Week 6 Class 2

Rapid prototyping, random input, pimp my idea.

Today we did lots of rapid brainstorming and came up with heaps of silly ideas, and a few usable ones. I really enjoyed this class because it got our minds set on the path to a solution. The pimp my idea exercise really helped to get someone else's brain onto an idea that we thought had potential, Annabel came up with a really cool idea for an app that's a bit more innovative than the one already existing.

Week 6 Class 1

Meena Kadri's lecture was really inspiring, it showed how going deep in to look for empathy can really help a project evolve into something actually useful and practical for the audience

POV statements-
Writing a POV statement didn't seem that hard until I started trying to do it myself- I then realised how hard it was so synthesise all the different point of views into a small statement. I think after we do some more empathy research, we will be able to come up with a better POV statement, as at the moment we only have a couple of interviews to go off.

Week 5 Class 2

Today's class was really beneficial for me personally, because before going into it, the whole concept of going to do interviews to gain empathy was pretty daunting and I was feeling pretty nervous about it.

Since me and Georgia have the same target audience as Sophie and Hayley, we decided that it would be helpful to collaborate in the first research and empathy part of the project. We began applying the ideo concepts to think how we can go about gaining empathy, and started thinking of questions for a survey or an interview, however I feel as though we need to make some of the questions a bit more specific, such as instead of ' how many hours a week do you work over time?' maybe something like ' 'in the last month, how often have you stayed at your desk during break time?' and 'how often have you stayed after the finishing hours of 5pm(or whatever it is)?'

However the exercise that we did to solve the problem of students putting bags on desks was really cool because we all came up with some actually good ideas, it gave me confidence that applying this to our briefs can actually create something that's genuinely useful

Over the break I am planning to start to find out where and who would be available for us to conduct an interview/s, gather secondary research and plan some times that we could do no tech nights or maybe even a 9-5 work day some how or conduct some of the observations. Maybe skipping a break at work or something but I'm not that keen to do that as it is against the law and my boss would get angry...

Week 5 Class 1

Morning Lecture:

I really enjoyed this lecture, particularly the parts from Tim and Tulia.
The things that I took away were mostly about putting yourself in the shoes of the user/viewer and really trying to see it from their perspective.

Presentation of Briefs

We looked around at everyone's finished briefs, it was cool to see everyone's finished work, however I still would like to stick with my original brief because having worked on it previously, I am still interested in how we can solve the problem

EX-CHANGE 2 - LOCATE

More people weren't able to turn up today which was understandable because of the looming deadline. We all had awesome conversations about our projects, it was really awesome to see the projects evolving.

I gained some valuable feedback from my group this week and seeing their projects going ahead gave some more perspective on the concept of wellbeing.

Industrial Design:

• He showed us his stop motion movie of the making of a pancake. 
• They are going to try and show the 'magic' of food with clever editing
• Showing the movement for the cook is important
• For his next project,  he is going to think about the food truck display and how it can be innovated for the optimum experience, taking influence from things like teppanyaki restaurants

VCD:

My Feedback

• Use depth of field and scale, along with an extra sentence, to make the dinner plate image clearer for the viewer
• Use the same dinner plate image for the Desired Action page but switch the focus to show the desired change
• More ideas for desired action page: pets, cat sitting on a laptop, food more appealing.

Nick

• Anxiety
• Name "false alarm"
• Creating a narrative throughout the pages - a person with anxiety realises that their anxiety is a 'false alarm'
• Concept is very graphic, he didn't have so much of a concept for us to critique, but he has heaps of good ideas to carry on with

Jessica

• First few pages have major impact with a striking first statistic
• Her brief was pretty much fully resolved in the front, but towards the back it still needed some work.
• She was also struggling with the desired action page, and how to show that change and resolution of the problem, we suggested to her that she take the issue page and show the resolution to that page in the desired action page

Fashion Design

• Fashion Design is always awesome to see
• She showed us her mood board and her initial sketches.
• She is focussing on the ocean and pollution in the ocean, creating a range of outfits around that theme.
• For her second project she is planning on making a ocean piece and a protest piece that represents the pollution
• She's currently wondering how to show the pollution within her outfit making capabilities

Week 4 Class 2

We had a class critique today, we had an almost full book to show, excluding the desired action page which we are sill not sure what do to with.

Some of the feedback received was:

• Hierarchy problems
• Alignment problems
• People enjoyed our visual style
• Issues with contrast in some images
• One person mentioned that the table top was a little repetitive.
• Some mentioned that they didn't understand the reasoning for the dinner plate being there.
• Some issues with the clarity of the copy.
• Still no Desired Action image

Our plan to address these issues

• Use tone and font to improve hierarchy
• Apply a more rigorous grid
• Play more with the images in Photoshop
• Try and take a picture for desired action that is away from the table top.
• Add in a sentence to ensure people get the dinner plate reference
• Edit the copy and make it more concise
• Ideate some ideas for Desired Action page

This feedback has really helped us to further our project and perfect it to a great standard

Week 4 Class 1

Chris Jackson Talk

The quote 'there has never been a more exciting time to be a designer' is totally inspiring and exciting for me, seeing all of the opportunities for up and coming designers.
The way that Chris delivered all of his information was quite intense and it was quite hard to take it all in.

• His show of the array of different design strategies and seeing the ones that we use at Uni. He seemed to think that offering one of them was problematic, but offering a wide range of design strategies was helpful

• He also showed a scale of 'design expertise', from amateur to expert and even beyond. Seeing where we are on the scale, still so close to the amateur side put everything into perspective seeing how far we all still have to go, and how much better I will get at design.

Class

We received critique on our prototype that we made over the break. We received some really helpful critiques on our spreads, people really liked our visual approach, which is promising. 

The imagery may need some tweaking so that it fully relates to the sections.

Our pacing is good and we have thought about which pages should be punchy and large and which pages should be a bit quieter and information based.

This critique made us consider how our text and how precise it is. I am going to define the copy as much as possible over night

Another really important point that I took away from class was that when you put yourself in the shoes of the designer who receives the brief, it's easier to get a clearer layout of the sections to organise the information appropriately. I think we need to experiment with different arrangements and get the best one for our subject.

Week 3 Class 2

Today we decided on a visual rhetoric, using a desk top on the page. I was having trouble last night when I was working on spreads using layering, there wasn't enough of a link to the office

Our idea also defined a lot more. Instead of focussing on solving the huge amount of things that can contribute to stress, we decided to focus down on a single area so that the designer that receives the brief has a clear direction. One of the main problems that we had seen throughout our research was that people were doing a lot of overtime and their work was taking over their personal lives.

After rewriting the copy for the pages that needed to be changed, sorting out the order and amount of pages and storyboarding everything, I am feeling really confident with our brief and I think it's going to turn out well. I'm excited to get stuck in and get all of the imagery and put it together by next week.