The Development Process Begins

Once I'd decided on my project topic, I started thinking about its design and content - a daunting task. Fortunately there was a process to follow that was designed to help logically plan and implement the whole thing.

We began in class with a spreadsheet on which we outlined the tasks and timeline for the Pre-development process. Pre-development begins with Requirements Gathering, which includes Content Requirements and Functional Requirements. It continued with the development of an Iterative Survey which will be sent out to my fellow classmates to gather their thoughts on my site's content and functions. I've now written up at least twenty questions for this survey, with more to come. I'll send it out to my classmates next week to get their input and indeed, gauge their interest in my project's topic.

The next step in Pre-development was to Determine Target Markets. Who would visit my Seeger website? I had a pretty good idea of who that would be, but nevertheless felt it would be worthwhile to look for similar folk music websites, if any, then research folk music sites in general. I knew the causes Pete sang and talked about, so I researched those areas. These included environmental causes, humanitarian causes and more.

My next task was Content Gathering. Googling "Pete Seeger" was a very good place to start. I also pulled a recently updated biography of Seeger off my bookshelf. It is an excellent source of detail and serves as a place to fact check some of the anecdotal information found on the internet. I did a lot of Youtube research as well and,through the Download Helper software on my Firefox browser, was able to capture a large number of videos of Pete and his contemporaries singing the folk songs he either wrote or made famous. These videos will form an important part of my website.