Posts Tagged ‘App’
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App Complete
My creation of the app “Poetry in Motion” is now finished. There were a lot of positives to this brief such as understanding poetry better, learning more xcode, designing for users and branding were all key for me in this brief. I really enjoyed this project and with the little time I had I think I did well and this process has been very beneficial to my studies.
Here is the final pdf that sums up everything – Presentation
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Xcode – The Good and The Bad
Last week I started prototyping the Poetry in Motion app. I decided to work with xcode since I used this last year when making an iPhone Application and it worked quite well. What I love about xcode is its interface since its like Dreamweaver it allows us to work with code and a friendly section that allows us to design without to much coding knowledge. It also has a strong online presence so if you get stuck on some code there is a good chance someone as posted the solution online. Here is screenshots of a couple of pages I have made so far:
However I have not used this software in over a year so remembering things is tricky. I am having problems with getting buttons to work and change the page on the app. Thats what I am going to be tackling this week and creating some user content to show what it would look like if used by a student. This is the last week so its a busy times ahead but its also exciting to see what I can do in this short space of time.
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Feedback & Updating
Today I received crucial feedback from Ewan about my poetry in motion iPad app. After our meeting I now understand that I need to re-work the structure of the app since right now its confusing especially for when teachers are using it. I have decided to add a sign in page where teachers and students can enter the app, however I will be prototyping the just students section. Here is an updated wireframe of the app:
I did receive positive feedback for the idea, the menu slide and the branding of the app so I am happy to hear that. I have been playing around with the fonts of the app so getting a positive response on my current branding was a plus. I will continue to work on each page of the app but for now I will leave you with an image of the splash screen.
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Reviewing & Updating Concept
After further feedback on my app concept I have decided to create a hybrid of both previous concepts. It is called Poetry in Motion and is about letting school students be more involved with poetry and building importing team working skills. To start off the teacher would select a poem for the class which they would read. In groups they would be assigned a stanza or how many lines the teacher has chosen and they will create a video based on what that part of the line is conveying to them. They would then submit this video to the teacher on the app. After the teacher has got them all they will play the videos back to the class and discuss the poem together. It will also create many interpretations of the poem especially if you played back the videos simultaneously without referring to the poem to see what new ideas arise.
Click the link to view a pdf of my concept >>> poetry in motion app concept v.2
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App Concepts
Today was presentation and hand in day which went down well. It was interesting to hear what others in the class have came up with, some really great stuff. I will start off by telling both my app concepts then will tell you which one I have decided to prototype.
App Concept 1 – PoemSwap
This app is designed to allow students between 12-18 to engage and become creative with poetry. From my personal experience and from asking my brother who is currently at school we both agree that there teachings are very repetitive and tedious. The PoemSwap app will let users read the poem Garden of Love by Helena Nelson, which is about a gardener who seeks control/power over his garden by letting things live or die. This poem expresses much emotion and ideas which will form the base for the students marginalia. With the marginalia they will then write a poem based on their interpretation from the poem. Once this is done they will then be able to share/swap it with other students which gives them another poem they can do the same over and over again. The creativity will be a continuous flow and the students will be able to read and understand emotions better.App Concept 1 – Poetry Mic
This app is designed to allow poets to perform there own poems in any way either through song, dance, act or just the classic speech. Through thoroughly research I found that a lot of poets are hesitant to read or perform there poems out loud. This is a shame since poetry is originally an oral language not textual. One person mentioned that after performing there poems the understood the art more and gained more self-confidence. Poets will film there performances and share it with the other poets in this group. Experienced users will also be included in this app where they will give poets advice, encouragement and help etc. The performance poetry community will grow with new fresh talent thanks to Poetry Mic.And the winning app that I will begin to prototype is…PoemSwap!
I will be updating my concept and will post later on my new ideas for this app, plus initial sketches of interactions and user interfaces.
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Inspiration So Far…
Here is a quick summary of what has been most inspiring to me in developing 2 app concepts about poetry.
- Reading Poetry
After some research I found out how poetry is an oral language but people have forgotten this recently and think how it as more textual. I watched videos of poetry speakers in different locations like pubs, coffee shops, parks and even on TV. I found out I actually quite like watching poetry being read more than just listening to it because seeing there faces and body language gives us more insights to the poem especially if you don’t know what some words mean. One of my favourites is poetry in song like from the show Def Poetry. Thinking about concepts I would like to use some sort of media for marginalia in my app.I also read some poetry my favourite being Garden of Love. You will see in my previous blog post I was inspired by this poem and used this to create a 3D & 2D Poem Objects (Box & Book). This allowed me to be very creative and let me think about poetry in a deeper way than ever before. I liked how this poem let me be creative and I would like to have that element included in my app that I create, letting a user create something from the app.
- Reader Research
After some research about poetry readers and communities online there seems to be a lack of young people interested in poetry. I feel this has something to do with school because the teaching of poetry has always been either your right or wrong and to me thats not what poetry is about and poetry communities would back me up on this. Online forums discuss each others poetry, give advice, talk about emotions, ideas etc. because there is mystery about poetry. Nobody knows how the poet was feeling or meant by what they have written so thats why I believe schools need to tell their students this and be more creative in poetry writing classes. When I was at school and even my brother now who is at school we have never writing poetry seriously, letting us think deeper and coming up with beautiful pieces. It would be an idea to have an app that lets students create poetry pieces creatively through the use of marginalia.- Broad Themes
Some themes that I am interested in creating an app for is for educational purposes and for creative performers of poetry. Like I mentioned before school don’t teach poetry the way poetry was intended to be used. Creating an app that will help students become creative using poetry instead of analysing it in a very linear way would be interesting. The latter idea is also good because I think performing poetry is not promoted enough in my opinion. I mentioned Def Poetry was a TV show but that was a good few years ago so there is nothing now. Having an app that will create a community of creative poets that can share performances of there poems and create new ones based on the marginalia generated from it sounds like a neat idea.
