We started off class by helping Jesse get on the server and also going over the first assignment. There were good points mostly and some bad points but over all we did a briliant job at showing our understanding of usability. Go Team! 😀
After we talked about the first assignment we got on the topic of our second assignment which was to choose an interface and how to design it better. Some, but not all of the ideas we came up with were;
-ATM machines
gas pumps
-Grocery self-check outs
-Key Fobs
-Gas Station coffee makers
Automattic car washes
and so on and so forth
After we brain stormed as a class we were put into teams of three and set off to come up with what we were going to re-design. In the group of three there is a Project Leader, an Information Architect, and a Design Lead.
We then discussed the Bare Honey Update. We all helped out with the “b” problem. It was either to serious or hard to tell that it was a “b”. Some of us came up to the board and doodled our ideas of what could help solve the problem.
After that we watched a video about a company called IDEO
We wrapped class up by getting back in our groups for a little more discussion how to re-design the interfaces we choose.
If you’re going to have the conflict of a night class the same night as a design event opening, it’s certainly of great fortune to have that class also be a design class, along with the benefit of a teacher who supports the attendance of said event. Which of course is what resulted in our Feb. 17th class starting out at the Paul Rand Brands opening at the CVA gallery.
So with a slightly restructured class on hand, we spent most of the evening exploring the featured work and the legacy of Paul Rand – first through the gallery exhibit, then through a few short videos Liina presented back in class, and wrapping fully around with each of us whipping out a quick reaction paper to the event. Because, really, experiencing a great seasoned designer’s work and advice does come down to how each person individually interacts with that work. In that, it was quite pleasant to show up a bit earlier than scheduled simply to absorb and internalize what resonated with just me and my needs and reactions. As such, here’s a few of the pieces I found of particular draw:
Obviously, there’s the appeal, amusement, and natural nostalgia of the vintage style – even down to the actual products and the aged and faded papers of original display purposes. But Rand, as are all of us, was also subject to his own time and influences. Thus, what we experience and learn from his work should go beyond the playful vintage aesthetic – it wasn’t vintage to Rand, after all.
For example, I recall hearing that even within the huge variety of Rand’s designs and varying clients, there are only a scant few fonts he ever used. Logical of course, given the lack of digital output of the time, but still, in our time of an explosion of typography ad choices due to digital output, it could serve well to remember that more isn’t always better or as effective.
Also, as an aside and to prove myself as a child of the technological world – can you possibly imagine not having digital? What would people even do with themselves?
Video Extras
But to wrap up on the Rand, here’s the short clips Liina showed in class. As points for the digital side, there’s an immense collection available for easy picking on YouTube, but let’s focus on the class results for now, shall we?
On to Class Time and Quizzes
Beyond Rand, it was still Thursday, and, exhibit or not, it was still quiz night. But quiz night this time with an added twist featuring a question beyond multiple choice on providing an example – with back up reasoning – on how a company’s design strategy fits with its business strategy. How’s that for added application of reading topics rather than simple passive absorption?
Plus a Journal Check-In
Still, answers were all in good humor – a gallery opening apparently has the power to add a little relaxation and good playful humor into late night studies. And that ease of mind carried nicely over into journal checks; you have to appreciate rolling with the flow, after all, and it lends to a much more entertaining discovery of the good and bad explorations of usability applications.
From PearlBrite’s bouncing navigation and hypnotic music,
to the MN Unemployment Department’s completely unreadable purposes,
and the Catholic Church’s new Confession App available for only $1.99,
there’s always room for usability evaluation.
Moving Forward…
Oh, and let’s not forget that next Tuesday is the big due date that’s been creeping up on us. Whether you’re feeling under control or are shooting for that last minute panic push, just don’t forget any pieces at home Tuesday night! For those keeping lists – because why wouldn’t you keep a list? Life feels better when you get to cross them off! – the pieces to consider include:
-mounted Personas
-mounted Wireframes
-mounted Mood Board (or two)
-mounted Design Boards (minimum of three screens)
-research documentation
prepared PSD and JEPG files for the server
Henry George is staying with me for a whole week and he made a guest appearance to class on Tuesday. Henry was a little freaked out initially probably because he was insecure about never having been to school himself. I’m sure all talk of artificial intelligence was quite too much for a small poodle.
TED Tuesday: Robots
About the Talk
Cynthia Breazeal dreams of a world where robots are not sci-fi enigmas but as living room essentials. Cynthia and her team explore the ins and outs of mechanized emoting, teaching and play. Ultimately she would like to see a fully interactive robot that responds to human behaviors.
