This year I entered the Digital Design brief for the D&AD Student Awards. The brief was pretty open and it asked me to create a 2 minute concept video of a multiscreen interaction using a Windows phone. This is the concept that I came up with:
After the first 2 weeks of the semester we have been fully introduced to our Interaction Design module. We have been given the brief:
‘To team up with Art, Philosophy and Contemporary Practices, students to create an app complimentary to their work. It should be an exhibition app for a gallery client who is having a retrospective of the artist’s work. The app should behave as the taster for the experience that can be found in the gallery or other exhibition space. This may include elements of content from the research activity helping illustrate the artist’s process and research interests.’
The first half of the semester will focus on research. We will have to get to know the artist that our team was assigned and then go on to think of how we could create an App to exhibit their work. In the first week we started to think of questions that we could ask our artist during an interview and what techniques we could use to get the most useful information from the artist.
Interviewing our Artist (Rosheen Murray)
During week 2 we had to organise our interview and begin our research into the artist that we were assigned (Rosheen Murray). The interview went really well and we managed to get a lot of insight into her course and how she feels about it. We also found out about re-occurring themes that she uses within her work and the process that she uses when completing a brief. The interview was a great help and has increased my confidence about the project.
Christmas at home
Having had a really good holiday back home in Glasgow I am finally on my way back to Dundee to start the next semester of 2nd year Digital Interaction Design.
My 3 modules for this semester are titled:
1. – Introduction To Data Structures And Algorithms
2. – Interaction Design (media products)
3. – Playful Practices
I also received my results for the 1st semester and I was really pleased to see that I had managed to get an 2 As and 1 B. This has definitely given me the confidence boost that I needed to go into this semester with a positive attitude. I look forward to seeing what the coming weeks have in store for me.
I’ve recently been working on trying to create a nice brand for myself and I feel that I have come up with a really nice concept behind ‘DesignWithDave’. Creating an elegant and meaningful design that I can use to spread the word and get myself known in the world of design. I created a business card design and have ordered 250 business cards which should be arriving in the next couple of days, exciting times!
Here’s the designs:
Front of the business card
Back of the business card
I managed to create a short video to demonstrate the app that I created as part of my 2nd year project in Digital Interaction Design.
I’m not used to having a Sunday without having work to do. I usually have to work on projects to get stuff done for the following week but today there was nothing to do because I have finished all of my coursework for this semester! I ended up not knowing what to do with my spare time so ended up designing a new background for my twitter feed. Hope you like it 
My new twitter background
Photoshop > xCode > iPod
After spending many hours working on the code, fixing bugs and re-designing, I had a working prototype on the iPod touch. I had really enjoyed designing and creating the app ‘Progress Report’ and I am really pleased with the final outcome. I believe that I achieved what I set out to create and the App runs as well as I could have hoped.
Using the app on an iPod touch
I really enjoyed the projects that we were given this semester and I feel that I have really progressed as a designer. It has been a great start to my second year in DixD and I look forward to another semester in the new year.
We were split away from our groups and had to design the rest of the app individually so I was straight onto photoshop and started creating my initial photoshop mockups, working with the earlier paper prototypes to design the user interface. I decided that I would actually call the app ‘Progress Report’ and I knew that it would need some sort of brand/identity which I would be able to produce while designing on photoshop. I believe that i managed to come up with an authentic and intuitive design.
The attendance page design
The buttons/footer design
I was consciously creating a fun and visual way for the user to see and interact with the data whilst keeping the data meaningful and interesting. There was a lot of trial and error with the data visualisation and colour scheme. I had to change the design on numerous occasions to make it look the way that I had intended. I feel that I managed to create a friendly interface that would be easy to interact with and was simple to use.
Once we got back from our reading week we were put into new groups and given the brief for our next project. We were told that we needed to create an App for students and that we were going to have to create detailed paper prototypes and wireframes before we begin to implement the Apps on xCode. Lucky for me I had already done a bit of paper prototyping during the first project so I knew how to get started on this project. We firstly had to figure out what kind of App we would design and we decided that we were going to create a Progress Report application which students could use to see how they were improving in their course at the University of Dundee.
The first stage, choosing a concept
Once we had chosen what kind of app we were going to create we had to create start paper prototyping and create different wireframes to show how the information structure and how the user would interact with the App. Early on in the process we decided that we would be creating a very visual app with meaningful data visualisations. These were our original designs:
Initial interface design
Our paper prototypes and wireframes
This process was really helpful and let us get a good grasp on how the user would interact with our app and how the information structure would work as a whole. It meant that we could see how different parts of the app would work without having to spend the time coding it on xCode and we could make important changes to the design early on in the design process. I was really proud of how our transition wireframe turned out and it really helped me understand how I would create the app on xCode:
Our transition wireframe
I was ready to start creating a detailed design of the App on photoshop and get prototyping on xCode.
After a few weeks of getting to grips with xCode and designing the app we had finally managed to get a working prototype that we were both really proud of. In just about 4 weeks we had managed to create a very meaningful design and had our first working iPhone App infront of us.
Our app working on the iPhone simulator
We presented the App to the rest of the class and got some fantastic feedback which we were really greatful for as we had really put a lot of work into the project and were extremely proud of what we had managed to achieve in terms of interface design and technical ability.
Once we got given the iPod touches I was eager to see how our app would look and feel on an actual device. The App looked great on the iPod and felt very fluent and intuitive to use. Overall the project was a great success and we both really enjoyed working together on the Hussein Chalayan App.
Using our app on an iPod touch
