Posts Tagged ‘Design’
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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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Poem Inspired Boxes
Tuesday’s class was a very artistic one. We had to design a box around our chosen poem. My poem was called Garden of Love by Helena Nelson. It is about us humans playing God in our gardens because we can decide what lives and dies. We let some flowers grow but we uproot the rest. I really liked this poem because I felt it conveyed a strong message of how people can sometimes be sinister but payback is always on the cards. The poem is just 2 stanzas long but many emotions, positive and negative arise from it.
My box has contrasting ideas to it as it is evil on the outside but beautiful on the inside. Inside the box is green tissue paper for the grass with positive text from the poem growing inside of it. This is for the parts in the poem that are allowed to grow. However on the outside is a fence to lock the beauty inside and with the negative text from the poem on the back of the box. On the lid is the title of the poem in in newspaper cutout text. This is to give the box an edginess/eeriness to it, to emphasise the sinister side to human beings.
I really enjoyed this day as I got to be very creative and I generally found it a great exercise to get me thinking deeper about poems.
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Researching a Design Company
The first assignment I have been given is to research a design company with my group to understand and appreciate the running of a successful business. I know some design companies such as IDEO, ISO Design, Midgibyte etc. and we have decided to research ISO Design. They work in many different design fields including identity, installation, motion, online, print and social media. There projects are very sophisticated and professional.
ISO Design is a content design and development studio. They specialise in cultural projects for public, private and commercial clients, producing digital media, interactive software and immersive installations. There in-house team includes live action directors, 2D and 3D animators, graphic and interface designers, scriptwriters, software developers, social media managers and producers. They where formed in Glasgow 1999 and are still based there today. They work across the UK and Internationally. They also work collaboratively on projects with partners and the size of projects can be large or small, they believe “a variety of experience helps us bring a fresh perspective to our work.”
They have worked with Television companies such as the BBC, ITV and many motion graphics businesses. Interactive and Installation clients such as Mercedes-Benz, Sony, Orange, Titanic Belfast along with creating commercials for other groups. With this wide range of clients involved with ISO Design it shows how huge and successful they are.
We will be making contact with them very soon to arrange an interview and to give us a greater insight into what it takes to run a successful design business. I am very much looking forward to asking them many questions including:
- What did you first start to do after you graduated from University?
- How long did it take come up with your business idea then to plan and finally to start ISO Design?
- Why did you decide to follow the market you have chosen?
- In recent years design related jobs are increasing, why do you think there is a huge demand in design work now?
- Did you find any stumbling blocks difficult to overcome when starting out ISO Design?
- Did clients come quick or did you have to put your name out there a lot to get started?
- What is your favourite type of project?
- Do you have a business plan that will keep ISO Design secure for at least the next 10 years and do you see any movements in the design field to look out for? -
Introduction Lecture
Design & The Market was a module that I chose to do because after I graduate from Digital Interaction Design one of the things I want to do is to be my own boss. Starting a business or be becoming a freelancer excites me greatly and I think this module will hep me better understand whats needed to achieve this. I proved to be right as after the first lecture and everything that I wanted to learn and more is part of Design and The Market. I am excited by the module guide and this is exactly what I was hoping for. Learning about business plans, hearing about success stories and building a solid social media platform for myself is just some of the things I will learn from this module.
The module is built into two assignments: a group project and an individual project. The group one is first up and I will begin working with my team next week learning about a business and we will eventually interview them. We will present our findings to the class for assessment. This is a great opportunity to learn what it takes to start up a business and how to make it successful. It is also a fantastic way to start networking with companies which might become handy in the future.
I have started to read the The $100 Startup book by Chris Guillebeau and so far it shows what we can do with little experience but with desire and selling something that people want can really kickstart a new life for all of us. The book is really inspiring and you want to keep reading it, very difficult to put down. I have also purchased the book called Business Model Generation so I will get started on that soon.
