Final video

Due to a lot of restrictions recording the footage needed within the McManus museum, we ended up recording within the room used for our recent interviews. With much time spent on finding a suitable place where we were allowed to record, Kirsten and I decided that with such low amount of time left we should spend it recording the functionality of the interactive screen.

With the interactive screen supposedly being a hallway, with limited resources we also realised that featuring a few different screens in one shot was not possible as we could only book out one or two projectors and we have limited laptops and space to set it all up. We decided to cut the ‘hallway’ in to segments so that each screen shown in the video represents each part of the wall and what may be displayed on to it.

To me this may have been the most difficult part of this project, as many decisions had to be made in short time even though we tried to cover all problems we would encounter as soon as possible during our development work. But realising this and being pressured to work to the best standard we could produce, I felt that it was a good experience and may also help us try to solve and counter more problems that may appear in later projects.

The concept of phones have developed considerably throughout pastimes to this modern day and age. The primary function of a phone was naturally to either call or be called by someone which was the basic form of easy communication through long distance. But the ideas of owning a phone became demandingly popular in a rather short amount of time which lead to developments of portable phones and further along to include texting, a digital representation of mailing letters. Now the majority of the population have ‘smart’ phones, almost ignoring the basic principle of calling or being called, most functions are based on applications that are available to us via these phones including games, photographing, video recording and especially social network sites such as facebook, twitter etc.

Content

To call someone all a phone needs are buttons to allow users to punch in some number to call another person or at the most a screen displaying the numbers of the caller or what you just entered would be relevant.

“Phones with numerical keypads worked best for dialing phone calls. Incidentally, phone calls tend to be the primary function of a phone. ‘Smartphones’ completely ignore these basic facts, resulting in some of the least intelligent devices I’ve seent yet. Oh the irony.” (Lorenza, A. 2013)

Our daily use of mobile phones have changed drastically through the years. What once was a simple object used for contacting has now been embedded with so much technology that rather than just simply pressing a button corresponding to the number you want, being the easiest method, is now a touch screen that you now have to get used to. I believe what Ashly is trying to say here is that with all the new technology advancements designers have developed so far ahead of what a phone really should be into something that requires effort to learn for new smartphone users, almost completely disqualifying the basic functionality of a phone just to suit this modern age. Yet people will buy smartphones, but generally not for the call functionality, but the applications that subside within it. As a portable device users find this very useful as they can go around their everyday activities with the positive of being kept up to date with their social life on the internet with their most recent posts, or sharing their photos of where they are and what they are doing. With the rapid competition between smartphones by different companies, incorporations of apps such as social medias became almost essential for every phone design to target users that find this very convenient.

      “we don’t have a choice on whether we DO social media, the question is how well we DO it.” (Qualman, E. 2010)

Technology is constantly advancing and with social media becoming linked towards our source of entertainment and job hiring, it starts to play such an important role that, rather than thinking of whether a type of social media should be designed/developed, its a matter of how well it should be made to suit the peoples’ needs criteria. Such technology designs allow social media to be readily available to fit on to many different sizes of screens on smartphones for easier usability. With such a phone, rather than having to wait to go home to their desktops or having to open their laptops just for a quick check on facebook, they can simply look at what they want through their phones while out on the streets or even at home while away from their computers. One such application that became a popular use for smart phones was the Instagram. This app allowed pictures that have been taken to go through quick ‘professional’ looking tweaks before sharing it with your friends/family on one of your most popular used social network sites.

“As the general public moves like a rampaging herd of rhinos towards the chocolate box choices of photography, the photographer has to expand his/her portfolio and create a distinct and unique vision. Make your vision what everyone else aspires to and cannot do with a swipe of a finger.” (Chong, O. 2012)

With so many available effects that allow your photos to look professionally made, photographers that take the time and effort to create the same styles begin to realise that they need to create more visually effective photos that do not incorporate such styles that can be created by a simple touch on a phone. As smartphones develop more and more with a variety of different applications, it starts to affect people who have the passion for doing their work as a profession, to differentiate themselves from casual phone photographers that use such apps for fun, they have to begin taking further steps to let their work be known and not be part of the now ordinary use of effects.

