling too lazy to work. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. TABLE OF CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ii LIST OF FIGURES vii ABSTRACT ix CHAPTER I BACKGROUND 1 1.1 Introduction 1 1.2 Goal and Guiding Principles 2 1.2.1 Goal 2 1.2.2 Guiding Principles 3 1.3 Architecture and Architects 5 1.4 The Web as a Repository of Information 9 1.5 Searching the Web 10 1.6 The Need for Having an Online Portfolio 14 CHAPTER II RESEARCH AND ANALYSIS 16 2.1 The Internet and Architects 16 2.1.1 Research by American Institute of Architects 16 2.1.2 The Internet Count 18 2.1.3 The Internet Timeline 19 2.1.4 Architects and the World of Hypertext 20 2.1.5 The Architecture Student Portfolio 22 2.1.6 The Advantages of Having an Online Portfolio 24 2.2 Individual Portfolios Versus a Repository 25 2.2.1 Pros and Cons of Having an Individual Online Portfolio 25 2.2.2 Pros and Cons of Having a Portfolio in the Repository 27 2.3 Student Reactions and Suggestions 28 2.4 Study of Alternative Software Technologies 29 2.5 Snapshots of Student Work on the Web 34 2.5.1 http://www.geodties.com/CollegePark/Lab/7689/ffame.html 35 2.5.2 http://www.arch.utah.edu/pinonrg/portfolio2.htm 36 2.5.3 http://www.alecng.com 37 2.5.4 http://branson_young.tripod.com/ 39 2.5.5 http://www.ehardaway.org/ 40 2.5.6 http://members.tripod.com/~fgli/portfolio.html 4 1 2.5.7 http://m_syracuse.tripod.com/index.htrnl 42 2.5.8 http://www.whazo.com/ 43 2.5.9 General Observations About the Student Portfolios 44 v Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. CHAPTER III INFERENCE 46 3.1 Limitations 46 3.2 Scope of Project 48 CHAPTER IV THE ONLINE PORTFOLIO REPOSITORY 49 4.1 Resources Used and Needed. 49 4.2 Software Requirement 50 4.3 Hardware Requirement 50 4.4 Architecture of the Site 5 1 4.5 The Flow of the Web Site 52 4.6 The Input Process 54 4.7 Roadmap 57 4.7.1 The Portfolio Gateway 57 4.7.2 The Projects Manager 59 4.7.3 The Project Details 60 4.7.4 The Page Layout 6 1 4.7.5 The Page View 63 4.7.6 The Search Page 64 4.7.7 The Search Results 66 4.8 Test of Proposed Repository 68 CHAPTER V PLANS FOR THE FUTURE 69 CHAPTER VI CONCLUSION 71 CHAPTER VII GLOSSARY OF TERMS 73 BIBLIOGRAPHY 79 APPENDIX 8 1 APPENDIX A: Pros and Cons of Having an Individual Online Portfolio 8 1 APPENDIX B: Pros and Cons of Having a Portfolio in the Repository 82 APPENDIX C: Questionnaire Given to Students 83 APPENDIX D: Frequently Asked Questions 84 APPENDIX E: Disclaimer and Terms of Use 87 vi Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. LIST OF FIGURES Figure 1 Architecture: a feat of engineering? 6 Figure 2 Drawing, Model and reality, the architect’s creation. 8 Figure 3 The Masters of Building Science Tools dissemination page. 9 Figure 4 Google.com: Stanford University’s creation. One of the most popular search engines today. 12 Figure 5 Source: American Institute of Architects 17 Figure 6 An online portfolio that proudly has a picture of the creator 22 Figure 7 The small images when clicked pop up larger ones 35 Figure 8 A well laid out site with small thumbnails 36 Figure 9 A flashy site with sound and animation 37 Figure 10 A simple layout with easy links 39 Figure 1 1 A one-page site with pop-ups. 40 Figure 12 A folder type design, with thumbnails. 4 1 Figure 13 A custom sized window to probably mimic a paper portfolio. 42 Figure 14 A site full of 3-D renderings but placed in image mapped tables. 43 Figure 15 The navigation flow through the proposed repository 52 Figure 16 The Process of uploading a portfolio to the site 54 Figure 17 The Login Page 57 Figure 18 The Project Manager Screen 59 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Figure 19 Entering the Project Details 60 Figure 20 The Page Layout and File Transfer Page 6 1 Figure 21 A View of a Page 63 Figure 22 The Search Engine 64 Figure 23 The Search Results Page with the Thumbnails 66 Figure 24 The Instruction Flyer Given to Students 68 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. ABSTRACT According to a research study conducted by the American Institute of Architects [2000], the third most important use of the Internet by architectural firms is to recruit and post jobs. This project aims to provide a repository of design work by students of architecture. Its also aims is to demonstrate the usefulness of the Internet to architects. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. CHAPTER I BACKGROUND 1.1 Introduction “Creativity is dynamic, it asserts life, frees the human spirit, conquers mental lassitude and illness, and makes real the outrageous potential of the universal imagination. ” - Robert Genn The Internet has seen tremendous growth in the last decade. The number of users accessing the web for research purposes has increased exponentially. Architects too have started to use the web extensively for research and marketing. Many architectural firms have started to post their work on websites. This follows the global trend of using the web as another marketing tool or medium. A job fair is held once every year at the Department of Architecture, University of Southern California. A month before this fair, students are advised to make 2000 copies of their resumes to be handed to the school for distribution throughout the country. The inherent drawback to this is that the chief criterion for selection in most architectural firms is the portfolio and not the resume. At the fair, less than 100 firms are usually represented. This accounts for a small percentage of the 2000 resumes submitted. Even with this small number of firms, most students carry a single copy of their portfolio that they show to the two or three firm representatives present. With the large number of students submitting their resumes and showing their portfolios to each of the firms, it can be assumed that the firm representatives would have liked to have a copy of the portfolio to take back to their office. They could then use the copy of portfolio for further discussions with other office principals, before deciding to call a few of the students for an interview when needed. Without the 1 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. portfolio, they have to rely on the one or two page resume and their own memory of the portfolios. It is obviously not the best situation for most students. The representatives would only be able to link some portfolios to names and forget a majority of the others. 1.2 Goal and Guiding Principles “All successful people men and women are big dreamers. They imagine what their future could be, ideal in every respect, and then they work every day toward their distant vision, that goal or purpose." - (Brian Tracy) 1.2.1 Goal The goal of this thesis is to create an online repository for the display of resumes and portfolios of the projects of students of architecture. This site will allow the students to display their work online to potential recruiters, employers and others. It aims to be a stop for any person interested in the work of an architecture student. The University of Southern California (USC) School of Architecture w ill be used as a test model for the proposed web site, the students of the school being representative of all the other students of architecture. With respect to the job fairs discussed in section 1.1, if the students list their online portfolio in the repository in the 2000 resumes sent out, they would have managed to send their portfolio to 2000 firms, with minimum effort. Due to the tremendous range of possibilities in many aspects of the thesis, a list of guiding principles had to be formulated to get the work into focus. These principles help contain the site within measurable parameters and keep the thesis within bounds. 2 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. The primary aim of “helping the students of Architecture display their work to the world” is the chief driving force behind the formulation of most of the principles. The attempt is to assist the large majority of students who would definitely benefit from having a portfolio on the Internet. This thesis aims to demonstrate the usefulness of the Internet in disseminating information. It attempts to highlight usefulness of the Internet to architecture professionals. The advantages of using the Internet for architectural projects are manifold. It is one of the easier ways of getting the architect’s work seen by others. The repository demonstrates an easy method of having an online portfolio with a low learning curve. 1.2.2 Guiding Principles The site designed shall try to adhere to the guiding principles determined from my interviews with students, teachers and professionals and analysis of existing student portfolios on the web (See section 2.5). These principles are outlined below: 1. The design should be tasteful with minimal clutter of content This is because most architects are extremely sensitive to design issues and organization. Although it is difficult to satisfy all tastes, pastel shades and an uncluttered look will please most. 2. Navigation should be simple with as little depth of links as possible. This will help amateurs and novices in navigating through the site. 3. Site layout and design itself should not be gaudy with heavy graphics. This will ensure fast download of the site itself and assure 3 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. repeat viewers. At the same time the site will not overwhelm the architectural work it is trying to highlight. 4. Visitors should not be overwhelmed by the site, but by the quality o f f student architecture work. Our purpose is only one: to provide the viewer with quality views of student architectural work. 5. The flow o f f the portfolio should be clear and intuitive. This is so that a visitor can browse the portfolio easily and understand the statement of the student. It is extremely important to make this experience a happy one for the viewer because this is probably their first look at the work of the student concerned. 6. High quality graphics and images should be permitted on the site. This is the one thing that sets architecture apart from most of the other disciplines. By its very nature of being highly visual, one only expects that portfolios of young architects would have to be graphically intensive. 7. Students should be able to distinguish their portfolio from others, in some manner with a personal logo or icon. The idea behind this is that architecture teaches the students to develop a personal style. Hence, the repository must try to permit the students to have something that is their own signature design on their portfolio. This is achieved through the logo that appears like a cover page on the portfolio. 8. It should be assumed that the majority o ff students are not very web savvy. A survey of a batch of 100 students of the third year class was conducted. The survey tried to explore the usage pattern of the Internet 4 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. and computers in general, among this representative student group. The result of the survey is that most students are not seasoned users of the web, for example preferring to use the more intuitive free online email services to using the more arcane “telnet" for emails. This suggests that most would probably have a large learning curve to study web designing. The students have a fairly good knowledge of using Computer Aided Design tools and photo-editing tools like AutoCAD, Adobe Photoshop and others. So the web input for the repository will be kept very simple. It will only require their knowledge of the Computer Aided Design software, the photo-editing software and online email file attachments. (See Appendix C for details) 9. The design of the site should fulfill the needs of most of the students. It is a known fact that even as students, architects develop a very individualistic style. Thus, it is not possible to fulfill the portfolio needs of all of the student body. But, it can be so designed as to fulfill most of the needs. 1.3 Architecture and Architects The world of architecture is a world full of visually stimulating images and views. Architecture, as seen through the eyes of laymen, can take many different forms. It is a play of light and shade, a splashing display of colors and their different hues, a fascinating composition of three dimensional volumes and spaces, a balance between nature and humans, a compromise between form and function, an art of science, the science of art, a dance of rhythm and feats of courage and engineering. 5 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Figure 1 Architecture: a feat of engineering? These varied perspectives on any human creation are a natural phenomenon. A work of art or architecture draws varied reactions from different people, some of utter disgust, some of acceptance, some of admiration and some of glorifying superlatives. Architects, on the other hand, are the creators of these objects, which may leave a permanent mark on the face of the earth or disappear into the pages of books. Whatever the case may be, architects are the ones who visualize the building before it takes a concrete form and sometimes even before it takes the form of a line on a piece of paper. 