Other Robotic Enterprises
Robots We Know and Love
Layer Group Demo
Liina has been demonstrating handy tricks in photoshop and Tuesday was no exception. She Showed the class how keep organized when working with a photoshop document that has many layers. Here is a video I found on Adobe TV about all the functions of layers in photoshop.
Basically, all you have to do is click the folder button at the bottom of the layer palate. A folder will pop up and will be labeled group #. You can change the name by double clicking to the right of the folder. Drag the layers that you want to keep together into the folder. the flipper allows you to contract and expand the grouped layers. Using layer groups allows for better organization and continued workability of your layers.
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Work Time
We finished class with work time. I found myself increasingly frustrated with how my designs were turning out. here is what I have so far.
In last weeks class we were introduced to some new Photoshop tricks. We learned how to use different brushes and how to pull free ones off different sites. We also further discussed different ways to create our direction pages for our iPad apps. It was mainly a work day and we spent most of our time further improving our apps.
This brush was created on a site called www.bittbox.com. The site also includes a step by step tutorial on how to create your own.
iPad apps
This is my direction board as it is now. I was told in critique to add some sort of background to it. Another good suggestion was to move the eyeball icons to the bottom of the page and to make them look more like buttons.
The goal for next class is to further improve our apps and to start on the other pages.
If you watched the video above then you probably do not need to read this overview. But in case you’re an odd person and you’d rather read then watch an awesome video, be my guest.
In February 2009, Pilloton and her Project H partner Matthew Miller began working in Bertie County, North Carolina, the poorest and most rural county in the state, to develop a design-build curriculum for high-school kids, called Studio H. In August 2010 they began teaching their first class of 13 students. Read about their experiences in Design Mind. Designer Emily Pilloton moved to rural Bertie County, in North Carolina, to engage in a bold experiment of design-led community transformation. She’s teaching a design-build class called Studio H that engages high schoolers’ minds and bodies while bringing smart design and new opportunities to the poorest county in the state. (Citation: http://www.ted.com/talks/emily_pilloton_teaching_design_for_change.html)
Final Assignment Overview:
Next we talked about the final assignment, and the requirements and expectations that went along with it.We discussed the grading criteria that will go along with the assignment and all the fine details of the assignment. You can get further information from the PDF below.
Project: iPad App: Visual Recipe Book Final Project Deadline: Tuesday, Feb 22, 2011 All project deliverables due 7pm at beginning of class
Next we had a crash course in photoshop. We talked about the proper sizing for the iPad and the screen resolution (dpi) it should be at for the final assignment. (72 dpi and 9.56″ x 7.47″) We learned some helpful shortcuts on the keyboard. We talked about “smart objects” which let you create outlines of the images or type that you’re working with and move it independently. Finally, we talked about creating the typical ipad “button” and how to create that look. The photoshop tutorials were very helpful, and would of been nice to have gone through before we jumped into the creation of the iPad design. Now that we have done some intro photoshop I think we are all more confident in creating the design aspect of the assignment.
Our teachers wonderful app design.
Make sure you steal all the work already done by Apple and apply it to your own apps!!
Journals?
I thought that this class required a journal entry, so I will give mine as an example. I found a website that I think is designed very well and it fun and easy to use and navigate. Check it out and let me know if you agree with me. TOKY Branding and Design
Final Conclusion
Class last Tuesday was informative and educational. The TED video was very interesting and I think made us all feel excited to be going into the design field because of the opportunities and interesting places and projects you can either start or become involved in. Being able to discuss the assignment in full and receiving a hand out with all the requirements laid out was extremely helpful. The photoshop lessons helped everyone and we all clearly appreciated the tutorials. Keep um coming! The class had ample work time and left me with not much to discuss or talk about on here, but I think everyone would agree that we all greatly appreciated the work time and being able to ask questions as we worked.
Funny video of the week. Usuability in the classroom!
As we work on designing our iPad apps, there are a lot of things to consider. A user interface is so much more than a book, or a brochure. It’s a tool. Remember that! But beyond all of the usability aspects we’ve covered, there’s also sheer aesthetics and style. To get inspired, I encourage you all to search for sites like this, that showcase different user interface designs.
Well if so, I apologize for not having this up and ready to read for last Tuesday’s class … but! better late than never right?
So last Thursday,
We started off the class with dun, dun, dun … a quiz. Some of us did better than others receiving scores anywhere from 2/10’s to 10/10’s. Although these quizzes may seem mundane and minuscule compared to our project work, it is important to keep in mind that these points add up and will ultimately accumulate to a significant percentage of our final grade. So … with that said, make sure to stay on top of the reading ! Alright, enough of the lecturing.
