Workshop Week 2: BBC User Centered Design

This BBC user experience workshop consisted of three members of the BBC user experience team from manchester. Diverge and converge is a technique in which they use for generating ideas, issues, constraints and goals for there user experience. This is the same process which we would be using to create an outcome for the workshops project.

Red Ant Man Process

This process consisted of getting into groups and drawing a cactus, A man chained to the cactus, ants and an oasis in the distance. This was to help visualise and categories each issue, constraint and goal we had for the john lewis display window brief. 

The John Lewis Brief:

Our task was to create an Inspiring, Inventive, conceptually relevant and eye-catching display for the john lewis flagship oxford street store for the spring season, that reshapes expectations of what shop windows do and can be, but keeps product firmly at its heart.

We decided that we wanted to focus on the concept of integrating mobile phone users who pass by the display’ Generating a new unique advertising idea which would make this particular display stand out from the others.

Here is a photograph of the Red Ant Man process.

Here is a photograph of a more developed Red Ant Man process.

This is an activity I took part in where we took 20 seconds to draw a quick sketch of ideas which we could use for the basis of the project. This quick session of idea drawing would then be discussed with the group and therefore would have to decided between us what ideas to take forward.

This is an activity we took part in where we had to create as many objects within the circles within a minute time limit.

This is the process me and my team took to take the brainstormed 20 second ideas and put them on a chart. The horizontal line represent the effort required to pull of this task.

Right = Low Effort  Left = High Effort.

The vertical line represents the impact that this idea would have on the chosen audience.

Top = High Impact   Low = Low Impact

The goal was to find the perfect balance between effort required and impact gained. Overall me and my team decided that we would look into camera projected idea, where a cameras would be located around the area of the store and portraying them on a screen. This would hopeful engage with the audience, promoting sales for john lewis. The idea was that with the distraction of the camera and screen this would create enough attention that mobile phone users would stop what they were doing an look.

After selecting our idea that we wanted to take forward, we then looked int additional details for the promotion, we decided that it would be a great idea to get a celebrity host for the event, bringing in more custom. However, I did suspect that this idea was a little to unrealistic if we was to keep in mind budget restriction, as celebrates more commonly like to be paid for such events.

Once we had compiled all of our ideas for the store window, we was then set out final task. This task was to create a newspaper article containing a name, photograph, quote and some information about the event. This was done to help visualise what our intention would be for this event and what we would want the public to think of this event also. We decided that a fitting name for our spring store window would be "A Spring In Your Step".

We then presented the idea in front of the other groups, which our idea was met with positive results. I was quite happy with the result of our teams effort in creating this store window theme, and understanding the complications of achieving this.

Just before we left we was told that the BBC was having a UX (User Experience) Design summer placement if anyone was interested. However, I decided not to participate as this is my third UX  workshop this year, so I thought that this would be a waste of time.

G# Minor

This lecture was taken over by Sara. The theme for this lecture was based around the concept of G# minor and focused primarily on motion graphic pieces of work. I quite liked this as I got to see a range of videos, which were creative and utilised sound very well. This video was based on a minimalistic motion format of a graphic notation, showing the music being played by the vibrations of the string.

This was a really interesting concept.

Strings: J.S. Bach - Cello Suite No. 1 - Prelude from Alexander Chen on Vimeo.

This video was created using stop motion, which is a series of photographs taken and pieced together to form a scene. This then creates the obscure frame rate. I have had some experience with stop motion before but never to a scale like this. I have never thought about using this technical process to achieve the visualization of sound. It was at this point I had an idea to use this method to go and take photographs with a camera whilst going on a journey. This may create a unique music video of some sort and would be a nice experiment to try out.


Hyde Park at Night - In Stopmotion from Anatoleya on Vimeo.
AANAATT (by Max Hattler) from Max Hattler on Vimeo.

During the lecture we listened to a couple of songs which included the G# minor, one of the songs of which were Lady Gaga's Poker Face. Sara showed us this song because although more commonly used in older music, it can be used with pop mainstream music.

I really enjoyed this lecture, as it I was shown that many graphical experimentations that I could produce, could use be created in after effects rather than producing stills in photoshop.

Year 1 Final Seminar With James Dyer

For our final seminar with James Dyer, the group was suppose to bring some studio work relating to our final studio, but was the complication of no email being set out to the graphic design group. This unfortunate lead to nobody being able to talk about there studio work. On the other hand we did see some students work online, which was a welcome insight into someone else work and thought process.


