Emma Borders & Jenna Moskow's Collaborative Project Rough Draft
COLLABORATIVE PROJECT 1
MEMORANDUM
DATE: June 6, 2008
TO: Dr. Theresa Fishman, Technical Writing Professor
FROM: Emma Borders and Jenna Moskow
SUBJECT: Collaborative Project Proposal for Tigers Who Care
Organizational History/Description
Tigers Who Care is an organization devoted to cooperation between Clemson students and the community. They facilitate projects that improve the well-being of citizens and students alike, and encourage students to make positive changes within the community. The organization educates students about the problems in their surroundings, and shows that those problems can be solved with action and determination. Tigers Who Care makes students passionate about changing the world for the better, and also helps the citizens and students of Clemson work together in projects that are mutually beneficial.
Members of the organization participate in widely known projects, such as Habitat for Humanity, and they help out their own community by helping take care of children and the elderly. They also volunteer in an assisted living home in Clemson called the Althera Sterling home, and participate in Helping Hands and Relay for Life. They have meetings weekly and do at least one different service project every month. They sponsor weekly opportunities for their members to perform some type of community service as well, such as taking care of children and the elderly as mentioned above.
Tigers Who Care strives to induce a sense of civic duty in its student members. The influence of this organization on its members may continue for the rest of their lives, and may increase the number of compassionate and responsible people. By working alongside other students and citizens to help people, the members of Tigers Who Care and those they work with learn the importance of diversity. They also learn to respect others and how to be respected.
The members of Tigers Who Care don't have to pay many dues (only $10 a year) but they have to invest time and energy in the organization. The students who join must attend meetings, participate in service projects, and participate in fundraisers. Tigers Who Care operate democratically with a set of rules that the members must abide by, and many decisions are decided by majority vote. The rules and regulations are in the Constitution of Tigers Who Care, which can be amended if enough members agree on it.
Members of Tigers Who Care are required to attend at least one meeting a month, and visitors are also allowed to attend the meetings in order to observe. Tigers Who Care are led by officers, including the President, Vice President, Secretary, Treasurer, Chairman, and Project Coordinators. There are other officials as well as the ones listed, with varied duties which are described in the Constitution of the organization. The officials of Tigers Who care are elected by the members, and elections take place in the spring every year. Elections may take place in other months if officers need to be replaced, but they only have extra elections when necessary.
Description of Clients wants and needs
The client needs a website that will be interesting, easily understood, and which correctly portrays the motives and goals of Tigers Who Care. In order for the website to be popular, so that people will read its message, it must look attractive and possibly entertaining. The website should contain some of the information that it contains now, such as the constitution of the organization, mission statement, and contacts, but more information should be available on the site to describe the projects that the club is working on or has completed. In order to attract more people to the website, there should be a link for “Tigers Who Care” on
First, the overall appearance of the website should be more up to date. The website’s color scheme will need to change from the old blue and orange colors to the current purple, white, and orange scheme. In order to keep the website as entertaining as possible, it will need some type of slide show at the top of the website with pictures from projects that Tigers Who Care have participated in or sponsored. The pictures in the slideshow will be a visual representation of the activities that the Tigers Who Care have participated in to give the on-looker another way to get the idea of the Tigers Who Care’s various involvements. This will be more interesting to site visitors than plain text, and their presence on the main page may encourage people to view the Pictures page for more pictures. The website will also include a list of links titled to easily navigate the website. Each link will jump down to the according section or page. This will allow the site-viewer to be able to find exactly what he/she is looking for instead of having to search through a long word document. The Table of Contents will include an About Us link, a Constitution link, a Contacts link, a Pictures link, an Events link, and a How To Get Involved link.
The About Us link will contain a brief description of how the organization got started and what type of events in which they try to participate. The Constitution link will provide their Constitution (from the old website) with the color scheme of the new website. The Contacts link will provide the names, numbers, email, and pictures of all officers, coordinators, supervisors, and advisors.
The Pictures Link will be a supplement to the slideshow, which will show some pictures to get visitors interested. Since the slideshow doesn’t include captions or any description, the Pictures link will contain not only more pictures of the projects that Tigers Who Care has participated but also brief captions describing the contents of the picture. The captions will tell who is in the picture, what they are doing, and when the picture was taken. With enough information, it should be possible to organize the pictures in chronological order of events. The different events and projects in the captions will be in hyperlink that, when clicked on, will jump to either the particular organization’s website or the corresponding part of the Tigers Who Care’s Events section that talks about the project in more detail. This will add more organization to the site, and will be easier for people to get specific ideas for how to get involved and what type of events the participants in the projects accomplish.
The Events link will lead to the Events section that will have a calendar with days of events highlighted. These highlighted days will have the option to click on them. When they are clicked on, there will be a link to a Table of Events that describes where the events take place, the times, a brief description of the event’s purpose, and contact information. Information about past events will also be available, including times, dates, and information about the purposes and results of past projects. Since the events section is organized into a calendar and the Pictures will be in chronological order of events, there will be an option in the Table of Events to click on the corresponding pictures in the Pictures section that are of the particular event (if pictures for the event are available).