6 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. The responsibility of the architect is to convert their vision to lines on paper and then finally to the concrete object. The attempt is to recreate the vision originally on paper or any other media, as perfectly as possible. For this purpose, the architect has a wide array of tools. Most of these tools are taught throughout the course of study while some is leamt later in practicing. Hand-drawn sketches, watercolor paintings, foam board models, computer models, engineering drawings etc. are some of the more common tools used. The architects’ drawings are part of their attempts to explain their vision to others. How accurately the final object matches the vision is a measure of their success or failure in communicating that vision. It is thus imperative that he/she explains with complete clarity and lucidity what he/she has in mind. They may need to augment the explanation with three-dimensional models, computer generated models or even hand drawn perspectives. See Figure 2 for example. By using the same palette of colors a painter could create many different paintings. In the same manner an architect could create totally different spaces within the same constraints of time, space, bylaws and materials. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. To... Figure 2 Drawing, Model and reality, the architect's creation. 1 2 The three-dimensional computer model of the renowned “Falling W ater' house by Frank Lloyd Wright was created long after the house was actually built. It is used here as an illustrative image to show what could have been done. Sometimes great architectural work goes through a reverse process of having the concrete structure modeled after they are built. These are normally study models, made to understand the depth of the original architects thinking. Great examples are the works of Le Corbusier, Frank Lloyd Wright, Mies Van De Rohe and others. The three dimensional model in Figure 2 is an example of this kind of work. The transformation from thought to lines, lines to colors, colors to a three- dimensional model and then finally to a concrete tangible structure is a process through which most projects have to go through. It is in documenting this process that the portfolio serves its best purpose. Thus, we see rough sketches by great architects like Frank Lloyd Wright adorning many books and museums. These rough sketches, when compared to the final structure bear an uncanny resemblance to each other. This is what architecture is all about. 1 http://www.math.umd.edu/-dng/WorldCoijrses/UNIV118/ARCH/FallingWater.html, Dr. Justin Wyss-Gallifent, University of Maryland. 2 http://www.ucalgary.ca/EV/virtual1/6833894/images/flwt0b.gif-Michael Wilson. University of Calgary 1998 8 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 1.4 The Web as a Repository of Information “Websites have become the equivalent of libraries, in which information and references are stored. But websites are also hardware stores and car garages, which can supply tools and equipment and even repairs and updates for existing tools... Websites are an ideal library for the dissemination of multi-platform computer simulations and tutorials. They represent such a significant leap in the combination of these potentials that they will change the way that we teach and disseminate information."3 EB D ^ -83310' < > < » r - .l4 ~3 Lflhtwup Design Guide AuWar M i O d GwWj O w ip e a n u y t n a t N a laaW M ietaal an b f M a f 4 Solar Masking Calculator u m i s»a i «i« M aw h C r i i m i « « i < m i # m * fw a a n t n a n w m a w m w aatM M # ew a nt* a * a*anm e w* aawnaaw at a aaW n ia i sate, an a >a > w l a ta aa tan an a nan > a M « M • # * « t * » VRSolar A u tfttr M iK J a a Oaanaeaa VHtala* m a taaa^w j taa« mhM> a W M L m m iid im w y e n I l i a aiw aw eai aa« m w M MWfta a w A a ale Nam M r »am» m wawnf wa Miai pawsan at a y aw ama. Law uaaawa n«9«a R iH S m l. m . b l. B u ild in g A d vil . r AaWat liana Manalan« Oaawiaean Tina m m « arf anwea iMa i n w a a i a We K w h ana We t w a T h tiM anawa a a* an » Law uaaawa mm a tw y w N«aa Nana C o n c M ll in H « H T t y iif o r O ilW a Tanaan DeaMtWen raw iirtaiaWNe « a l awa aaawam m >anaa maaaa 1 naW>anWai ■n awiamga it w»a» We Wee* aa aaU aa pieatSe iaaa aaaaa m a n ana aetaalWew < a > Waaaw aateaiWMn* Law utaaw a Onaatna Niwwna Naaa Q H | 9 u w llo i i i a Figure 3 The Masters of Building Science Tools dissemination page.4 3 Marc Schiler, Madhu Gupta, Anish Tripathi, Karen Kensek and Doug Noble, Websites as a Technology Transfer Library and Software Dissemination Source, 2000 4 http://www.usc.edu/dept/architecture/mbs/tools/ecstools.html, The Univ. of Southern California Master of Building Science web page. 9 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Figure 3 is a snapshot of the website of the University of Southern California, Master of Building Science Laboratory. It is an excellent example of using the web as on online repository of software and tools used in the architectural trade. It presents an insight into the possibilities that the web offers by its nature of being accessible at any time and in any place through out the world. The Internet is one of the largest collections of information in the world. With over 80 million computers connected to the web, the amount of information it has is mind- boggling. The massive amount of information available is overwhelming in content, language and locations. Thus, one of the first problems facing a user is finding relevant information. The website discussed above is a step using the web as a library of software tools and tutorials. This makes it easy for architecture students and professionals to look for relevant tools and information in one location, much like a library specializing in architecture books. 1.5 Searching the Web “In this mode, the Web is the beginning of a "virtual library" or "library without walls." Because individuals are able to publish their own material, every conceivable topic now has a reference site on the Web. This raises two major issues: How do we find what we are looking for? How do we know the quality of what we find?”5 Indeed, how does one start looking for something in a library? 5 The Web as Information Repository - jason.frand@anderson.uda.edu http://www.anderson.uda.edu/faajlty/jason.frand/researcher/aacsb97/repository.htm 10 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. One normally goes to a catalogue, some kind of index of everything that is available, or at least almost everything. Some others go to specialized libraries where they know that everything they have will be of a particular subject, like architecture students would go to the “art and architecture library to look up on most class projects. In the case of the Internet, most people visit search engines, some visit places they are familiar with and are sure to find something of their interest. For instance, a researcher in diabetics would probably visit a site devoted to diabetics like diabetics.com regularly; a sports fan would visit ‘ ‘espn.com'', a traveler or adventurer would visit “discovery.com", a frequent flyer would probably visit “travelodty.com", a book buyer would probably visit “amazon.com” etc. The idea is that some sites are etched in the minds of people as having a particular kind of information like the student of architecture discussed in section 1.5. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. e r a 1 »«i<^ ^CNjEifl-l mamms Google Search 13MB 3BBJXP web pages ;;Oiig>ai'^^^ISaSgBg»i55l Q t f l i .W r t M n m n r tf it m b o tg tn z td b y topic H m m t G aatm iim hIm m « « n :h rw u lli irta «nui l u n im im T A l □o-K-youna* haywortf a M ftiw ig . G ood. ArfWonH woOii Coo) Jobi • A M Gooyta\o Your S « . • A d w lii. »mh Ua • Goo91a m .our Lanauaaa - M L ______________________ zl to b a lb*—M s K t a s a a i Figure 4 Google.com: Stanford University’s creation. One of the most popular search engines today. * But what happens when people do not get what they need in the known sites? They turn to search engines like google.com (Figure 4). Most of the well-known search engines index a large number of web pages and then perform searches on the indexed database to retrieve relevant data. Some are web-spiders, which pro actively go through websites and generate a database of keywords for each site. Google.com claims to have indexed 1.346,966,000 web pages. These search 6 http://www.google.com, founded by Larry Page and Sergey Brin, PhD candidates in Stanford University in 1998. It is supposedly searching 1,346,966,000 web pages for information based on the popularity of the web page. 12 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. engines still return irrelevant pages at times. They also return dead links, which are links to sites that are either down or unavailable. In an article published in 1999 titled “Accessibility and Distribution of Information on the Web”7 by Steve Lawrence, it is claimed that 85% of the Internet surfers use search engines to locate information. An extract from the article: “What tips can you provide for those disseminating information? For those that want to disseminate information on the web, it is a good idea to register your pages with the search engines. Some engines will index registered pages within a few days and some within a few months. However, there is no guarantee that registered pages will be indexed. Many people report that they cannot get engines to index their pages at all, or that previously indexed pages have been dropped from an engine. Use your own domain name, as opposed to hosting your pages within a larger site like GeoCities. The search engines typically only index a small percentage of the large sites.” Thus, a very useful tool that will enhance the value of the online repository would be a search engine that was dedicated to finding student work by project types and which would link the work to the faculty or the student. After an extensive search of the net, it can be concluded that the likelihood of the Internet having a site like the one mentioned is very low. The search engine of the online portfolio repository will fill this lacuna in the kind of searches done in the Internet. It does not replace the standard search engines, but augments the value of search engines, with more precise results and information. 7 http://www.neci.nec.com/~lawrence/web99questions.html. 13 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 1.6 The Need for Having an Online Portfolio For the student of architecture, the one thing that makes a difference in their job interview is the portfolio. A portfolio makes or breaks their chances of getting hired. It is the most important item under consideration when a decision regarding their talent or style is made. Most hard copy (paper) portfolios are very difficult to create let alone recreate. It takes the student a lot of time to create only one of their portfolios. Then he/she has to go about recreating some copies for circulation. This is a very cumbersome and painful process that has been practiced till now, for want of a better way of exhibiting their work. Consider this scenario, a student has his/her resume sent across the nation, by the career center. The firm there is interested in the student and wants to see some samples of his/her work. In this scenario, the student has to recreate the portfolio and send it out by courier. He/she does this probably by photocopying the original or painfully recreating the original, photograph by photograph, prints by prints and page by page. Now consider this scenario. A Department of Architecture helps the students in their careers by sending out 2000 copies of their resumes nationwide. Let us assume 100 of the firms show interest in a student. He/she could do any one of the following: 1. Make 100 copies of the portfolio 2. Go to all the firms and show the portfolio personally or 3. Simply ignore 90 of the firms and send 10 copies of the portfolio. 14 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. With the repository web site, the student simply scans the portfolio and uploads it to the web site. He/she then sends out an email to each of the firms, directing them to visit the website to view the portfolio. This one portfolio can then be viewed by as many people as the student wants. At the same time it is visible to people the student is not even aware of, who may need his/her kind of talent. Another need is from the side of the recruiting firms. Let us assume that at the time the firms receive the resumes of the students, they have no vacancy to fill. Three months later, an architect leaves the firm. What do the firms do? They post the vacancy on online job sites, classifieds in the newspapers and other advertisement media. In most cases, the resumes received three months earlier are forgotten, outdated or just too cumbersome to go through. This is where the repository comes into play. By constant viewing, promoting and marketing, the URL (Universal Resource Locator) of the website would become associated with student interns from a given school, in the minds of the recruiting firms. They would just have to visit the site and search for the exact student intern they are looking for. This eliminates all the advertising and time spent interviewing many extra prospects. The ability to see the work before actually meeting a prospect decreases the total number of interviews needed to get the right recruit. This greatly benefits both the students and the firms, by saving time and energy. 15 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. CHAPTER II RESEARCH AND ANALYSIS 2.1 The Internet and Architects "New material demands new methods, and new methods fling a challenge to old convention.” - (Lawren Harris) Today, the Internet is poised to become as common a commodity as the television is. In fact, we are seeing the computers are starting to become more like the television and vise-versa. Almost every profession has had to deal with the immense popularity and importance of the Internet. We take a look at the impact the Internet has had on the architect and their reaction to it. This includes research work conducted by the American Institute of Architects, which is the largest architects’ organization in the country. 