Conclusion

What once was a simple technology to allow the use of long distance communication has now developed considerably through the years, from being portable and adding the option of text messaging to the idea of touchscreen phones. While slightly moving off the primary function of phones, they continued to develop from this criteria to the point where the majority of the users buy such phones for the ability of internet usage while outside their homes. Being capable of using applications including social media became a huge success for smartphone designers made me believe that smartphones have made most users that more addicted to using social media whenever and wherever they are.

Reference

Lorenzana, A.  Try me first or pay up!.

<http://extrapinchofsalt.wordpress.com/tag/mobile-phone/>[Accessed on 21 April 2013]

Qualman, E. Socialnomics: How Social Media Transforms the Way We Live and Do Business.

<http://www.socialnomics.net/2010/05/05/social-media-revolution-2-refresh/> [Accessed on 21 April 2013]

Chong, O. The Instagram Effect.

<http://www.visualconnections.com/blog/tag/photography/> [Accessed on 22 April 2013]

For our first step in finding the concept we wanted to further develop was the basic brainstorming stage. After explanations from our lecturer we had to discuss with a few classmates from different groups about an insight card we each picked and write down all the possibilities of design that could come from them.

This was a very good exercise to me as I found sharing ideas with others allows more ideas to come with another person which was, in effect more like a developing brainstorm session and helped generate a more expansive search of ideas. As Kirsten and I generated many ideas we started realising that many of the ideas have a common connection that targets/relates to the idea of senses.

After a thorough discussion between us and the lecturer and hearing positive feedback from our classmates we decided that this would be an effective project to approach.

I found this exercise extremely helpful and fun to do as being under pressure made us choose the quickest and easiest method of building our prototype while successfully putting our points through.

Using kappa boards we created the main structure of our prototype, the hallway. With cardboard a building landscape was made to represent what may be shown in the ‘Walkthrough Time’ project with added information boxes represented by kappa boards. Our holographic humans walking along the hallway is made by cutting through a plastic bag and attached with elastic band so that it can hover over the hallway.

For our final prototype we realised that for our interview with the people at the museum, it may become a nuisance and possibly damaged along the way there if we had to carry it carefully with the rest of our gears for recording. So for this prototype we decide to introduce a similar flatpack idea, with strings attached to hold it all together so it does not fall apart easily but also makes it convient to prepare for displaying as all you have to do is pull the strings which in turn pulls all the walls in to the up right position.

- Tripod

- HD Camcorder

Interviewees:

- John

- Alan

- Iona

- Rob

I found this exercise extremely useful as each person we interviewed gave the impressions that they understood this project and how it would work easily. They also helped give insight as to what they thought was very effective for educational purposes within the project.

We based our questions for the interviewees based off of what they thought of our project, what they thought needed changing/adding/removing and if there was any major milestones in the Dundee history that they thought should be incorporated in to this design. Each person we interviewed helped in some way as they all worked in different departments of the museum. As one of them told us about the past exhibits that were fairly similar to our project and how effective it was in attracting audiences, another told us about the responsibilities of the design, having entertainment may attract more viewers interest but it would be important for them not to forgot the educational values that come with the project. This gave a great deal of insight to what we thought should be done to our design, as one of our ideas was to use holograms, this may distract them and so we decided to think of the more simple approach that may contain the same elements of entertainment but also fill their heads with the knowledge.

Before creating our own storyboards and wireframes we had a brief explanation of how storyboards work to convey a scenario, following a plot with an opening, climax and ending. I learnt that storyboards do not necessarily have to be perfectly drawn as long as the readability is adequate. The most important aspect of storyboarding is being able to detail how our project will work in a real life situation and persuade the audience of it working.

