Team Name: NeuroTech
Project Name: Web Design Engineering Notebook
Date: 2025
Date: Day 1 – 2025
Our goal for this project is to design a professional, functional, and visually appealing website for our robotics team, NeuroTech. The website should:
Today the team focused on deciding which platform to build our website on. We discussed several options, including HTML/CSS coding, website builders, and other tools. After weighing ease of use, time constraints, and our experience level, we initially decided to use Slides to design the website. Part of the team worked on sketching initial wireframes, while the rest began planning content for the pages.
Date: Day 2 – 2025
We researched 5 other robotics team websites to identify best practices:
Part of the team focused on layout ideas, while the other half analyzed colors, fonts, and navigation. We noted ideas to implement in our website design. This research helped guide our orange and beige Slides prototype.
Date: Day 2–3 – 2025
Tools Used: Google Slides & Google Sites
Part of the team began building the website in Google Slides. Each slide represented a page on the website. We used an orange and beige color scheme for a clean, professional look and added a few robot images per slide to highlight our projects. Half the team added content to their assigned slides, while the others focused on making the layout consistent and readable. By the end of the day, the basic structure of the website was complete.
Today we realized that Google Slides wasn’t compatible for a full website design due to linking and responsiveness issues, so we decided to migrate the project to Google Sites. Half of the team worked on uploading the team logo and setting up all the necessary pages, while the other half added titles and organized page navigation. We also developed the first version of the homepage, including layout, titles, and placement of logos. This served as the foundation for the website structure, making it easier to continue building and refining the site.
Date: Day 4 – 2025
Today the team focused on improving the website’s sidebar, creating a sleeker UI, and adding smoother animations for a better user experience. We completed the Meet The Team, Exhibit, and Build pages. Part of the team worked on adding better images of our logo and creating a more relaxing, visually appealing interface. Anvitha tried adding all team members’ names using HTML, but she ran into a developer problem with my name. I fixed it and gave her a tip: she didn’t need to include the </li> tag after every name. Half the team focused on content updates while the other half polished the UI, and by the end of the day, the site looked much cleaner and more professional.
Date: Day 5 – 2025
Today the team finished all the pages needed for the website, including the Sponsors page and the Contact/Outreach form. We conducted a full content review to ensure all text was professional and grammatically correct. I also focused on writing the engineering notebook as thoroughly as possible, making sure to document all decisions, updates, and contributions accurately. Everything required for the Engineering Notebook was completed, and the website is now fully structured, polished, and ready for a final technical review.
Date: Day 6 – 2025
Today, the entire team focused on adding final technical and aesthetic polish to the website, moving beyond just content completion. Our primary goal was to ensure the site was not only fully functional but also highly optimized and user-friendly before final submission. A significant effort was placed on the footer functionality and consistency. Yashas took the lead on reviewing and updating the footer across all remaining pages, making sure it included essential information like copyright, quick links, and a link to our sponsor page, maintaining the established orange and beige theme. We encountered a few inexplicable layout shifts and minor UI bugs that had cropped up since the previous day’s development. The team worked together to track down and resolve these issues. This included correcting minor alignment problems on mobile views and ensuring that all interactive elements, like buttons and navigation links, had smooth, functional transitions. A major focus of the latter half of the day was on performance optimization. We realized that the initial push to complete the site might have led to some excessive or inefficient code. Atheet and Atharv specifically reviewed the code on high-traffic pages, reducing redundancy and streamlining elements. The goal was to ensure the site loaded quickly and efficiently, even on older personal computers or slower mobile connections, which directly impacts accessibility and user experience. This proactive approach to technical debt aligns with our team's aspiration to be the best engineers possible, focusing not just on features but on robust performance. By the end of the day, all known UI bugs were squashed, the footers were uniformly implemented, and the site's code was significantly cleaner and faster. The website is now fully structured, visually polished, and technically optimized, ready for presentation and submission.
End of Engineering Notebook