Day 28: Final Project Planning

Synthesis Over Summary

Your final project shouldn't just demonstrate individual techniques - it should synthesize them into something new. Combine brutalist typography with generative backgrounds. Merge glitch aesthetics with smooth animations. Create cultural commentary through experimental navigation. This is your experimental design thesis - make it count.

Ambitious but Achievable

Dream big, plan realistically. Your project should push boundaries while remaining completable. Define core features versus nice-to-haves. Build in time for experimentation and failure. Create fallback plans for technical challenges. The best experimental projects feel impossible until they're suddenly inevitable.

Project Planning Framework:

// Final project architecture
const finalProject = {
  concept: {
    title: "Digital Decay Gallery",
    thesis: "Website that ages and deteriorates with use",
    inspiration: ["ruins", "entropy", "digital archaeology"],
    challenge: "Make decay beautiful, not broken"
  },
  
  technicalStack: {
    core: ["Vanilla JS", "CSS Custom Properties", "Web Audio API"],
    experimental: ["WebGL shaders", "IndexedDB for decay state"],
    fallbacks: ["CSS-only decay", "Local storage"]
  },
  
  features: {
    mustHave: [
      "Progressive visual decay",
      "User interaction tracking",
      "Regeneration mechanism",
      "Mobile responsive"
    ],
    niceToHave: [
      "Sound design",
      "Collaborative decay",
      "Data visualization of deterioration",
      "Easter eggs in ruins"
    ]
  },
  
  timeline: {
    day1: {
      morning: "Core structure and decay algorithm",
      afternoon: "Basic visual implementation"
    },
    day2: {
      morning: "Interaction tracking and effects",
      afternoon: "Polish and edge cases"
    }
  },
  
  successMetrics: [
    "Creates emotional response",
    "Technically innovative",
    "Conceptually coherent",
    "Actually functions"
  ]
};

Document Everything

Your final project needs rich documentation. Plan to capture: Initial sketches and rejected ideas. Technical decision rationale. Screenshots at every stage. Video of interactions. User testing feedback. Code architecture decisions. This documentation becomes as valuable as the project itself - it shows how experimental designers think.

Prepare for Presentation

How will you show this work? Plan your presentation strategy: Live demo with fallback video. Interactive walkthrough. Story-driven case study. Technical deep-dive option. Multiple entry points for different audiences. Your project should impress designers, developers, and civilians alike. Make it accessible without dumbing it down.