- Existing Technologies
One of my previous blog posts talks about an app that uses gestures and various interactions with the user. I would like to incorporate this sleekness into the app that I will make. Turning the device on its side, shaking it, swiping your fingers the across screen are all great ways to create a very professional looking app that engages the users. There is a bit of debate about reading traditional books and reading books on devices such as the iPad or Kindle. I have read a book on my iPod Touch and it was very good, actually better than I thought. However if I was going to buy a book that I really wanted to read I will always go for the hard physical copy because actually having the book in your hand to me is something you can’t match. I asked a few people about this and an owner of a Kindle says they like to take their device on holidays or while traveling because its lightweight, portable and can store many books on it. Another person I asked says the page turning on these devices is something to look. They don’t use the page turning option but have rather opted for the scroll because it feels slicker. I have had experience with pages sticking to your fingers when using my iPod “book” and I too have opted for the scroll. Perhaps if you can’t beat the physical book, try to look for other options. -
The start of a new semester comes a fresh new Brief
Before the Christmas Holidays, the class was introduced to a new project called “Social Mobile Apps. Digital Marginalia/Poetry and Technology”. After reading the brief I was quickly interested in it as I never thought about poetry and technology working together before. Designing an app based on poetry is challenging and one I am looking forward too. With devices like kindles and nooks available to a lot of us why shouldn’t poetry be included in the technological advances that the endless amount of books are quickly taking advantage off.
I have never been interested in poetry so during my Christmas Holidays I did a bit of researching on the subject. The first thing I looked at was poetry forums on the internet. There are many similar forums out there that tend to share and comment on each others poems, have categories for different emotions e.g. humor or anger, have contests, give advice or share ideas etc. These forums seem to be individually made for passionate poets either amateur or professional and this creates a greater community. What I did notice was these websites are not very personal to the poetry being used. The design of these sites are dated, bland and feel very generic here are a few examples:
http://www.thepoetsanctuary.net
http://www.thepoetryforum.co.uk/
http://pigpenpoetry.com/
Since these designs did not relate to the text I browsed websites such as Pinterest, Tumblr and Instagram. On these sites you will find many images of text, not all poetry, but the text flows well with the image. Taking poems and customising it without any barriers is very visual and creates greater mood and emotion through the image thus giving the reader a better sense of the poem. I found that these images are typically created by a younger generation of internet users who want to express feelings in a very artistic and emotional way. These two images stand out to me from Tumblr:
I think this could be something worth to look more into as there was lots of great typography on show on these sites.
I then looked on Youtube and found out there was a show in America that was about poetry called Def Poetry.
I find this very interesting and using poetry in video enhances my interpretation on the meaning of the poem. I think this is because you can see facial expressions and hear audience reactions whereas a textual poem is a lot more difficult for me to understand and the poem seems to have multiple meanings. This was a popular show with several seasons to it and celebrities even appeared on the show reading their poems. This shows that Television managed to work with the poetry field and make it suitable to various audiences. New technology like apps on smartphones and tablet computers can bring in new audiences by using social reading.
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Finished App
Last week my group and me got together and tied up a few loose ends and completed the Gemma Mathieson App. We showed her the app on the iPad for some user testing and she loved it. There was some minor complications that were highlighted as she did not know how to exit from the video player. However this was beneficial to us and we then went back a stage and corrected this. This is why user testing is very important as you could easily miss something that a user might not.
We also presented our app to tutors and held an exhibition. This was a great experience as we got showcase our work and also look at the others groups’ work. This also helped me gain some experience on holding exhibitions and I look forward to doing more in the future.
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Developing the App
Last blog post I mentioned me and my group where looking at the design side of this app, for artist Gemma Mathieson. This past week week we have been busy developing the app on xcode, which is software that lets you develop apps for iPads and iPhones. We allocated tasks and held meetings regularly to achieve a high standard iPad app for showcasing Gemma’s work. The image above is a screen capture of our app.
The image in the middle is scrollable and when a button is clicked the image will break apart showing video, audio or an image. We wanted to create a journey effect to this app by creating a timeline as Gemma believes that the journey of creating artwork is just as important as the outcome. With that knowledge we wanted the app to better reflect her creative processes.
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App for Artist – Design Process
Yesterday we continued with our project on the app for artists. We were instructed we have to design and prototype the app for the artist, this is the last part of the semester. We started this process of by watching our individual D&AD concept videos to give us some inspiration. We then took notes and drew little ideas of what we wanted to achieve. We wanted to have a good understanding of what our app will do, its functions and how it will behave before we got into the whole aesthetics. We made mind maps to help us with this.
When that was agreed we moved onto the design. We like the idea of having the one of the artists work constantly moving across the screen and a timeline at the bottom with pin drops. Our artist believes the process/journey of an artwork is just as important as the actual art itself so we wanted to make the app design tie in with this belief. There would also be a subtle menu at the top. The menu and timeline will be a greyish metallic colour. We also had a good idea where when run, the app will start at the end and run everything very quickly right back to the start of the app. Then there would be a video of the artist telling you a brief description of herself and the app. We had discussions on what the app would be more suitable for: an iPhone or iPad. We all came to the solution that the iPad would be best as it will clearly portray the artists journey and with a bigger screen this would be the best solution.
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