SELFS- THE DEFINITION from Isla Miller on Vimeo.

The work presented was an animation called selfs, created by Isla Miller, a student on my course. I really like the animation and thought that the sound choice was perfect for the overall theme that she was trying to capture. Although it was an incomplete version of her animation, I could really visualise the final product, this made me want to utilise my newly founded After Effects skills, over the holidays as I am becoming really passionate the software.

I think that this seminar opened my eyes to what talent we have on our course and how far people have come on our journey as graphic designers. This seminar was a very reflective period for myself, as it created a new driven passion in the creation of my work. This was a nice end to James seminar session for my first year in university, and I look forward to what comes in the future.

Principles Of Graphic Design

In todays lecture we understood the five main principles of Graphic Design.

Proximity - This means the grouping of elements together so that you guided the audience to different parts of the message.

Alignment - Is how the designer generates composition within an frame, not just placing thing central but attempting to scatter and create new layouts,

Repetition - Repeating elements in design can produce visually appealing out comes and ofter do so.

Contrast - To make things stand out, understand that you need to get noticed.

Space -The use of negative space can have a powerful effect on a design, sometimes less can be more.

Meaning And Messaging Seminar Infographic

The task for this seminar was to produce a infographic based on personal information. An infographic is basically an artistic graph, where you record information. The information which we asked for was a timespan of our life, using key moments in our lifes to change the outcome of the position on the graph. For instance, if you created a chart where the lower the line was, the more sad you were at this point and the top being being an happy emotion, then the events which would take place throughout the chart would effect the overall outcome.

This seminar was quite an enlightening experience as I have never created a infographic before. The unique purpose of this, was that there was no limitation to what we could make, as long as we recorded information and did it visually rather than using statistical numbers. I have noticed infographics becoming much more popular with creative CV's as it breaks down the text so that the employer easily see the information and much more clearly, having a bigger impact. Another way I know how infographics are used are within magazines, usually business related so that they can show statistics much more clearly.

Image of an infographic Poster

I really enjoyed this seminar, as we were give a fun and enjoyable task to take part in and experiment with out to transfer statistical information in to a graph and produce it much more visually.

History Of Graphic Design

This lecture was focused around exploring the history of graphic design. During the lecture a range of artist were discussed, some of which stood out to me. These were as followed:

April Greiman

Fred Woodward 

Wolfgang Weingart

Chris Ashworth

Chris Ashworth has a common style in relation to David Carson, he was also one of the designers who worked on the Ray Gun magazine.

I found this lecture to be quite informal, showing a new spectrum of designers rather than the more common David Carson and Neville Brody. It also gives some perspective of how other designers have used previous work and design movements, adding there own creative vision.

Expanded Genealogy

This seminar was an extension of our previous genealogy seminar back at the beginning of the first semester. We explored the genealogical method, exploring questions between a method and methodology.

A method is defined as a process of doing, so what does methodology mean?

Methodology is a system of methods used in a particular area of study or activity - Google Definition

I then realised that the word methodology also applies to our previous seminar with James, based on Genealogy. A quote during the lecture stated that the "genealogist examines the preconceived and questions the phenomenon that we tend to feel is without history". At first I didn't quite understand what this quotation meant , however the idea behind this is that we don't tend to think about how others interprete our actions and life style. A perfect example of this is shown in cultural differences from the west and the east. This is why Genealogists claim that there is no eternal truth. When I think about the concept of eternal truth, I think about the idea of not one law fits all, for instance what is dictated as a crime in one country could very well be accepted in another, does this mean either side is right? I don't believe so, these are nothing but subjective opinions.

This is where We asked ourself the question are genealogist sound they engage in subjective or objective studies. Well the idea behind the word subjective is that this is completely based on personal opinion, where as objectively this mean to have the involvement of someone else. From what we discussed genealogist studies are primarily subjective as they didn't involve the Michel Foucault, who was a french philosopher.

Michel  Foucault quoted "What right do have historians have to impose their tastes and preferences when they seek to determine what actually happened in the past".

"The purpose of history, guided by genealogy is not to discover the eternal truth of a historical subject but to research ideas and bring idea and approaches together to link and makes sense of the subject."

This means that Michel is saying that genealogy is little more than speculation, with theory backing u there claims. It's similar in the ideal of science, you can only speculate based on the information in which you have.