2.1.1 Research by American Institute of Architects The American Institute of Architects (AIA) conducted a research9 study in 2000 to study the use of the Internet by Architectural firms across the country. The AIA Firm Survey 2000-2002 questionnaire was mailed to a sample of 4500 AIA member- owned firms, selected from a total of almost 16,700 member-owned firms. The fourteen-page questionnaire was pre-tested with a focus group of select firms. The survey data was weighed to reflect the true population proportion of firms in each of six size categories, as well as their geographic distribution in terms of nine census regions. (See Figure 5) 8 http://www.e-architect.com 16 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Some of the important findings were: 1. Firms plan to increase their technology spending. 2. More than four times as many smaller firms have web sites now than did in 1996. 3. Over two thirds of firms with ten or more employees have Websites. FIRMS WITH WEBSITES 94% 100% 90% 80% 70% 93% 60% 50% 36% 40% 31% 219k 30% 13% 20% 10% 0% ALL 2 to 4 1 5 to 9 10 to 19 20-49 50 or more FIRMS Nu mbe r of E m p l o y e e * Figure 5 Source: American Institute of Architects With online information rapidly expanding, especially product data, detail libraries and specifications, firms are turning to the Internet to do much of their research. Almost 90% of firms use the Internet to research. A little fewer than 50% research potential consultants and or vendors. Marketing firm services and recruiting employees online are very popular at firm s.9 9 http://www.e-architect.com/news/aiarchitect/iunOO/intemet.htm 17 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. if we consider having a website as representative of having a presence on the web and using the Internet, Figure 5 shows that the use of the Internet has reached 36% of all the firms. Most of the larger firms (25 people and above) use the Internet and have a good presence. 2.1.2 The Internet Count To fully understand the size of the “Internet Library”, it is important to look at some interesting statistics regarding the web. This will demonstrate the immenseness of information available and the need for search engines and specialized web sites. It also seeks to show the fact that the Internet has become a part of our daily lives. 1 . Estimated Total number of indexable pages (Feb 1999)1 0 =800 million This number is an approximation of all the pages in the web that have an HTML header that is indexable. It does not take into account those that are not indexable, which would probably increase the number by a huge margin. 2. Estimated Size of information available =15 terabytes 15 terabytes of information equals 15,000,000,000,000 bytes. 3. The Ubraty of Congress contains 530 miles of bookshelves =88 terabytes1 1 4. Average web usage per week per person (US and Canada)1 2 =35 minutes (equivalent to the time spent watching rented video tapes) 5. The total number of English speaking users (Dec. 2000) 1 3 =192.1 million 1 0 Accessibility and Distribution of Information on the Web, Steve Lawrence and Lee Giles , http://wwwmetrics.com/ 1 1 http://ecommerce.ncsu.edu/topics/navigation/bytes.html 1 2 CommerceNet/Nieisen survey, September 1995 1 3 Global Reach, http://www.glreach.com/globstats/index.php3 18 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 6. The total number of non-English speaking users (Dec. 2000) = 211.3 million 2.1.3 The Internet Timeline In any study concerning the Internet and architecture, it is important to trace the important milestones in its use by the architects. The impact on architects and architecture is given special focus here. We look closely at the technology that has spurred the Internet to what it is today. 1. 1969: The birth of the Internet It is the first connection between two computers separated by more than a cable. This event has no impact on the practice of architects. Architecture is totally insulated from the slow text based technology of the "Arpanet (Advanced Research Projects Agency Network) *1 4 . 2. 12t h November 1990: A landmark day for architects. Tim Berners Lee announced what would facilitate the presence of architects in the Internet. The World Wide Web Hypertext Project is launched at CERN (Centre European pour la Recherche Nucleaire or the European Laboratory for Particle Physics). This completely transforms the world, it is the spark that soon engulfs the earth in a massive and raging fire of information flow. 3. January 1993: Marc Andreessen releases the NCSA “Mosaic” and soon starts “Netscape Communications”. This one step by Marc was the added power required by the Internet, to drag every human into its vortex of never ending information. 19 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 2.1.4 Architects and the World of Hypertext The tremendous popularity of the Internet made it into a ubiquitous thing in daily life, almost like that of a television. Architects leam that powerful graphic media and visuals can be streamed across the world and hyperiinked to all kinds of information. With the rapid spread of the Internet, soon architectural firms realized the advantages of using the Internet for improving efficiency, client servicing, flexibility and storage. The adoption of the Internet by architects should have been as quick as the explosive acceptance of it by the rest of the world, which by some estimates is doubling every 100 days1 5 . This was not to be. One major stumbling block that has played a very important role is the cost factor. It was a rather expensive proposition to use the Web for storage and using of high quality graphics and images. The prohibitive cost for storage as well as bandwidth prevented most architectural firms from using the Internet extensively. Thus, only the larger firms, who could afford the financial setback of maintaining an expensive high-speed connection and costly storage, were the early adopters. Today, the scenario is a lot different, various low cost-high bandwidth connectivity packages are available like DSL, cable ISDN etc. The cost of hardware and software has fallen dramatically. This has served to increase in the proliferation of the Internet to the smaller sized firms. The Internet is more easily affordable today than what it was a couple of years back. 1 4 “ Roads and Crossroads of Internet History- Gregory R. Gromov. http://www.intemetvalley.com/intval.html 1 5 Frances Hong, Internet Capacity Major Theme For 1999 - Study, NEW YORK (Reuters), Yahoo! News, December 6,1998 20 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Architects use the web for many purposes. One of the most important ones is to maintain their portfolio of design work for public viewing. This is seen as an opportunity to display their work to the world at a very low cost for marketing. Clients could just go online and see the architect’s style and oeuvre. They could see the status of their ongoing work as posted by their architects, they could email questions and doubts they had about the work and they could proudly show their homes or buildings to their friends and relatives. These days, some counties are trying to implement paperless plan checking where the goal is to streamline the plan checking, approvals and inspection process by applying business systems. It also involves standardizing local codes and interpretations. The Internet has revolutionized the way design professionals do their work. They are using the web to gather information about everything. They do product research, market research and search for new recruits. Most academic institutions were among the earliest adopters of the web. But this has not proliferated to students using the web to demonstrate their talents. We do not find a lot of student work on the web. 21 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 2.1.5 The Architecture Student Portfolio A student of architecture is trained to create uniqueness of thought and action. Their creative skills are nurtured, their imagination given free rein, their style honed and exposed, their technical skills are enhanced and their vision broadened. Every year the student spends learning the trade is an investment in their creative potential. The student carefully compiles all the work and keeps it for reflecting on their own growth and development. They find immense satisfaction at seeing their views change and mature over time, their technical skills develop and their creative skills sharpened. The portfolio is the medium that is used to keep track of this growth in personality of the student. Webster’s dictionary defines the portfolio as, 1. “A hinged cover or flexible case for carrying loose papers, pictures, or pamphlets” and 2. ‘A set of pictures (as drawings or photographs) either bound in book form or loose in a folder”. For the architecture student, the portfolio is their attempt to declare to the world their coming of age. They take great pride in presenting their portfolio to others (Figure 6). Figure 6 An online portfolio that proudly has a picture of the creator 22 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. The conventional “architecture-student" portfolio is as defined in the Webster’s Dictionary. It is: “a set of pictures (as drawings or photographs) either bound in book form or loose in a folder”. This only differs from the portfolios of other disciplines in that it is normally very graphic and visual. Most students spend a lot of time after the semester’s end to compose the portfolio, which includes choosing the important projects, models and computer generated drawings. This is all compiled into a manageable size of a folder. A lot of photography, resizing, photocopying and printing is involved in this process. Years later, this portfolio is going to be their legacy, their only remaining memories of the work and sweat. It will help them get jobs, make a career, build a future. At the University of Southern California Department of Architecture the students have to compile every semesters work into a portfolio for submission to be graded. This has a dual purpose. Firstly, it helps the teacher understand the student progress in the semester in one quick snapshot. Secondly, it forces the students to organize their work so that they would have a very good portfolio for themselves, by the time they graduate. At present, if any student wants to have an online portfolio, they have to either create one by themselves or use one of the online hosting sites like GeoCities. The extra effort needed to create a website has prevented most students from creating an online portfolio. 23 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 2.1.6 The Advantages of Having an Online Portfolio An online portfolio has the following advantages. 1. It is accessible from almost any place on earth. 2. It can contain images that are too large to fit in a conventional portfolio. 3. It does not need to be replicated each time someone requests it. 4. Editing is much easier and less messy. 5. People, who are physically very far from each other, can view it simultaneously. The online portfolios augment the paper portfolio in that they give the viewer a preview of the kind of work to be expected from the student. A face-to-face meeting would follow only after the online portfolio meets some degree of satisfaction. This helps all the people involved in saving time and energy. It is clearly a useful addition to the plain text one-page resume, which is normally used before the paper portfolio is asked for. The resume could be sent to any comer of the world, the portfolio would be visible there at the same time, provided the firm has Internet access. The online portfolio has the added advantage of being easily edited, it does not need to be replicated each time the student applies for a job. Editing involves just uploading a different image in place of the old one or uploading the edited text to replace the older one. This is obviously less messy than all the pasting, copying, binding and resizing that is needed in the paper portfolio. 24 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Consider another scenario: Suppose the branch of a firm in Los Angeles has a vacancy and their Principal was located in New York. In order to explain their choice of student, the two physically distant managers could pull up the portfolio simultaneously and discuss the work of the student concerned, without any extra effort or cost. This saves time and hastens the process of selection. 2.2 Individual Portfolios Versus a Repository There are pros and cons to everything. The student needing an online portfolio has two basic choices. The first involves designing and creating one for himself/herself and the second involves hosting it in the proposed online repository. 2.2.1 Pros and Cons of Having an Individual Online Portfolio When the student has to decide on creating their own online portfolio, they have to be willing to leam web designing and sacrifice some things for it, in terms of time and effort. The choice also depends on the student’s inclination towards using the computer. There are certain students who are averse to using the computer for any kind of design work. The following sections are an analysis of the pros and cons of creating their own portfolio. (See Appendix A for a tabular version) Pros: An individual online portfolio made by a student has the inherent advantage of having the portfolio take on a flavor as preferred by the student. The designer has free reign on the layout, fonts and graphics to include in the site. They have the option of choosing the color scheme and the design elements, the flow and the architecture of the site itself. 