Week Six - Session Two

Since today was Massey Open Day, and being an RA at The Cube I had to help out with the tours of The Cube, so could only be in class for the first hour.

The class today started off with us all heading up to the studios, and then working on our prototypes. I was surprised to see that nobody else had mocked up a prototype even though that was our assigned task for the week.

I brought my prototype along to class, and began setting it up in context, taping it to the back of the chair, and having a play around with all of the different screens. It was a way of creating an interactive storyboard available for user testing. Unfortunately, most people were busy working on their prototypes to get them user tested during the first hour so I wasn't able to get much user testing done.

I had spoken to a few other groups at my table and got them to try out my prototype, and they all said that if it was on a bus that they would interact with it and use it.

Following the study break I will aim to get more feedback and user testing. By next class, I want to try and refine a few aspects of the prototype and also develop the mocked up interface that I had drawn up, to clarify exactly what I want to be on the screen. The earlier I sort this, the earlier I can get feedback and alter it accordingly.

I have attached a bunch of photos below which show how a user would interact with it at the current stage. It shows me going through each of the screens. The machine is activated and stopped via the insertion/removal of a Snapper card. The screens go straight from choosing to play the game to the 'You Win' screen after the game, as I haven't yet prototyped the actual playing stages. I will am to do this by the first class back next term.

Week Six - Session One

Over the weekend, we had been required to continue to develop and find the best couple of ideas from our 20 ideas in 20 minutes exercise that we did on Friday.

First we started in small groups of 5 or 6 people where we presented our ideas one at a time. Following this, we did a 'Pimp my Idea' exercise, where we pass our idea on to another team and they have a go at finding ways of improving the idea and making it more effective. This exercise was extremely helpful, and helped me come up with a few more things to consider.

My idea was around a language game on a bus, where there are screens in front of each seat. I decided to target a bus because it is generally a place where everyone goes for a short period of time, and either sits there staring out the window, or goes on their phone/listens to music. It's a very quiet, anti-social environment.

Alexis would always avoid sitting next to people on buses as he was afraid of confrontation due to a lack of language. This way, there is a way for him to learn the languages while on the bus each day. Although some people may only be on the bus for a couple of minutes, it still gives them something to do. My thinking behind it was that people would be interested in what it is, and decide to give it a go since they don't really have anything better or more interesting to do on the bus. In turn, it helps people learn new languages, and will help the 2% of non-English speakers in New Zealand slowly find it easier to socialize and fit in.

My idea hasn't yet been clarified as to how the interface would work (there are drawings and concepts in my physical workbook), as I've considered doing a classic language app style, or even language games such as action or adventure games. This concept also allows users to challenge other users on the bus.

In my physical workbook, I also have sketches of how it would look in context, as well as a whole bunch of ideas around the idea of tracking and saving the progress, so that the experience is personalised for each user, and they can carry on from wherever they were up to rather than starting all over again.

From the 'Pimp my idea' feedback, I was told to come up with some sort of incentive to play, and thought that the use of offering Snapper Credit would be helpful, seen as they use Snapper to ride the bus in the first place. That way, not only will they learn some languages on their trips, they will be rewarded by getting a cheaper bus ride in return.

As this idea progresses, I will begin to have a look at how this could possibly expand outside of the bus, whether it is by a phone app, into other spaces such as malls, or even how it differs between short and long bus trips. These are all areas to research and explore over the coming weeks as I develop the idea.

At the end of the class, Tristam came around and really liked my idea. He thought is was an effective and unique approach to the brief, and liked how it was focusing on a specific area of anti-social behaviour such as on the bus. I was asked to be one of the groups to present my idea to the class afterwards.

By Friday, we have been asked to have some sort of mock-up or prototype that we are able to show and begin to user test. This way we can begin finding out how many users would interact with it, why they interact with it, and how they go about interacting with it.

Week Five - Session Two

Class began with a lecture down in The Pit, which ran for about an hour. After this, we went back up into the classroom, and began undergoing some rapid ideation sessions. 