Next, We watched a video from Youtube that took a closer look into the mind of the author of one of our books called Don’t Make Me Think, by Steve Krug which can be reviewed here if you so wish :
Even with its cheesy music, and borderline corny visual effects, Mr. Krug offered a lot of useful information and interesting insight to draw on. I imagine this to be especially useful to us as students, but also extremely beneficial for working professionals as well. It was even noted by a fellow Youtuber that Krug is “one of the greatest usability experts”. So, it seems, that we are in good hands guys.
After the video, As a class, we reviewed the blog from the previous Thursday. Maggie did a great job recapping the class both in linguistics and visuals.
We then presented out moodboards, and received feedback by both each other and Liina. Some of us need to go back and make major refinements, while others only need to do a little more tweaking. All in all, we did good for our first “design” based project. Liina talked about the importance of craft when it came to printing and mounting.
Basic rule of thumb when it comes to design,
CRAFT = EVERYTHING.
As, we read in our textbook, even the best design will come off weak and unreliable if the craft is not there. So keep this in mind for projects to come 🙂
Here are a few examples of some of the moodboards presented :
Pretty shnazzy right?
*One thing to keep in mind throughout the revision process of our work, is that this is a potential portfolio piece. so of course you want it took look great and professional. So with that said, take the time to master this design and the craft involved in creating not only a visually pleasing piece, but a presentable one as well, and ultimately, a piece you are proud of.
Finally, after critique and a 15 minute break, we were set free from the firm grasp of lecturing to work on our design for the recipe page of our Cookbook Ipad App. Work time during class is always appreciated, especially (well at least for me) because there are too many distractions at home to keep me from putting %100 of my attention and efforts into work time so when I am forced to work during class I feel much more productive and also get 150 times more accomplished. Plus, the teacher as well as classmates are there to help 😀
Alright,
Have I bored you out of your complete and utter mind? I hope not, because this is all good information to look back on at the end of the semester and be like “Oh so that’s what all those thousands of $$$’s are getting me.”
So for now, farewell my friends. I shall leave you with this ridiculously cute baby hedgehog. Don’t you just want one now!?
As usual, this Tuesday was TED Tuesday where we were graced with the presence of the class across the hall. They came to our room (which was nice because we were already comfy in our seats) to watch this weeks edition, “Jason Fried: Why work doesn’t happen at work.”
This was a particularly interesting video in my opinion because many of the work related interruption and management problems which are things that we as students have a lot of experience with. Although a lot of our classes are over two hours long, we don’t often have in class work time. And like the workers described in the video…. we are “banned” from checking Facebook or Twitter. Another thing I found fun was that my mother is one of those “manager/overlord” of the office types who schedules mandatory meetings for 20 people or more every 30 seconds. I sent this to her Tuesday night, she still hasn’t responded. Oops!
Critique of our final Wireframes & Personas-
For class we were to come prepared with our final mounted wireframes and personas for our iPad app. They were to be 11″ x 17″ sheets with three images on them mounted flush to the edge on foam core board. Craft was extremely important, although there is an opportunity to do some final touch-ups to your work before its due. Here is an example of my final personas and wireframes mounted.
Final Wireframe
Final Personas
These wireframes and personas do NOT need to be printed in color. However the next assignment that I will talk about later will need to be eventually shown with color. Everyone received credit for these if they had them in class to show!
Journals-
The journals Tuesday were fun to see because we got an unexpected comparison of jewelry web sites. It was good to see the pros and cons of each site. Unfortunately I did not have a journal to show the class Tuesday but we got into a nice but brief discussion of the Adobe Creative Suite and why and what we do or do not like about it. It was good to finally be able to talk about the things that we didn’t get to cover (for some of us younger folk) in Foundation year at CVA. Only 96 more to go!
Lecture:
Setting the mood for a Mood Board-
Going from the Defining your problem stage into the Designing your solution stage, we will be creating a mood board. A mood board is exactly how it sounds. It will set the tone and the appearance of what you want your design to look like. You can add inspirational color palettes, illustrations, patterns, textures and typography to your board. This will bring all your personas to life.
How to get started:
Get reacquainted with your personas. Put yourself in their shoes. What do you think they would be attracted to visually?
Explore images, styles, patterns, textures, illustrations, color palettes, type styles etc.
Here are some questions you might consider asking yourself while creating your mood board…
Come to class prepared with your preliminary mood board. It doesn’t have to be printed out, but you should have a file to put up on the server that is clearly organized and includes all of the assignment requirements. As mentioned earlier, these include: color palette, pattern and or texture examples, images, typography examples, and any other inspirations you come across. The file should be formatted to 11″ x 17″ horizontally, as if you were planning to print it out.
In wrapping up this post, I hope that everything described was clear. I have never blogged before so fingers crossed! Good luck and its almost THE WEEKEND!!!!!!!!!!!
Principles of Usability 