Me and my partner Kirsten first created a storyline through discussion and quick sketches to explain the many different ways on how our story could flow. After completing the script, our lecturers looked over and discussed the effectiveness of our story and a few example changes that could be done to further our development towards a storyboard.

We found that creating wireframes helps explain to the user what parts of our project would be interactive, play video, audio etc, which is more relevant to writing descriptions that may confuse our clients i.e. keeping our storyboard and wireframes descriptive and simple yet brief.

Lauren, Stephen M, Kevin

Our insight cards were based off of 3 facts that we realised inside the McManus:

1. Can we use technology to return the visitors’ attention back to the exhibits?

- We realised that many of the interactive screens around the McManus either does not relate to the work next to it/does not work/ or just distracts people (usually younger generation as they prefer to just play around).

2. Is it possible for all ages to be equally interested?

-As parents who take their children to the museum, the children tend to lose focus rather quickly and starts moving to the next exhibit making the parents having to leave before fully looking at the work.

3. Can personal stories give greater depth to the museum experience?

-Based off of Lauren’s experience of the phone booth explaining stories of people’s past history, she found it as a great insight and a more realistic experience of their work.

This was a very useful exercise as noting and discussing about issues within the McManus in a group helped pinpoint main issues that we agreed with whisch could then lead to further developments in to projects.

This SNS contains 3 main pages:

- The first being the ‘Timeline’ page consisting of the login/signup details and the general Love/Hate column chats. Before signup you may notice that there are no comment boxes available as we have set up the coding to disallow commenting until after registering to our site. This way people may have an example of what our site is about by looking at other comments and uploads but is unable to join the conversation and in turn entice them to join our site.

What the Helvetica is a partially working prototype created by a group of three (David Todd, Kevin Wong, Karen Geddes) for the SNS project that is still under development so please look forward to more in future times!

For one of our class projects in Computer Arts and Design HND we were learning how to design an advertisement using the 3D Max software. As I am a big fan of gaming I chose to animate the attachable camera for the Portable Playstation (PSP) console. By adding more entertainment towards the advert I decided to personify the eye of the camera.

In the animation you see the PSP in a first person view, while the camera pans towards it as if reaching to pick it, the eye jumps up in fright and glares in your direction. While attempting to move from side to side the eye will keep following your direction. After finally deciding to leave the PSP alone, the camera view of the PSP decides to back away and the PSP sign shows up.

In the process of developing my 3D animation I realised that the use of lighting in different positions are crucial in displaying the 3D effect in 3D Max and do not usually only contain one source of light.

I found this project rather exciting to do as I have never done animation in 3D before, learning how to use basic shapes but manipulating the vector points to achieve the desired design was rather confusing at first until later the lecturer showed a video of how everything is made up of only a few basic shapes that are just combined and manipulated a bit to form something else.

Interactive Square is a flash based application that is based around St. Enoch Square in Glasgow. The point of this project was to convey the ideas of 5 different words that we studied and applied designs towards – Colour, Metaphor, Affordance, Movement and Conventional.

I created this flash app by first taking pictures around St. Enoch Square and creating them in to vector images on Adobe Illustrator. Afterwards I started using the basic principals of rollovers and click-on button effects so that the animations will only run when one of these conditions are met. Each picture contains a coloured object that represents where the interactive button is and appears to be flashing, but it is actually containing the word it belongs to i.e. the birds in the Colour page flashes the word Colour, similar to sublimal messaging for a more entertaining look. A final hyperlink page is created under the ‘Conventional’ button linking to a website containing the rest of the projects done by our class.

Flash was a very fun program to learn and use as I am fairly attracted to animations to start with and the idea of creating my first interactive piece was rather exciting. By using the skills taught to me by the college and looking at tutorials I feel I understand a lot more behind flash and how to accomplish my goals to create this interactive piece.