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Deciding on an Idea
Last Week was crucial as I finally deciding what my project was going to be on. I want to have a thermal printer to print out top 10 music, books and movies & tv best sellers. The user would interact with the device by touching the area desired and thanks to the capacitive breakout board the arduino would know which was selected and the relevant top 10 will be printed. This idea was generated by reading reports from New York, Shanghai and Paris about parents who are extremely busy with work and children they do not have time for themselves. One participant says that they need time for hobbies so with this list they can read it while travelling to work and decide what they want to download or pick up from a store on the way home. The basic idea was to create personal time in a time where the user would not think they could have personal time, like on a train.
Here is a design sheet pointing out the key areas:
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Getting Technical
The class this week was about arduino. Ali, the tech guy, told us about different sensors and what things we can do with the arduino like have tweets from the internet get read out from an audio output sensor. It was all very interesting and learning about how we can manipulate technology in all different kinds of ways is exciting.
Also in class we had to tell Graham and Kate what our initial ideas where. Mine was a box that would show your horoscope by using percentages like Work = 86% and have leds’ that would light up brightly if the percentage was high for work or shine dimly if the percentage was low. However after reviewing this and reading over the resources etc. I changed my mind and I am now focusing on an idea that would help people who have stressful jobs and need some calmness just before they leave their homes. I would have stress tips from tweets be sent to the box and either spoken out via an audio output or printed using a thermal printer. I still have not decided which route to take but both have positives. The audio one would be beneficial for visually impaired people but the print out is in my opinion a more richer experience for the user especially for the kind of person I am designing for. They can take the print out to work with them to refer back too or show friends who need a quick stress relief tip.
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Design Ethnography
On Friday we completed a Design Ethnography led tutorial including reading up on reports and breaking them down to find problems from peoples’ lives. This was started of by going in groups and writing down our assumptions of what problems people face living in big cities with big families. We wrote down various problems on post it notes including traffic, travel costs, shopping, and getting everyone together for family activities. We then read real life reports from families from Shanghai, New York and Paris detailing there living arrangements, household control and children responsibilities. We soon realised that most of our assumptions were correct but the reports from interviews from the participants highlighted certain areas more and gave us a better insight. We also learned more problems that we did not assume. Now that we have highlighted these problems, we looked at creating a solution for one of them.
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21st Century Barometer
This week we were given details of our new project, 21st Century Barometer. Back in the day, before the internet, a barometer would give information about the weather to people leaving their houses so they would know to take an umbrella of sunglasses with them. Using this concept we are to design a “domestic, dedicated, daily data-driven digital device” meaning an internet-enabled information appliance that gives a householder a specific and appropriate piece of information as they leave their home at the beginning of their day.
After only knowing the brief for an hour we were tasked to find “source material” to inspire and generate thoughtful ideas on ways to tackle this project. Some went and asked people on what they would like in their households, others went to the library and the rest searched online. Each of us presented our initial ideas and there were some very interesting ideas. Lots of people went with reminders, travel information, messages and some were more out there like calculating how much milk is left in the fridge. This was a good exercise as it let you see what people wanted and how others thought in the class, giving us all better ideas on our own concept. Here is the classes’ ideas up on the wall for all to see:
I plan to sketch ideas and research designers to get some influence on styles and techniques they use. I am looking forward to the designing what the product looks like but I am also feeling the pressure of actually pulling the information from the internet to my product through arduino. I am not 100% confident on arduino but at the same time looking forward to learning more about it.
The next few weeks will be based on 3 different design perspectives. These are Design Ethnography, Designing for Disabilities and Physical Interaction Design. These will help shape our designs by giving us insights on each perspective and we can tailor our projects to suit ideas from these.
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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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- Assignment 1
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- DJ21012 – Screen Based Interactive Media 2 (11/12)
- DJ22006 – The 21st Century Designer (11/12)
- DJ22011 – Interaction Design (media products) (11/12)
- DJ31035 – Interaction Design – Physical Digital Products
- DJ32005 – Design & The Market Part 1 (12/13)
- DJ32013 – Social Mobile Apps (12/13)
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