25 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. The student can choose the technology to use in the portfolio as well as the complexity involved. If interests and time permit, they could create a complex website too. The size of the student portfolio is limited only by the amount of disk space they can find or afford and the speed of the host computers. They can put as many images as they feel like. They get to choose their own web hosts too. Cons: Some of the disadvantages of having an individual online portfolio are that the student is limited by their knowledge of the Internet and web programming. Thus they may ultimately end up with an inefficient website, which would be self- defeating. Next, they would have to choose a host for themselves. Some students have used the free community website hosts like Geocities, while some others have registered their own URL and used low-cost ISPs to host their URL. This sometimes works poorly, as the site is normally graphically intensive and most ISP's are not prepared for this kind of a web site. Thus the end product is slow on loading and inefficient. It is inefficient because a visitor to the site would probably not have the patience to wait for the relatively long site loading time. 26 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 2.2.2 Pros and Cons of Having a Portfolio in the Repository The online portfolio repository is another choice for any student wanting to have his portfolio on the Internet. In choosing this path, the student is instantly within the radar distance of many firms. (See Appendix B for a tabular version.) Pros: The site can have a URL (Uniform Resource Locator) that is easily memorized by firms because it would be like a storehouse of student interns from any university. For example, in the case of The University of Southern California (USC), the URL could be http://www.usc.edu/portfolio. Also, it can be linked from the USC School of Architecture web page, making it more accessible to visitors The site would also be accessible at all times from any place with an Internet access. The students do not need to learn any of the programming skills needed to make a good web page. They would just have to be able to send attachments and scan their images. This low learning curve would ensure a larger degree of participation from the students, which in turn would help in the popularization of the site. This would in effect make it a more attractive place for firms and others. The site has a search engine built into it, which would help people look for students by key words that could include faculty names, project types and building types. This greatly increases the usefulness of the website and thus is an added value and incentive for firms to come looking for their exact match. The website would thus have both the “Push” and the “Pull” effect. This translates into the portfolios having a much higher profile and exposure than if it was isolated on its own. 27 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Cons: Some of the obvious disadvantages are that the individual portfolios would have to be within certain fixed design layouts as set by the creator or administrator of the website repository. This is severely inhibiting for the design conscious student of architecture. By being a public unmonitored site, the site would be open to possible misuse if not maintained property and on a regular basis. 2.3 Student Reactions and Suggestions Most students have had a very positive feeling regarding the proposed repository. The concept was placed before the American Institute of Architecture Students at USC for their feedback. The general reaction is one of anticipation. Charles Callahan, the chapter President at USC was very anxious to see the website go live. Carta, a final year student had this to say, “the students would welcome such a great chance of having an online portfolio without much effort, and would probably aggressively market the site for their own gain.” Leila Farkhondeh, a third year student and president of the Student Council at the Department of Architecture USC, had helped in approaching the Executive Council for hosting the website. A survey was conducted to determine the guiding principles, which became the foundation for the development of the website. Attached in Appendix C is a sample questionnaire used in the survey. In all, 100 students of the third year batch on 2001 were surveyed. This was assumed to be representative of the USC student population in the Department of Architecture, which totals about 500. 28 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 2.4 Study of Alternative Software Technologies The website could have been programmed in various languages and hosted on different kinds of web servers. Some of the options for the different components of the website were: The Server Operating System: 1. Unix 2. Linux 3. Windows NT 4.0 Server 4. Windows 2000 Server These are the predominant server Operating Systems (OS) in the world at present. The University operates most of their servers using Unix or Linux that has long been the OS of choice in most educational institutions. The problem with Unix or Linux is its arcane text based commands. Compared to that, the Windows Graphical User Interface (GUI) is much easier to work with. This includes everything from setup to deployment to maintenance. The web site would require maintenance like any other site. But besides normal maintenance work, maintenance of the uploaded files will be a bit more challenging than normal sites. Hence, the choice narrowed down to using either Windows NT or Windows 2000. Windows NT or 2000 server was chosen because of its GUI, ease of deployment and maintenance. In the case of a new person taking charge, the learning curve for him/her would be low compared to the other operating systems, in understanding the backend system, which drives the website. Most new students are familiar with 29 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. the windows environment and would find it quite a task to switch to Unix that has problems even seasoned users find hard to tackle. Programming Language Used for the Repository: The programming languages used for writing the Server side codes could have been 1. JSP (Java Server Pages) 2. ASP (Active Server Pages) 3. Java 4. Visual C++ 5. XML 6. Perl or C in CGI programming. CGI is also not inherently multithreaded, which limits the number of concurrent users. So, CGI uses a greater amount of server resources degrading performance of servers and sites. Writing any CGI script is also not an easy one. Moreover installing a CGI needs a special kind of experience. This makes maintenance and upgradation an issue too. Besides, CGI programming is for Unix/Linux servers and thus ruled out by the choice of the operating system. Visual C++ is mainly for standalone programs, although one could write applications for the Internet in C++, it would require much more effort and time from the user. This means that the user would have to download the application from the Internet, which in itself could be a time consuming affair, depending on the size of the file. This is normally not preferred by the user as many malicious programs are transmitted in this manner, thus making them wary of such programs. Then the user would need to install the application on his/her computer. Most people are averse to 30 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. this process. Also, it is more convenient to the user if the program runs on the server side and does not interfere with their personal computer settings. Java has the same conditions as that of Visual C++, in that it would be downloadable application. Although Java has the added advantage of being platform independent, the fact that the web site need not depend on the client made that advantage a non-issue. XML or Extended Mark-up language is a relatively new language. The main problem with XML is that XML requires a processing application. That is, the good thing about HTML was that you knew that if you wrote an HTML document, anyone, anywhere in the world, could read your document using a browser. With XML documents, that is not yet the case. Thus a person with only the latest browsers, which has XML capability built in, would be able to view the site. To get around this problem, XML documents must either be converted into HTML before distribution or converted into HTML on the fly by another application. These are the reasons why XML was not chosen. JSP or Java Server Pages depends on the Java programming language. It is inherently platform independent. The issue with JSP is that it is more complex and demanding of the administrator. Also, JSP is a relatively new language and is not supported as well as ASP is by Microsoft. Thus with the selection of the operating system, the platform independence becomes a non-issue. After having chosen the operating system, I adopted ASP as the language of choice. ASP or Active Serve Paoes has many advantages. Firstly, It is Microsoft’s creation along with the Windows Server. This has the advantage of being from the same house and thus would be more compatible and easier to troubleshoot, 31 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. maintain and upgrade. Secondly, ASP works with ODBC (open database connectivity) compliant databases. Developers can use Microsoft Access 97 or 2000 on the desktop to develop or prototype the web application using the upsize tool from Microsoft to move the data from Access to SQL Server. This would in fact, permit us to migrate to most of the database servers in the market. ASP web sites are powerful at database handling because of ASP’s database access technology: ActiveX data Objects (ADO). Using these specially designed built-in data objects it is easy to connect a website with a database, which is one of the needs of the proposed online repository. Also, ASP is inherently multithreaded allowing a greater number of concurrent users. ASP will be the good choice if you are running a large website. The Database Server The following Database backend could have been used to store the data of the repository: 1. Access 2. MySQL 3. MS SQL Server 4. Oracle 5. Informix 6. Sybase While deciding between these choices, the chief criteria were ease of use, future support, portability, price and conceived popularity. MS SQL Server, Oracle, Informix and Sybase are very large RDBMS (Relational Database Management Systems) server software, mainly recommended for mission 32 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. critical and enterprise level situations which require added reliability, security and database integrity at all times. These systems are capable of maintaining integrity of data over a large number of client computers and servers. Due to this high level of complexity involved in the capabilities of these servers, they are typically very expensive propositions. MySQL is a popular Open Source SQL database provided by MySQL AB. MySQL AB is a commercial company that builds its business providing services around the MySQL database. Being an open source program MySQL was originally a Unix based program. Thereafter it was ported to Windows. But it still requires a lot of text based maintenance and tweaking. This posed a problem for maintenance and future adaptation by administrators of the online repository. As far as the database backend was concerned, “MS Access” was the most in expensive and accessible programs. Access is installed in nearly all the computers in Universities. The Operating system Windows NT and ASP accept Access connections easily. One of the reasons is that all the three are products of Microsoft and as such tend to be more compatible. One limitation that prevents MS Access from being used in large-scale data intensive servers is that it is STA (single- threaded-apartment) and not MTA (multi-threaded-apartment) or Free-Threaded. This means that all database requests are serialized and is on first come first served basis. Thus a large request could stall smaller requests following it. In spite of its drawbacks, it was the ideal backend to go for. It was gauged that there would be about 500 active members up to a maximum of 1000 or so. This low number of records could easily be managed using MS Access. 33 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 2.5 Snapshots of Student W ork on the Web A few randomly selected online portfolios of students were selected and analyzed for their content, technology, design and navigation. The conclusions drawn from this was used in deciding the architecture of the proposed online repository. They were also used to justify the use of certain features in the repository, like the pop up images and thumbnails. Each online portfolio was chosen because it was different from the previous one studied, in some way. The points analyzed are listed below: 1. The URL is a measure of the success of the website. Normally long URL's are difficult to memorize and consequently not very visited. 