The How To Get Involved link will have information such as who to contact to get involved, dues that will need to be paid, upcoming events, different organizations that the Tigers Who Care sponsor with the option to click the organization name that leads to their website, etc. By having a section of the website that encourages students to join the organization, with easily available information regarding membership, dues, and responsibilities all in the same place, more students may be persuaded to join Tigers Who Care and helping the community. There should even be a section on the site where non-students, who obviously cannot join the organization, can find similar projects to participate in. The main emphasis of the How to Get Involved section will be to portray to the viewer the small amount of money and time needed in order to make a big difference, and hopefully will thus encourage the viewer to get involved with some of the organization’s events.
Now that the website is more organized, and more easily viewable, the overall look of the website will need to change, as briefly stated earlier. There should be a purple background, and all font will be in Times New Roman in white so that it is easy to read. All links will be orange, and anything that is highlighted will be highlighted in orange. The font for the main links (About Us, Constitution, etc.) will be in larger font, about 22 font, and the rest of the page will be in regular 12 font. The slide show of pictures will constantly be going on and when anyone scrolls down the page or clicks on a link further down on the page, the slide show will remain across the top, constantly in view for the reader, and giving the page a far more entertaining appeal.
The site also needs a new design for the Tigers Who Care logo. The text in the logo needs to be clear and easy to read. This will involve designing by some of the members, so the idea will need to be further developed after they put forth a general idea. Even if the members are reluctant to change the logo very much, the wording should be improved to increase its clarity.
Identification of Project Constraints
The constraints of this project are basically the need to complete the project within a given time limit, the ability to gather all appropriate information and documents, and the need to stay true to the spirit of Tigers Who Care. The purpose of the website should be the same as the purpose of the organization: to help people and the community. The final product of this project needs to meet the needs of Tigers Who Care, and it must be to their liking and the site viewers’ liking.
It might be difficult to come up with a new logo, and to obtain all the information that is needed to carry out the plan for the new site. If the Tigers Who Care object to changing their logo, then we may have to either give up on the idea or only make very small changes to the logo. It will take cooperation from Tigers Who Care to obtain pictures of their past events, assuming that there are any. Since they do not have pictures on their current site, it may be hard to find someone who has pictures of Tiger Who Care and who knows what is happening in the picture. Brief descriptions of the picture contents will be needed for the Pictures section, and identifying people in pictures may be difficult if no one in the group can remember the particular people involved in the event.
The constraint of time will make it challenging to gather all of the information that we need and put it together in the planned format. The amount of information that we intend to put on the site will be substantive, and organizing and editing it will take time. Along with the pictures, we will need summaries of the events in the pictures, and dates. If we cannot get the information that we need from the members of the organization in order to improve the website, then it may be a very difficult project. If the lack of information is great, then we may need to rethink a new proposal of how to improve the website. If the members of Tigers Who Care are not willing to cooperate, then it will definitely make the project much more difficult. Another possible constraint could be the ability to get all areas of the website functioning properly. Creating slide-shows and links that function correctly is a tedious and difficult task and will need the assistant of the Tigers Who Care website designer. Without the help from the designer, the webpage would very likely not be completed as according to the proposal.
Description of Major Project Goals
The goals of this project are to design an improved web site for the organization Tigers Who Care, which will encourage other people to visit their site and read their message. We hope to make the site more attractive, and more interesting. The product of this project should contain more information about the causes that Tigers Who Care supports, and about the projects that they participate in. The website will be designed so that it will capture the interest of students, and inspire them to either join Tigers Who Care or help out the community or some other way.
The website will also have a section geared toward students who want to join the organization (the How to Get Involved Section). This section will summarize the information that the students need to know before joining, all in one place, that is easy to understand. More detail about the operation of the organization will be included in the information on the website. This will give potential members more information about the organization that is easy to access and understand.
There will be a slideshow with pictures of Tigers Who Care participating in service projects, or pictures that represent the causes that the organization supports. These pictures will provide more information about Tigers Who Care, and let visitors to the site see what types of things the members participate in. Hopefully, visitors to the site will be impressed with the accomplishments and dedication of the organization and decide to participate in some sort of service project.
The website will be visually pleasing, and will incorporate the colors orange and purple instead of orange and blue. The site will be easy to navigate, which will encourage visitors to explore it. The logo on the website should be changed, either completely or just a little. At the least, the writing on the logo will be changed so that it looks better and is easier to read in order to attract the viewers to the organization. The layout of the site will be more professional and more balanced, and the whole site will be more appealing. Ultimately the changes to the website will cause more people to visit the site, will cause more people to join their organization, and will educate the community about the need to help others.
Outline/Timeline
Note: Due to possible constraints, lack of cooperation with the Tigers Who Care members, and/or technical difficulties, this outline is subject to change.
| Project | Date Accomplished |
| Gather Pictures | June 9th, 2008 – Jenna Moskow |
| Gather Event Information | June 9th, 2008 – Emma Borders |
| Home Page (links & layout) | June 9th, 2008 – Emma Borders & Jenna Moskow |
| Picture Slideshow | June 11th, 2008 – Jenna Moskow |
| About Us Section | June 11th, 2008 – Emma Borders |
| Pictures Section | June 14th, 2008 – Jenna Moskow |
| Events Section | June 14th, 2008 – Emma Borders |
| How to Get Involved Section | June 16th, 2008 – Jenna Moskow |
| Constitution Section | June 16th, 2008 – Emma Borders |
| Contacts Section | June 17th, 2008 – Emma Borders & Jenna Moskow |
| Compile Information and Final Product | June 18th, 2008 – Emma Borders & Jenna Moskow |
| Submission | June 19th, 2008 |
posted by Jenna at 6/22/2008 08:24:00 PM
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