Initially we began trying to come up with as many ideas as we could around our brief. We then went onto doing 'random input', where we would select some words and try to come up with an idea revolving around this word, or a word that could branch off from the written word.

We then moved on to 20 ideas in 20 minutes, which was extremely interesting. It was quite difficult coming up with so many random ideas so quickly, although was definitely a quick way to come up with a whole bunch of different ideas, and then narrow it down to which ones could work and be most effective.

By Tuesday, we need to choose our three best ideas and refine them so that we can present them to small groups in class. 

At the end of class, we went to another Exchange session. Today's one was super cool to see how everyone's projects had come along since our last session back in week 2. I really liked finding out how each different discipline approached the brief of well-being. It was interesting to find out that Spatial Design were approaching it slightly differently, by designing a space initially, and then the second part of the brief being to alter the design in order to accommodate for the well-being of a particular audience.

Presentation

Today's class was our presentation in front of Streams A + D. We had two minutes to present our visual brief.

At first I thought that the presentations were gonna take ages by the time everyone switched in between presentations, got ready, and then presented, although it went surprisingly really quickly. It was really interesting seeing the different ways that people went about the readings, as well as the various ways people created the visual brief.

I feel like our presentation went quite well. I spoke to Tim afterwards and he said our stylistic approach had developed nicely with the angled lines in the background, and also said our brief was really clear and to the point.

I have decided to go on my own for the next part of the project, and will stick with the brief we just created. I've decided to stick with it as I think trying to find a way to help with language barriers is an extremely interesting angle to take and I'd like to see what I can come up with. I really like this angle as well since it's so relevant to me, as there are a whole bunch of players that play in my football team that couldn't speak English when they moved over to New Zealand, so I'd like to try find a solution or a way to help people in similar situations.

Final Meeting Before Presentation

Today Georgia and I met in the Library to finalise our dossier, presentation, and then come up with what we were going to say during the presentation. Over the weekend, we were able to get the styles looking reasonably similar, as I would upload the Photoshop Files from each dossier page up to Dropbox, and then Georgia could download them, and drag and drop the respective images onto another page for the presentation.

It took a couple of hours to finalise exactly what we were going to say, and touching up the last little aspects of our presentation.

I'm really looking forward to the presentations tomorrow. I find the presentations interesting as it offers up a chance to see how others have approached the topics/readings, and to see what their stylistic approach is as well. I'm excited for the dossier presentations where they are all put out in Te Ara Hihiko and we can wander around and have a look at everyones, before deciding on which brief we would like to do.

Stylistic Development

After class, I hung around for a bit and started developing our stylistic approach. I removed the gradient, made the type really neat and precise, and then on top of that added some movement in the background with the use of some lines.

I looked up some emotion colour wheels on google to help me decide on which colours to use. For example, I used the bright yellow for the audience profile as it portrays excitement, enthusiasm and adventure, which were three emotions that Alexis felt before the move. Therefore I felt it was accurate to use these emotive qualities while introducing Alexis as our audience.

I have attached an example of the developed style below. I will keep working on each of the slides, and craft them into this developed style.

Week Four - Session Two

Today's lesson was all around getting final critiques of the presentation and dossier before we present on Tuesday. We had decided that we were going to have the dossier and presentation all mocked up by today in the new stylistic approach, so that we could get some helpful feedback, before making some final readjustments over the coming weekend.

Unfortunately, I was the only one that turned up with work from our group, which meant that we were only able to show the dossier, and not the presentation to go along with it.

However, focusing on the positives, we got a whole heap of feedback on our project. All of the groups that we had our small critique sessions with said that they found our narrative and brief really clear and easy to understand, so quite liked our brief. Phoebe said she really liked how it's come a long way since Tuesday in terms of looking at a new style, although to still look at using some sort of other metaphors instead of photos of people. Tim suggested that if we are going for this sort of rough illustrative approach on top of the photos etc., that we need to contrast it with perfectly crafted type to make it seem 100% deliberate.