2. The site which hosts the website. This is to see whether the site is hosted in a university server or is a sub-domain or whether it was on it own unique URL. This is because the URL gives us a hint to the extent of knowledge of the creator of the website. If it is hosted in the university servers, it is probably (not necessarily) a reflection of less knowledge of the Internet. If it is a sub-domain or hosted in one of the community websites, it shows knowledge of using ‘redirectors' and uploading of files. If the student hosts his portfolio in his own unique URL, it shows some degree of sophistication and knowledge beyond normal Internet usage. 3. A more in-depth analysis is then done and listed as pros and cons of the site architecture, design and navigation. 34 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 2.5.1 http://www.geocities.com/CollegePark/Lab/7689/fraine.html Web Portfolio of Mohd. Faizal Abu Bakar. The site is hosted in Geocities community website of Yahoo Inc. Notice the long URL to the site. Technology used is HTML with frames. Figure 7 The small images when clicked pop up larger ones Observations: Pros: This is a unique web site layout. It has six images each in different sections called pages. There are seven pages in all. Each page has six thumbnails that are sufficiently large to discern the images at that size. Navigating the site is quite easy. The layout is simple and intuitive. Cons: The URL is too long and complex. The site uses ‘‘Frames”, which is not preferred by most designers because of its incompatibility with some browsers. The pop up images are not sufficiently large to justify their separate existence. 35 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 2.5.2 http://www.arch.utah.edu/pinonrg/portfolio2.htm Web Portfolio of Roberto Pinion, B. Arch., University of Utah. The web site is hosted in the University Servers. Technology used is HTML with frames and Macromedia Flash Figure 8 A well laid out site with small thumbnails Observations: Pros: The site makes good use of the mouse-over to display the large images from the thumbnails. The navigation system is good. It is laid out horizontally for the main topics and vertically for the subtopics. Cons: The images are preloaded, which means that the visitor would have to wait a while without knowing what is happening. The site has a custom university URL which is normally too deep in a university website to be easily located by a casual browser. The thumbnail images are too small to be comprehensible. The mouse- over design forces only four to five images per project, without going into another page for a project. 36 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 2.5.3 http://www.alecng.com Web Portfolio of Alec N. G., M. Arch., Univ. of Michigan, Ann Arbor. The web site is hosted in its own domain with an ISP (Internet Service Provider). Web technology used is predominantly Macromedia Flash. Figure 9 A flashy site with sound and animation Observations: Pros: A well laid out website, using one of the most talked about product of today, Macromedia Flash. The main website is a small horizontal window of 800x400 pixels. The site is unique in content and creativity. The URL is very short and easy to remember. Cons: Macromedia flash is required and a cable connection is recommended. The site may be a bit annoying for some viewers because of its animations. It is also heavy on the bandwidth requirement needed to view the site. This is because 37 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Macromedia Flash and a lot of animations have been used in the website. This is not a desirable thing insofar as wanting to display the architectural portfolio is concerned. It does display the web designing skills of the creator, but that is not an issue here. One of the guiding principles is that the site should not overwhelm the architectural work. This site is loaded with of other web-designing work and personal information, which take away the importance of the architectural work. The site overwhelms his architectural design work and highlights more of his web design skills. The window shape and size gets a bit awkward for some architectural drawings. Navigating the site is a bit complex. 38 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 2.5.4 http://branson_young.tripod.com/ Web Portfolio of Branson K. Young, B.Arch., University of Oklahoma. The web site is hosted in Tripod, another community website, He has opted to be hosted as a sub-domain which is a slightly better alternative to having a long URL. Technology used is mostly HTML with JavaScript. (gr Figure 10 A simple layout with easy links Observations: Pros: The layout is simple. The web site has easily identifiable architectural work divided by years. Cons: There are only three projects included. The website does not maintain the same navigation pattern through out the site. Sometimes text and graphics are clickable, sometimes only images are clickable. 39 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 2.5.5 http://Www.ehardaway.org/ Web Portfolio of Miles Hardaway, senior architecture student at Texas Tech University in Lubbock, Texas. The web site is hosted in its own domain, with an ISP Catalog.com. Technology used is plain HTML with tables. Figure 11 A one-page site with pop-ups. Observations: Pros: The cover page of the website says it all. It is a one-page overview of the full portfolio. Cons: Clicks on an image goes to pages that are totally different in design. The links are not intuitive. 40 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 2.5.6 http://members.tripod.com/-fgli/portfolio.html Web Portfolio of Fu Guang Li. 1998 University of Nevada, Las Vegas, Las Vegas NV. The web site is hosted in Tripod.com a community Web Site. Technology used is primarily plain HTML. Figure 12 A folder type design, with thumbnails. Observations: Pros: The web site has an elegant brochure like look with thumbnails of projects. Cons: The web site URL is long and complex. The projects are not clearly outlined or described and the images are not captioned. The thumbnails are too small to be comprehensible. Even the final images are considerably small. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 2.5.7 http://m_syracuse.tripod.com/index.htinl Web Portfolio of Michael Syracuse, 2000 B.Arch., B.BS Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. The web site is hosted as a sub-domain in Tripod.com. Technology used is HTML and JavaScript, with a custom size window of 700x750 pixels. Figure 13 A custom sized window to probably mimic a paper portfolio. Observations: Pros: The web site has a unique look and size. It makes good use of GIF animation. The project description included is useful. Cons: The images are small and some are incomprehensible. The projects are not clearly outlined, thus making the site difficult to navigate. 42 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 2.5.8 http://Www.whazo.com/ Web Portfolio of Adam Weiss, 2001, Rice University. The web site is hosted in a personal domain with an ISP wwide.com. Technology is HTML with tables and links for navigation Figure 14 A site full of 3-0 renderings but placed in image mapped tables. Observations: Pros: The site uses 3-D renderings and tables to navigate. A house analogy is used in the navigation. Image mapping is used in the front page of the site. Thus when a viewer clicks a part of the entry foyer/room, they are supposedly transferred to another room, like the gallery. The URL is unique and easy to memorize. Cons: Navigating the site is not very intuitive. The architectural projects are not dearly delineated and do not have text descriptions. Each page from the vertical links on the side has a different look and feel, no uniformity. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 2.5.9 General Observations About the Student Portfolios In analyzing the results of the study of the available online portfolios, certain common factors emerged. These were then collated to create the ‘ guiding principles” that is detailed in section 1.2.2. 1. Most of the sites had the same concept of having thumbnails and then popping up a larger image on being clicked. This is a very intuitive way of displaying an image for viewers. The problems that some sites had were that the thumbnails were too small to be identifiable or were incomprehensible. Also, some of the pop ups were not large enough to give any extra detail. This defeated the very purpose of their being there, which is to explain the thumbnail in detail. 2. The students divided their portfolio by projects, year of study and professional work. A very logical and simple way of arranging the portfolio is by the projects. The drawback in nearly all the web sites studied was that textual project details and descriptions were inadequate and mostly missing. This severely limits the viewer’s judgment about the projects concerned. 3. A few web sites had a text-based resume too. The plain text resume has an obvious use to the viewers. Once they like a portfolio, they would like to know more about the creator, and the resume contains the precise information that they look for. The format is also Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. easily printable and can be filed away as a hard copy too, without excess information normally associated with browsers and web sites. 4. None of the sites had a search engine built in. This means that searches on the site would sometimes be inconsistent with the purpose of the search. Thus, a person searching for computer architecture would probably arrive at the portfolio sites too. 5. The navigation was different for all the sites. Some of the sites studied had very difficult navigation systems. Others had different navigation systems within the same site. This inconsistency can easily lead a viewer to another site and lose his attention. 6. Some sites lacked design consistency. Design inconsistency is on its own counter intuitive to what most architects desire and consider good design rules. By having totally different designs to each page, a viewer does not get the feeling of viewing a unique portfolio. 7. Some sites were too heavy on bandwidth. Bandwidth is a major constraint for viewers on 56Kbps modem lines. By having pure Macromedia Flash sites that require a minimum cable connection, we are already discouraging a large number of the potential viewers because of their connection limitations. This is still acceptable if it was for an architectural image, but would normally be considered overkill for animations that do not highlight architectural skills. 8. The flow and hierarchy of most of the sites was simple and a maximum of four pages deep. This is a preferred level of depth so as to keep the navigation manageable and comfortable. 45 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. CHAPTER III INFERENCE 3.1 Lim itations *The difference between genius and stupidity is genius has its limits. ” - (Albert Einstein) The Project could have had a very wide scope. In order to narrow down the scope and make it feasible, a number of limitations to the project were introduced. Some of the limitations were situation based, some technology based. 1. We would not be able to have more than a few simultaneous visitors working comfortably with their portfolio. This was because MS Access is not a very robust database manager for large volumes of transactions. Also, the high bandwidth required for high quality graphics transfer would also clog the server. 2. The server itself would have to be a very fast and powerful machine to serve the high quality images. Anything less would slow the site down considerably. 3. Students would have to be limited in terms of the size of their portfolio. This is to restrict the total memory required to fulfill the demands of all the students. It is also to bring some order to the site as a whole. This is because, some student may unknowingly overload their portfolio with images and text. This would severely inhibit the functioning of the search engine. (See section 2.4 page 29). It would also open the site to abuse and misuse. 46 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 4. The test site would be limited to the students of University of Southern California and alumni. 5. The test site would only accept JPEG and GIF format images. This is because these two are the most popular image formats for the Internet because of their relatively small file size. 6. The site would also be limited by the availability of server space and server side programming permitted. If sufficient server space is not provided, the repository would fill up very soon and slow down the website as a whole. This is because a large number of image files is expected in such a site. And image files are inherently large and thus slow in loading on client browsers. 7. Regular maintenance of the site is necessary to prevent abuse and misuse and for house keeping. Lack of regular maintenance would result in a malfunctioning site and probable abuse. 8. The site may need to be updated technologically. This will rely on future students or webmasters doing the necessary updating. This is a limitation because when the site becomes larger, bugs may appear in the site. Also, modules for management of the site would make it easier to maintain the user database and the images. 47 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 3.2 Scope o f Project "There are no rules of architecture fora castle in the clouds.” - (G. K. Chesterton) The scope of the project encapsulates the boundaries within which the project resides. Some are technical boundaries, others are bounds of time and situation. 