Week Three- INTERIM

Session One - Interim

We had our interim, presenting four different poster concepts, receiving/giving critique and analysing our work. These were the four we presented:

-Type hard to read

-Pink flamingo very American, find something more kiwi and local

-No visual hint to zombies

-Cold silhouettes don't really show community - too vague

-Zombies silhouettes too obvious and 'in your face' - try something more subtle, show 'impending'

- Cool idea but it can't really develop from here

-Clearly strongest design

-Hints at impending zombie apocalypse nicely

-Clearly identifiable as zombie to all, references classic zombie icon/movies

-Needs better sense of community

-Try dog's paw? Grave yard? Jewelery on hand? Gripping someone's foot? Some authority figure looking scared?

-Look at specific neighbourhoods - what shows Newtown? 

-Try different (grunge) type faces

Here are some thoughts/notes on the interim and other people's works:

And some iteration ideas for the poster design:

Looking at possible wireframes and analysing existing wireframes:

NzOpera

Ideas for us

Session Two

Today we had some really useful and informative lectures. 

The first lecture by Tristam Sparks talked about trans-media as a form of storytelling. Good trans-media should have a sort of narrative which unfolds as the user engages. He talked about the use of an experience journey as a way of thinking about the user, where the user would be when they encounter the media, what order you intend for them to experience the media, what they would be thinking about and how they would be feeling. 

Sparks talked about Key terms such as User experience, Experience design and so on (GUI, UI, HCI, IXD, UX, XD). These are terms I've been interested in in the past but haven't yet researched them. 

When creating trans-media platforms this is the suggested development sequence:

1. Sketches

2. Wireframes

3. Wireframe prototypes

4. User interface design

5. User interface prototype

6. Development and production

7. Iterate (refine and repeat)

The second lecture was held by Tim Turnidge and focused on Prototyping with InVision. Learning about InVision was really exciting for us as it allows for fast ideation and getting our websites up for a test fun easily and efficiently. The lecture was really interesting and comprehensive though I imagine InVision would quickly get frustrating due to it's limitations. While it's easy and quick, it's also pretty limited in what you can do with content. 

Experience Journey:

During class we critiqued our poster iterations:

Our critique:

-Gnome one makes them look like their fighting for attention - needs better hierarchy

-Try the other thumbnail iterations we previously came up with

-Try hose one without box so we're not 'growing' the zombie

Tim critique:

-The action of watering and growing is a good metaphor for growing the community, needs to be clearer; use text to show this.

-The gnome is the strongest; shows neighbourhood, adds another element, makes it lighter and fun, expression gives a lot of possibilities for iteration and can be funny. 

-Agrees there needs to be better hierarchy

-Try multiple gnomes like a neighbourhood, consider other backgrounds, expressions etc. 

Week Two

Session One

During class there was a focus on critique and ideation. For homework we had to do at least 5 thumbnails to bring to class to get critiqued. The one we chose to show was:

The feedback we got for it was that while it was humorous it didn't really have much to do with a community get together, so we needed to make sure to show some form of community so that people aren't confused by it.

Moodboards - Tim critique: Style looks good, though some of the textures and themes make it look very dark and dystopian. Focus on more lighthearted themes to make it fun and intriguing.

After getting critiqued on the mood boards we moved on to a big brainstorm/discussion of words that related to our themes. For this we spilt up into the two groups- neighbours and beach clean up- so that we could be focused on just our theme. We brainstormed words to do with the subject, audience, themes/symbols/intangibles, tangibles and styles. 

From there we had continue to make more fast thumbnails that incorporated these words, to make heaps quick ideas. 

Session Two

In this session we focused on critique of our ideas so far, distilling our concept into a few words, creating a call to action, created more thumbnails, and discussed our style approach. 

Play with puns? 

"This situation is dead serious"

"Being alone in an emergency is dead scary"

"Don't be a stiff, get to know your neighbours"

"Your neighbours are dying to meet you"

"Meeting your neighbours is a no-brainer"

Call to action: 

"Love thy neighbour"

"Prepare for the worst"

"Be prepared"

"Get prepared"

"Better together"

"Anything could happen"

"Anything could happen" - while our theme is zombie apocalypse, we're really preparing the neighbourhood for any kind of emergency. 

"Get prepared" - probably strongest call to action

Website Models

http://davidbastian.red/
While pretty, this one makes me dizzy. It's revered for it's UX but I really don't enjoy using it. to move the images from side to side you scroll up and down which is very counter-intuitive.








http://www.defringe.com/page/45
This one is much more intuitive, simple scroll down, heavy use of visual imagery and small amounts of text. Each image is a link to move info, it's easy to navigate and intriguing. Very large images though, I think someone with slower internet or an old computer would struggle to use this website.




http://www.theavotree.co.nz/

I appreciate the simple design, the consistency in colour/type etc. It's easy to navigate and find info, very intuitive having the logo/link to home page in the top left and search bar/sign up etc. in the top right. They seem to be having some technical issues with the Tea Tree and Pumice hand scrub (under soap menu), I tried to inspect it to see if I could find the issue but I couldn't see what was wrong. However when you inspect it the format changes to mobile size which is useful for comparison.

Week 1

We started class in week 1 with a lecture about Koha, designing for good and transmedia. For this project we have to choose a topic, either 'get to know your neighbours' or 'clean up the beaches' and then design a poster, flyer and website that works on both mobile and desktop with at least 2 pages.

Our first in class exercise was the Simpsons Exercise, where we worked in groups of 4 to make some quick thumbnails for the two topics aimed at two different Simpsons characters. We were given Apu and Homer, so based on their lives, interests, concerns, we chose to aim clean up the beach at Apu, as he is a vegan so he would care about the animals being harmed from dirty beaches, we decided to target him in the poster by using his religion. Then we chose Homer for the get to know your neighbour as he likes food so we could easily get him involved with the incentive of a neighbourhood BBQ.

These are the two thumbnails we ended up with:



 This thumbnail was another iteration of Apu's beach clean up because he has 8 children so their many hands would make light work.

Then we chose another character, which was the Comic Book guy. We decided to try to get him to come to the beach clean up because it might be slightly more difficult to get him there. He isn't really an outside sort of person, who does things for others benefit. We came up with the idea of a cosplay clean up, where you dress up as your favourite comic book hero and be a hero by cleaning up the beach.
  

We also got given a random word and random phrase to incorporate into the thumbnails. Our word was tree and our phrase was "better the devil you know than the devil you don't".
 


After that we split off into our pairs to decide on what topic we wanted to choose.
We decided to go with Get to Know your Neighbours.

We want to aim our neighbourhood get together at university students, and we thought a really good way to get them involved would be to have a "Prepare for the Zombie Apocalypse Party" as apocalypse and dystopia themed things are quite popular right now. This is also a way that we could get uni students prepared for a natural disaster. A lot of the things you would need for an apocalypse are the same things you need if there was a major earthquake. Things such as having access to food and water, being able to make it without electricity and having other people to rely on are some of these things.

Reverse Project plan-