The feedback was super helpful, especially the feedback from Tim, as it made me think of new ways to develop the dossier, contrasting perfection with imperfection, and neat type with slightly rushed/messy drawings.

Unfortunately, Georgia is going away for the whole weekend, so communication will have to be through Facebook and sending things back and forth rather than in person. Even though it still works this way, it draws out the whole process and makes it a lot longer due to delays, and people being online and offline at different times.

We have decided to meet on Monday to craft our speech, so hopefully the presentation has been mocked up by then. 

Stylistic Approach

Today after class I had a play around, and managed to come up with a few pages in the dossier of a new stylistic approach. I have attached an example below, showing our context pages:

I sent it through to Georgia via Facebook, and she liked the new style, so we decided to go with that. We decided that for Friday's presentation, I would mock up the Dossier and she would mock up the presentation so that we had the bulk of the work done, and then from there we can send the final few days making a couple of refinements and making sure they look like they fit together.

Week Four - Session One

Over the weekend, I had continued working on the visual brief, and trying to develop it. I added in some backgrounds with photos to try and add a bit more context to each slide. I hadn't really played around with different stylistic approaches, although later in class we were told to begin experimenting with these.

Unfortunately, despite both of us agreeing to work on developing the brief over the weekend, Georgia had failed to even give anything a go and turned up to class with nothing to present. However, I realised that it seemed I'd be needing to do most of it on my own, and wasn't going to let a partner's lack of effort stop me (and therefore the group) doing well. After all, there is only one more week until the presentation, and then I have the option to split off and pursue the brief on my own.

We presented the briefs to a few people, and they again said how they liked the clarity of the brief and how quickly they were able to understand what was wanted. The only task now was to come up with a stylistic approach to make it more emotive, and more interesting.

Towards the end of class we began researching for some inspiration on what sort of approach we should take. We found a few examples we liked, and so I decided to start working on a few in that style.

By tomorrow, we decided that we would come up with a few slides in that new style and see how it looked, and then go from there. By Friday I want us to have a dossier and presentation finished in the new stylistic approach, so that we can get one final critique before a final development for the final presentation on Tuesday.

Week Three - Session Two

In today's class, I brought along the visual brief I had made, and Georgia brought hers along. However, it seemed that she only tried quickly chucking something together the night before as she hadn't really put much thought or effort into it.

However, I brought mine along hoping to get some valuable feedback on it, to benefit our group. Part of the class was spent presenting our visual briefs to different groups to gain some feedback.
Unfortunately Georgia said she had to leave class just as the presentations started, so I was left to present and take feedback on my own. However, I was more informed on the project as a whole, as I had done all the research prior to this point, as well as making the whole visual brief on my own.

I got some really good feedback on my visual brief, the two pairs that I went with were really impressed at the clarity of the brief, saying it was easy to understand what the issue was. They both commented on the fact that since it actually had photographs of real people, it was easier to feel connected to the person and the brief as a whole, rather than using some sort of symbol or icon.

The initial visual brief concept can be seen in my physical workbook.


Since Georgia had to leave early, I uploaded the InDesign file of the current visual brief to Dropbox for her, and suggested that we both continue to work on developing it for next Tuesday's class and see how we both approach the development.

Week Three - Session One

During class today, we worked on 'storyboarding' and putting together our visual briefs and deciding how we would present them. Half way through the class we combined with the other class (Stream C) so that we could get critiques on our brief and see how we can improve it in terms of making it more clear for the designer.

I quite enjoyed working on the brief and trying to make it as precise as possible without being too wordy, and then putting yourself in the shoes of others to see if you would be able to come up with something based on the brief or if you would need to carry out extra research.

We presented some drawings that we had quickly drawn up as a storyboard, with some annotations for each section; audience, context, needs etc.

For independent study, by Friday I am going to continue working on my concept for the visual brief, and then present it in some A4 print-outs.