1. The students can upload their own images and files to the site. They get a choice of three standard layouts for their page. They can browse and edit their portfolios page-wise using a tabbed screen similar to well known software. 2. The recruiters can search the site by typing in project types, locations, qualifications, experience etc. The search engine shows thumbnails of the different project pages in the results screen. 3. The website entails a lot of Dynamic web programming and interfacing with databases. A database would be required to keep track of the user details like, year or study, major, achievements, resumes and education history. This is stored in a MS Access database. 4. There is another database linked to each student for the portfolio that keeps track of the different project text and image files. 48 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. CHAPTER IV THE ONLINE PORTFOLIO REPOSITORY 4.1 Resources Used and Needed. The website uses HTML (Hypertext Markup Language), ASP (Active Server Pages) and some JavaScript to create Dynamic web Pages. This means that the web pages are all created on the fly as the viewer requests it They are customized as per the browser and the user settings. Microsoft Access is used at the server side back end to manage the database. A working model of the proposed site would needs a static IP address and access to directory security. This is needed to permit the users to upload files to the server. Dreamweaver 4.0, Frontpage 2000, Ultraedit 7, MS Notepad, Adobe Photoshop 6.0 and Macromedia Fireworks were used primarily in the creation of the site. A user only needs a browser that supports server side scripting. The preferred browsers are Internet Explorer 5 and above and Netscape 6 and above. This is meant for students of architecture and any person interested in their work. All attempts were made to make the site as lean as possible, taking minimum time in loading up. Only the high-resolution images would take time to load. 49 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 4.2 Software Requirement The website requires the following software: 1. Operating System should be either Windows NT 4.0 Server or Windows 2000 Server. 2. Internet Information Server (IIS) 4.0 or 5.0 should be running on the server. 3. Microsoft Access 97 or Microsoft Access 2000 SR-1 should be installed on the server. Care should be taken that if Access 2000 is used, it should not be earlier than SR-1. 4. It runs on IE 5 and Netscape Navigator 4.7 and above. 4.3 Hardware Requirement The site should be on a Windows NT Server with at least the following configuration. 1. Intel Pentium 133 MHz and above. 2. 256 MB RAM or more. 3. At least 2 Gigabytes hard disk space with 1 gigabytes free space 4. 10/100 Network interface card connected to the Internet. The site should be set up on a good multimedia-streaming server to deal with the large sized images. This would probably be a computer with SCSI II hard disks and a T1 or a T3 connection. 50 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 4.4 Architecture o f the Site The website consists of some private directories and some public ones. To secure the database and the user files, all the member information and files are stored in the secure top-level directory of the server machine. This directory is normally not accessible from a browser as it is above the virtual directory from where the site executes. New members are assigned a private directory space for storage of their files. This is transparent to the user, which means that they cannot see the directory or its structure. This secures the users from tampering with other people's files. Each member is assigned space for uploading 10 projects and within each project is limited to ten pages of information. Every page consists of a small image and a large image along with a short description and a longer one. Thus, every member has 100 pages for their portfolio. And if we have 100 members, we have to provide for 10,000 pages or 10,000 large images and 10,000 small images. Some mathematics: A small image = 100 KB A large image = 400 KB Thus total space needed on server = (100x10.000) + (400x10,000) = (1,000,000) + (4,000,000) = 5,000,000 KB = 5 Gigabytes The server should be able to move large image files around quickly, in order for the site to be efficient. A SCSI hard drive is preferred for such high capacity servers. 5 1 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 4.5 The Flow o f the W eb Site F L O W OF T H E S I T E IJ S f R t N I t F ? S S I t I J . ± Figure 15 The navigation flow through the proposed repository Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. The navigation is a very simple linear one for the casual visitor, as can be seen to the right hand side of Figure 15. For the student user it is only one branch deep. They have to go into the project detail manager and come back out to enter the page editor from the project manager page. 53 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 4.6 The Input Process I N P U T P R O C E S S I J \ [ R I U ( , S IN I I V Figure 16 The Process of uploading a portfolio to the site 54 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Figure 16 explains the process of uploading a portfolio to the site. Let us discuss the entire process beginning with the creation of the files to be uploaded. Stage .1: The student decides on the projects that he/she would like to include in the portfolio. Stage 2: All the necessary images and text for the selected projects must be digitized. This means that photographs will have to be scanned and converted to JPEGs or GIFs, which are the only two formats accepted by the site at present. In future, other formats could be made compatible with the website too. CAD drawings and computer based three-dimensional models will have to be converted too Stage 3: The student has to gather or create the relevant text for the images selected. Stage 4: The digitized image files will have to be arranged and smaller copies made of them. Thus, the student would have to create 400x300 pixels sized copies of all the selected images. Some software tools are available that can do this process in one go, in a batch process. Examples of the tools are Macromedia Fireworks, ACDSEE etc. Stage 5: Smaller versions of the text files will have to be created manually. Unfortunately, there are no tools that do this process in a batch mode. Stage 6: The user registers on the portfolio repository Stage 7: He/she signs in to his/her account. Stage 8: He/she enters the project manager page. Stage 9: From the project manager page, the user enters the project details page and can enter the project details of one or more projects. 55 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Stage 10: Now the user enters the Project page manager and uploads the images and text, page by page, project by project This process closely mimics the creation of a paper portfolio that also necessitates the selection of good projects, collection of textual information and photographs and arrangement of these in some order and design. With the advent of good quality laser color printers, more and more students are digitizing their paper portfolio. This process of digitizing the portfolio involves, scanning the images, inserting the images into a Desktop Publishing (DTP) software like MS Word or Adobe PageMaker and then taking color prints of the page. 56 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 4.7 Roadmap The navigation and usage of the online portfolio repository tries to mimic the creation of a paper portfolio. To maintain the integrity of the different users, the database used to store the information of the users, is used to validate the user with a password protected entry into the modification module of the website. This is meant to prevent a malicious user from tampering with the portfolio of a user. 4.7.1 The Portfolio Gateway D e p a r t m e n t of A r c h ite c tu re Figure 17 The Login Page The initial login page of the test site is where users see some basic info about the members, like the number of members etc. New members register here and old 57 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. ones can log in to their portfolio management site. The test site is limited to USC students only by virtue of it being used in a private server. The one graphic in front is randomly selected from the student portfolios. This is directly hypertinked to the portfolio. Each time the site is refreshed, the graphic changes to show another image from the database of the users. This gives the viewer a chance to enter into a portfolio that they may like without going through the process of searching the website. A casual visitor on the other hand could go to the search page and look for portfolios in the search engine of the web site (section 4.5.6). There the visitor gets to see more randomly selected images from the database. The Disclaimer to the site is also linked from this page. It is replicated in Appendix F. Also available through this page is the Frequently Asked Questions. This FAQ is replicated in Appendix D. 58 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 4.7.2 The Projects Manager ■ P o r i f o l i o . H o m e t’ D U r i m i 11 i s ^ '■■'•“ •v 1 " V 7T N I A ( 1 Figure 18 The Project Manager Screen This Project Manager allows the user to have an overall view of all the projects in their portfolios. They can see all the 10 projects at a glance. This page is the top level of the website. From here the user can edit the project details or delete a project altogether. The screen gives them information about each of their selected projects and is the entry point into each of the project pages. They can go into each project page one at a time. From here they cannot edit any of the project details, but is able to delete any project from the portfolio by selecting it and hitting the delete button. 59 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 4.7.3 The Project Details ROW T I O l I IJS ENTER PROJECT DETAILS Protect Nm im : |3D of Museum Tim a: | T a m : |1 J jj Protact Typa: | m u u u m Rata k« U n ja rt: |ArcMacfcnl JJ| Profact Daacrlpttan: |3D WtorfcTypa: |Oraptaca F«aaB)0GuMaO>: |MarcSchiler FacuRyffiuM aV): | Figure 19 Entering the Project Details This is the page where the user enters the important project details that will be used in the searches made on the whole website. The project Name, project type and the time spent on the project are some of the information that is entered here. The project type is made up of fixed project types as decided by the Webmaster. This is to make the searches more efficient by limiting the size of the database of project types. This is a standard procedure in most websites. The user also enters their Role in the project and the work type. These two details are also fixed in scope by the program, so as to make the searches more efficient. Then they have the option to enter the names of a maximum of two faculty guides. 60 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 4.7.4 The Page Layout POINTS TO REMEMBER 1 . Maximum Number Of Pages Permitted For a Project is 10 2. Clicking on {Reset Page! Clews the Erttnes 3. [Oetelo Page] veil lowar the page numbers of higher end pages by 1 4. [Upload and Save Changes] veil overvm te w t existing tile Project No: 1 I — I I — r | | H U « | Figure 20 The Page Layout and File Transfer Page 61 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Here the user gets to choose among three fixed page layout designs. This range of choices could be increased in the future. It is here that they also upload the files to fill the page. All that they have to do is to attach the path of the files to the slots and hit the upload button once. Two image files and two text files are expected for each page, a smaller set for immediate display and a larger set with more detail for the pop up. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 4.7.5 The Page View First Nama: 8« aa CMag Laal Nama: Law CHy: Jaraay CXy StaM: Naw Jaraay Unhra ratty Ualta ra lly at Sa a M ram Ci M fciaia Tatai Pagaa O n o t Figure 21 A View of a Page This is the Page Browser for individual projects where each page is tabbed at the bottom like many popular software like AutoCAD 2000. A click on each tab would take the viewer to the respective pages. 63 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 4.7.6 The Search Page PORTFOUO Figure 22 The Search Engine This search engine is probably the backbone of the entire website. It searches the site by keywords and returns results based on them. It also returns thumbnails of the resulting search results. Included in this page are four randomly selected thumbnails that pop up to facilitate a quick run for some viewers. The viewer may notice an image that interests him/her and then, may choose to bypass the search and go straight to the site. This saves the viewer some time as the search engine could become rather slow when the database is populated. One of the reasons for this is discussed in Section 2.4, page 37. Access is a single threaded apartment, meaning that if one viewer sends a query on the database, the next user, if simultaneously online, has to wait till the first 64 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. query is completed before his/her query is executed. This problem can easily be compounded when there are many more simultaneous viewers. This would lead to a long loading time for users that is not desirable. At the same time, when users are connecting to the site using slow dial-up modem connections, the overall effect may seem like a stalled server. 