Alan's IxD ← Miscellaneous jabberings.

A critical reflection on the social role of technology

Apr

2013

As an interaction design student at the University of Dundee, my need for collaboration and discussion is becoming ever more important. Throughout my two years at university, I have participated in many projects which have been almost exclusively group based. I have never been outwardly “good” at discussion or brainstorming, spending most of my time ...

Video Prototyping

Apr

2013

We decided that the best way to simulate our concept was by miming interactions with the system and post-editing in an overlay of the interface. We supplemented this with a voiceover narration describing the types of interaction with the People Aware Labels. After Effects was used to overlay the interface using a difference matte to detect when the people ...

Prototyping Digital Futures: Paper Prototype

Apr

2013

Our next step was to create an experience that would give the user as good an insight as possible into how the final product would function. We made use of an unused whiteboard to simulate a display case in the museum and a number of physical objects from around our studios. A scale model was ...

Prototyping Digital Futures: Concept Storyboards

Feb

2013

Having conducted our user research at the McManus gallery and drawn some conclusions based on our observation, we began to brainstorm ideas for solutions to problems in the museum and enhancements to current systems. We began by splitting into groups of two again for 10 minute brainstorming sessions. Each pair would select two insight cards ...

Prototyping Digital Futures: User Research

Feb

2013

Having touched briefly on user research and storyboarding in previous modules, I was excited to hear that we’d be spending an entire module learning in-depth how to do it. Our previous project to design a social network had involved a substantial amount of user research, but most of that took place online, gathering data from ...

Social Network: Stage four, branding!

Nov

2012

When it came to branding, we employed a low impact colour scheme of whites and grays, along with a textured background to support the theme of showcasing materials. We selected this clean, provocative design in order to avoid drawing focus from the content. We composed the layout of the site to draw attention to the images ...

Social Network: Stage three, concept generation!

Nov

2012

Having finished researching the potential usergroups, we began to formulate possible concepts for the project. We initially came up with three concepts, Recraft, Everlovin’ and Biobling. During this stage, we began to encounter problems due to our very focused subject matter and usergroup. Each of our concepts ended up with one major feature, which was ...

Social Network: Stage two, ecological jewellery!

Nov

2012

It quickly became apparent that our topic of upcycled jewellery would prove too specific when it came to gathering content. This caused us to widen our focus to ecological and environmentally-friendly jewellery in general. We then began to brainstorm for possible concepts for our social network. During this time, I started learning not to focus ...

Social Network: Stage one, user research!

Oct

2012

As part of our Designing Social Networks module, the class has split into groups of three and begun to think about subjects related to design to center our social networks around. Our group consists of Amy McCrae, Stephen Macvean and myself. We began by listing as many different subject areas as we could. Starting off ...

5 Top Lessons to Take Forward

Dec

2011

During the undertaking of the assignment ‘instigating a conversation about Interaction Design’, we encountered a number of important points, both positive and negative. While the problematic points caused serious setbacks, knowing them for future projects will help them go far more smoothly. We were asked to conduct an interview with an alumni from DJCAD’s Digital ...