65 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 4.7.7 The Search Results 01 I toil!' H 1-1 I-' M atching P ro ja c ti Found : 3i and a n arranged in matching order D iaplaytag Search R a a u ta : 1 to 10 J K Protect 7 Samole Sanaa 1 tor Prouct managa Project 3 Samntt S andal tor Protect tnenager Project 3 Semcte Sanaa 1 tor Protect im ager Protect 8 Serrcte 2 AudotorUn S a n * n Protect No. 2 Protect 8 S a n a 2 Audotsnun S anta n Protect No. 2 Project 8 Senate 2 A uM orun Senate n Protect No 2 U l l ' l Figure 23 The Search Results Page with the Thumbnails The search results page with thumbnails of the project. The thumbnails are very useful for the viewers. They get a preview of the project and thus do not need to load the pages based on the text description only. The images augment the text displayed in the search results. The text is taken from the project name and the Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. project description. The search results are displayed ten at a time. This can be modified later or even customized to suit the viewers' tastes. The number of results is normally kept low so as to improve loading time of the dynamic page and keep scrolling to a minimum. 67 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 4.8 Test of Proposed Repository A single page flyer was distributed to students to test the website. The flyer was kept in a concise one page size to test the website navigation and ease of use. . .by p n jK t.ty p ttp n jtc t dwcrtpUoo, faculty or any othar day w a r*. Ttiw, It la W hw P a p a a <ar AtchMactwr al iiwdaiw . Tfew^rafPctMwafarfcUiaplacayowsaaalyourprAjactafciapaekfeacaManly aMarSalaaaaprafactlHra. \hu tra aMa to a M R tfie fn fa c t taflartuatlan tf u n o u p i tMspaeatee. Wu have a choice oTtfvee lay ou ts ONLY, for any af your prefact paps. V n alsa ip M a la p s /lean (320x240 ptaato) wMdi I* Swwi b a fo c a a ponon antars yaur portfolio, M f c a a cover pop*. hna pa s can only be Jpa p or f|f. Text hat to be plain te x t from notepad. Y OU C A N ENTDt A M AXIM UM OF 10 PROJECTS ON L Y . EA CH PRO JE C T CA N HAV E A MA XIMUM O P 10 P A G E S ONL Y . FOR EVERY PAGE, YOU NEED TWO COPIES OF A PICTURE AND TWO TEXT DESCRIPTIONS OF THE PICTURE. One of the pictures will have = to be smaller In size 400x300 ______ pixels, and the other can be of any size preferrably less than 800X600 pixels. The smaller text description will be displayed first In the page along with the smaller picture, while the more detailed Is for the pop*up. PLEA SE R EAD THE INSTRUCTIONS ON THE P A G E S TO O Figure 24 The Instruction Flyer Given to Students Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. CHAPTER V PLANS FOR THE FUTURE The website is a demonstration of how the Internet could be used by architects to facilitate their practice and display their work. If there is constant evaluation and support given, the site could grow to be a model for other departments to follow. The concept could be used as a prototype for other universities and high schools. Alumni of architecture schools could benefit from the site too, as they could use it to host their professional work. Many changes and upgradation can be done on the website to improve its performance and flexibility. Below is a list of the more pertinent ones. 1. The site could be hosted on a multimedia server of the University, thus providing for fast downloads and uploads of the large image files. 2. The project explorer could be upgraded into a more robust one. The user should be able to change the number of pages per project and move the projects up and down the hierarchy for purpose of emphasis. 3. A thumbnail explorer for the projects would enhance the viewing pleasure and make the management of the site easier. 4. A File explorer would also be a handy tool to be used to manage the full portfolio. 5. The portfolio could have more design templates to choose from and probably allow some degree of customization. 6. The number of pages could be made flexible with the student deciding on the number of pages per project. Probably the maximum ceiling should be set and the rest left to the student. 7. The design of the site itself could take some re-working. 69 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 8. The database could be ported into a more robust backend like Oracle or Microsoft SQL server. This would improve the performance of the search engine and the site as a whole. 70 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. CHAPTER VI CONCLUSION The website was conceived in response to a need for students of architecture to have an online portfolio. The needs of an architecture student are different from that of other majors. Thus, all of the online job sites likejobtrak.com and hotjobs.com do not fulfill their need to have a graphical portfolio online. The web site is an attempt to fill this lacuna and provide the students with an easy tool to have their architectural work online, along with their resumes. This had to be done without requiring the students to leam something new, like web designing and HTML programming. The website succeeds in meeting most of the guidelines noted in section 1.2.2. The students do not have to leam web designing or any new skill. They only need to use their existing skills with Photo-editing software like Adobe Photoshop and CAD software like AutoCAD to either scan in their work or export it as a jpeg or a GIF image. The only other skill needed is that they should have used email attachments in the free email sites like yahoo and hotmail. Thus having the portfolio online still requires some preparation. The student has to gather his/her projects and create the appropriate text descriptions. Then they have to create smaller versions of the text description and image as per the requirement of the repository. It is only after this is done that they can upload the file to the site. Here a student may choose to upload an image that contains text in it The site only permits jpeg and gif images. This can be improved to accept other formats like MS Word files and CAD drawings too. One very useful feature of this site is the search engine. This manages to parse the search string through the database and match the words and pull out the relevant project page. The one feature that stands out is that it also displays a thumbnail of 7 1 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. the image of that page. The search engine has scope for a lot of improvement and fine-tuning. The current one does not differentiate between pages of the same project. It also does not permit advanced search capabilities like filters and Boolean operations. Thus in future, when the database grows, the more sophisticated search capabilities could get more relevant results and images. The site lacks modules for maintenance and house keeping. Thus the administrator would have to work at the database level to remove unwanted and orphan images. He/she may also need to physically delete unwanted files. The administrator would also need to remove unused accounts manually. So, development of site management tools and modules would ease the work of the administrator and maintain the integrity of the database, by keeping it safe from direct manipulation by the administrators. The website in its present form serves the purpose it was designed for, i.e. to host student portfolios online. The aforesaid enhancements and additions would make it a more comprehensive website. 72 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. CHAPTER VII GLOSSARY OF TERMS Anti-aliasing: A method used by image editors to smooth the jagged edges caused by the inherent pixellation of digital images. Bandwidth: The amount or capacity of the data streaming media used to send information to various computers. It is like the capacity of electric wires in carrying some particular amperage of electricity depending on the thickness and turns. The more information or data the media can carry per unit time, the higher the bandwidth. bps: Bits per second. This is the measure of the speed at which data is transferred from one computer to another. 1Kbps is equal to 1000bps and 1 Mbps=1,000,000bps. Browser This is the client program running on a users computer that uses hypertext transfer protocol (HTTP) to display most web pages. Some examples of Browsers are the Internet Explorer by Microsoft, Netscape Navigator by Netscape Communications and Opera by Opera Software. Cookie: A small file that is usually stored in the users computer to “remember” user information when they visit an interactive website, like the portfolio repository here. 73 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Database: A collection of information that is sorted and stored in an orderly fashion, so that it can be easily accessed and updated. This information in stored in records containing similar fields of information. Dial-up connection: A connection made to the Internet using a modem and a phone line. This is an intermittent connection and is disrupted when the phone hangs up. Domain Name: A unique name for a Web Site, followed by a period and a broader classification of the site. Examples for the extensions are .com, .org and .edu. The Domain name would be usc.edu for example. Download/upload: The process of sending or receiving files from a computer or a server. When you receive a file from a remote computer or server, you are downloading. When you send a file to a server, you are uploading. DSL: Digital Subscriber Line. A new technology for sending a high bandwidth signal on ordinary phone lines. A typical phone line has four wires, out of which the phone companies use two. DSL technology uses the other two unused lines to transparently send data to the user. This does not disrupt the phone line and the phone can thus be used simultaneously. FAQ: Frequently Asked Questions. 74 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. FTP: File Transfer Protocol. This is the fundamental protocol used to transfer and manage files over the Internet. GIF: The Graphics Interchange Format. An Internet file type for highly compressed image files. CompuServe, an ISP, originally devised this. GUI: Graphical User Interface, pronounced "gooey”. The GUI is one of the major factors leading to the popularity of the computers among the masses. Its ease of use as compared to the text-based command line interface was so much more easy and intuitive, that ordinary people could use the computer. A GUI typically uses visual metaphors or icons to relate computer functions to everyday life e.g. the trash can, the file folders etc. Home page: The entry point of a web site that leads to the interior of the site. HTML: HyperText Markup Language. A computer language that tells the browsers how to display elements of a web page. It does so by using markup tags between the beginning and end of an element that provide instructions for its display. HTTP: HyperText Transfer Protocol. The set of rules that governs the exchange of text and media files on the Internet. Hypertext or Hyperlink: A means of organizing pieces of information with connections to other pieces. 75 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Internet: The global network of networks. This is the massive network of computers of different configurations and operating systems that speak to each other using a common language like the TCP-IP. Founded in 1969 for military purposes, the Internet is growing at an exponential rate with about 80 million computers connected to it. ISP: Internet Service Provider. A Company that provides Internet access and service to customers at the retail level. JPEG: Joint Photographic Experts Group. An Internet file type for highly compressed images Network: Two or more computers connected to each other by some media. It could be a cable, wireless or even electromagnetic waves. The computers need not be physically dose to each other. They could be as far as on two different continents or in the same room too. OS: Operating System. The software that controls the basic computer functions. Examples are Window 98, Windows NT, Unix, Linux Solaris and others. Pixel: The smallest dot that a computer monitor can display. This normally refers to the physical area of the smallest dot that the computer monitor can display. 76 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Push and Pull: Push is the delivery of information at the initiation of the sender and Pull is at the initiation of the requester. In our case here, we can “Push" Firms to our site by adding the URL to resumes and placing banners at firm fairs etc. The “Pull” force to bring the firms to the site would be if the site is up to date and actually represent quality work of the students at the school of Architecture at USC. The firms would then, on their own volition visit the site to look for interns and recruits. Raster image: A digital image on a computer that consists of many pixels with different values of color and brightness. Resolution: The number of pixels within an image that can be displayed on a computer monitor. Typical computers nowadays are set to 800x600 pixels resolution. Scanner An electronic device that digitizes printed pages or objects like pages of books or magazines. It reads the information presented to it and produces the electronic replica of the original. Script: A sequence of computer instructions written in different languages like VBScript, JavaScript etc. These are not stand-alone programs and are normally carried inside HTML code in web pages. Search Engines: A program or website that finds Internet resources matching the users search key words given. It is mostly based on an Index of information, with 77 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. different types of coding filtering the resulting pages displayed in some kind of hierarchy of importance. Server This is the computer that responds to requests from user computers or browsers in a computer network or the Internet. It normally refers to both the hardware and the software that make up the computer. Streaming: The technology that permits multimedia files that are normally large in size, to begin playing back before it is completely downloaded. TCP/IP: Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol. The fundamental language of the Internet. This is the language that is common to the different kinds of Operating systems on the computers connected to the Internet. It is the foundation upon which the Internet was built. URL: Universal Resource Locator. This is the address that normally identifies a computer. This can also point to different types of sources like folders or FTP sites. An example would be http://go.to/uscportfolio, which instructs the computer browser to go to the server “go.to" and load the page identified as uscportfolio. Web Page: A single HTML document that is part of a larger website. Website: A collection of web pages. They may not be physically present on one single computer, but could be distributed by hyperlinks over different computers. 78 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. BIBLIOGRAPHY Alex homer, Dave Sussman, Brian Francis et al. Professional Active Server Pages 3J). Wrox Press Ltd. ISBN 81-7366-179-0.1999. Frances Hong. Internet Capacity. Major Theme For 1999 - Study. NEW YORK (Reuters).Yahoo! News, December 6.1998. Gregory R. Gromov. Roads and Crossroads of Internet History. http://www.intemetvalley.com/intval.html. 2000. http://www.commerce.net/resources/work/pilot/nielsen_96/exec.html#details. CommerceNet/Nielsen survey, September 1996. http://www.e-architect.com. American Institute of Architects. 2001. http://www.e-architect.com/news/aiarchitect/junOO/intemet.htm. Internet Use at Firms Accelerates. June 2000. http://ecommerce.ncsu.edu/topics/navigation/bytes.html. Bvte Size Measurement. 2001. http://www.glreach.com/globstats/index.php3. Global Internet Statistics. Global Reach. December 2000. http://www.math.umd.edu/~dngA/VorldCourses/UNIV118/ARCH/FallingWater.html. The Creative Drive: Creativity in Architecture. Music and Science. Dr. Justin Wyss- Gallifent, University of Maryland. 2001. http://www.neci.nec.com/~lawrence/web99questions.html. Accessibility and Distribution of Information on the Web. Steven Lawrence. 1999. http://www.ucalgary.ca/EV/yirtual1/6833894Amages/flwt0b.gif. Architectural Modeling. Michael Wilson. University of Calgary 1998. http://www.usc.edu/dept/architecture/mbs/tools/ecstools.html, The Univ. of Southern California Master of Building Science web page. 2001. Jonathan Cohen. Communication and Design with the Internet. Published by W.W.Norton & Company. ISBN 0-393-73043-3.2000. Marc Schiler, Madhu Gupta, Anish Tripathi, Karen Kensek and Doug Noble, Websites as a Technology Transfer Library and Software Dissemination Source. 2000. Matthew Strebe, Charles Perkins. MCSE Internet Information Server 4. Published by SAMS Publishing. ISBN 81-7656-006-5. 2000 79 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Scott Mitchell and James Atkinson. Teach yourself Active Server Paoes. Published by Macmillan Computer Publishing. ISBN 81-7635-401-5.1999. Steve Lawrence and Lee Giles. Accessibility and Distribution of Information on the Web, http://wwwmetrics.com/. 2000. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. APPENDIX APPENDIX A: Pros and Cons o f Having an Individual Online Portfolio Pros Cons 1. The student can add as many images and projects as he/she wants. They may ultimately create an inefficient website. 2. The student is free to choose the online host. This is rather tricky, as the choice is usually not straightforward 3. The student can design the layout in any fashion they likes. The site will be visited by those who are informed and if it pops up in a search engine. 4. The student can use any web technology they are comfortable with. They have to leam web designing and development. 5. The portfolio can be of any size or shape. Again an inefficient website may develop. 6. The portfolio is visible from almost any place on earth. The URL will probably be difficult to remember or too unique and isolated to remember. 81 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. APPENDIX B: Pros and Cons o f Having a Portfolio in the Repository Pros Cons 1. The site can have a URL that is easily memorized by firms because it would be like a storehouse of student interns. Also, it can be linked from the USC school of Architecture web page, making it more accessible to visitors. The student has a limited hand in its design and layout. 2. The student is still able to show his/her work as he/she desires in an intuitive flow. The flow of the portfolio is governed by the webmaster and designer, over which the student has no control. 3. The student does not need to leam any web designing skills and only needs to have used email attachments before. 4. In time, visitors will get used to the flow of the site and soon browse the site very efficiently and quickly, making it a favored site. It will have lost the unique flavor that distinguishes each design student’s portfolio. 5. The site has a search engine, which can allow visitors to search by project types, names, faculty name etc. 6. The site will be accessible from almost anywhere on earth. 82 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. APPENDIX C: Questionnaire Given to Students A. Personal Information 1 NAME: 2. SEX: M/F 4. ADDRESS: 5. YEAR: 1/2/3/4/5 5. PHONE: 6. EMAIL: B. Percentage of time spent on the net per week: Percentage of time spent on the net for architectural research per week: Do you chat online? Where: How regularly do you check emails? Name the top three sites that come to your mind: 0 ii) iii) What do you think the Internet can be used for in the building industry? Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. APPENDIX D: Frequently Asked Questions This FAQ is included in the website as an online help tool. It answers some of the general queries made by users of the site. Q1. What is the need of an online portfolio? A1. This Portfolio of yours will be accessible to anyone having an Internet connection and a browser. Virtually all firms in the country come into that category. You could have them take a look at your portfolio without having to mail out your expensive hardcopy. Q2. What is the optimal image type to use? A2. There are two popular image types for the Internet (i) CompuServe GIF and (ii) JPEG The two have different uses. If your image were composed of solid colors with no gradient of colors, you would go for GIF images. GIF images have a limitation of 256 colors only and are suited for line drawings and plain text or images in solid colors. Most photographs would not be in this category. GIF’s have two added advantages. The first is that it loads the images on the browser in stages of improving quality. Thus a viewer can begin to see a blurred image immediately and has to wait a little more time for the image to become sharp. This method is used to engage the viewers and keep their interest. The second advantage of GIF’s is that, it can carry information about transparency. This means that part of the image can be designated as transparent, so as to show the things beneath it 84 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. JPEGs on the other hand are images that can contain millions of colors. It is suited for photographs of all types where there are color gradients. Although it does not have the two features of the GIF image discussed above, JPEGs are highly compressed images. Both can be compressed to varying degrees of quality, called lossy compression. Lossy compression basically means that, when you want a smaller file size, you lose on image quality. Q3. What is the structure of my portfolio on this site? A3. The portfolio is divided into 10 different projects. Thus you can hold 10 different projects according to your choice and no more. Each project consists of 10 pages. Each page consists of one image and a description of the image. Thus you would have 10 projects with ten pages each, totaling to a 100-page portfolio. 04. What is the need for adding Faculty name in the projects? A4. The search engine of the site is built to search by any useful information in the portfolio. Since, most of the time, your faculty is better known in the industry, people or visitors could come to the website and search by faculty name. Q5. What is “icon” button at the top right hand comer? A5. This is the portion of the site where one would upload one of their designs or logo, which would be used as the splash page for the portfolio (e.g. like the “Starting Window” screen in Microsoft Windows). It is also the place where one uploads an image of him/herself to be placed in the resume. Both of these are optional. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Q6. What is the image size that I have to use? What is the text size? A6. The portfolio pages require one to upload two versions of the images and two versions of the text description. One version is the small sized ones which loads in the main portfolio. The second version is the large sized one with more details, which pops up on clicking the smaller one. 86 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. APPENDIX E: Disclaim er and Terms o f Use This disclaimer is posted on the website. By visiting and using the this web site the user agrees to the following: 1. All the information displayed, transmitted or earned by this websites including, but not limited to, directories, guides, news articles, opinions, reviews, text, photographs, images, illustrations, profiles, audio clips, video clips, trademarks, service marks and the like, collectively the "Content”, are protected by the copyright and other intellectual property laws. 2. The user must not change any of the material in the site or remove any part of this notice 3. Trademarks used on this site to describe firms and their products are trademarks of those firms or the registered proprietor of the trademark. 4. Always check the Information at this site. 5. The site is subject to the usual uncertainties of the web community. It may not be accurate, current or complete It is subject to change without notice It should never be relied on as the basis for doing or failing to do something 6. Links Are Not Endorsements. They are for convenience only and do not mean that the host or the creator approves those other sites, their content or the people who run them. 7. Beware of Security Risks and Computer Viruses The world wide web exists across insecure, public networks and there is a risk that: transmissions to or from this site may be intercepted and modified by third parties 87 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 8. The user accepts all risks and responsibility for losses, damages, costs and other consequences resulting directly or indirectly from using this site and any information or material available from it. 9. To the maximum permitted by law, the host excludes all liability to any person arising directly or indirectly from using this site and any information or material available from it. 10. The information contained in the site is not monitored regularly. 11. It is the responsibility of the user to inform the hosts of any misuse or abuse. The host and the creator of the site are not responsible for content and or information on the site. 88 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.
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Asset Metadata
Creator
Law, Bean Ching
(author)
Core Title
Online portfolio repository for students of architecture
Degree
Master of Building Science / Master in Biomedical Sciences
Degree Program
Building Science
Publisher
University of Southern California
(original),
University of Southern California. Libraries
(digital)
Tag
Architecture,education, technology of,OAI-PMH Harvest
Language
English
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Digitized by ProQuest
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https://doi.org/10.25549/usctheses-c16-42678
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UC11342157
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1409594.pdf (filename),usctheses-c16-42678 (legacy record id)
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1409594.pdf
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42678
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Thesis
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Law, Bean Ching
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texts
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University of Southern California Dissertations and Theses
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The author retains rights to his/her dissertation, thesis or other graduate work according to U.S. copyright law. Electronic access is being provided by the USC Libraries in agreement with the au...
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University of Southern California Digital Library
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USC Digital Library, University of Southern California, University Park Campus, Los Angeles, California 90089, USA
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education, technology of