This expanded source on the topic on genealogy was a lengthy but confusing seminar, however I have learnt that that genealogy is a subjective process, however its process of finding out information and putting it together to form an answer is a somewhat interesting idea, which I think can be applied to graphic design as a problem solving tool.

Visulisation Of Sound Seminar

Much like the lecture, this seminar also focused on looking at the possibile ways in which to proceed with the project. We looked at some of James Dyers old projects that he did while studying at university. James mentioned that he loved to tinker with technology and perceived to hack their primary function to make the hardware to do something it wasn't intended to. An example of this was, to rework Microsoft's Kinect to show his movements from the Kinect's software perspective. This then created patterns when depending on James movements, which was a really unique way of utilizing technology.

Another cool idea the I though James did was the way which he rewired his camera to take pictures when a current was passed through a circuit. I have seen technology adaptations like this done before for instance, on You Tube there is this video called Halo Theme On Eight Floppy Drives where this person has reconfigured these floppy drives to produce particular electrical noises in the tune, similar to that of the original song. I really think the idea of manipulating technology is a really cool concept, but I have never really had any experience in doing so, so I don't know really where I would begin to start.

Video Link - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jr4k5eJq8KU  

I really like the examples of work James showed us this seminar, I understood the message he was trying to get across this lecture, wanting us to really push us out of our comfort zone, wanting us to take risks to achieve really defined experiments for our visualization of sound project.

Film: Urbanzied

For this lecture I was introduced to a documentary film called Urbanized, directed by Gary Hustwit. This documentary focused on how design affects the modern day society, focusing specifically on city design, interviewing architects to gather a range of different perspectives on the matter. There is a huge focus on perspectives throughout this documentary and really makes you understand how much design is responsible for contemporary society.

Not only does this documentary look at the design of "urbanized" society, it looks into a much more deeper understanding, hi-lighting many different problems that societies around the world face in both the future and the present. A big concern mentioned in the film was that society is getting increasingly overcrowded, putting a strain on global resources and harming the environment, not to mention the poor condition of human living in places like Mumbai.

I thought that this film was a nice break from constant designing for commercial sales, it focused on looking at more serious issues that happen around the world. It focused on the ideal of problem solving and I really enjoyed this, after all designers are problem solvers.

Film: Helvetica

This was another film screening that I was introduced to from the director of Urbanized, Gary Hutzwit. This documentary was based round the font Helvetica, insulated by the title. The film was released on the 50th anniversary of the typeface Helvetica, talking about the process font has developed throughout history.

I also learnt the the reason why we have uppercase and lower case letter was because back during the printing press we had two cases both separating the two types of letters. These letters were stored on in a uppercase and a lower case. This directly impacted the deign of the keyboard and which is why we use the term upper and lower case to distinguish the different between capital letters.

This film talked to some of the most influential designers based round type, one of which I knew called Neville Brody. Brody is one of the most iconic typeface creators in the world, producing in my opinion some of the most inspirational works in recent years.

Overall I really enjoyed the film as I myself like the art of type and knowing more about its history, made me appreciate it all the more.

Typography

This lecture was focused primarily on the area of graphic design known as Typography. I have had experience with Typography before and understand that when used correctly that creative placement of text can have more impact than any image. Typography has always been something that I have had some interest in as a graphic designer.

What is typography?

"The art or procedure of arranging type or processing data and printing from it" - Google Definition

We was shown a poster which I have seen before, but which I still find really interesting, this is the bad typography is everywhere poster. With its simplistic colour pallet and neat design, the message I personally receive from this is that bad typography stands out more than good typography, shown with the red overlaid type.

However something that caught my attention during this lecture was the terminology of Typography and typefaces. I was unaware of how detailed and complex typography really was. The lecture talked about many aspects of type such as:

Ascent
Ascender height
Mean line
Descent

Tracking

Counter
Bowl
Spine
Descender
Serifs
Stern
Terminal
Ligature

Visualisation Of Sound Project Introduction

This lecture introduced the group to our new project, Visualization of sound. Unlike our sense of place project, we were given a much shorter time frame consisting of 5 weeks to produce 8 experimental outcomes, based on the visualization of sound. It was advised that we took a varied technical approach to generating these outcomes, using many different forms of media, such as, animation, stills and practical methods. This was basically to test ourselves under pressure, like the way in-which we would be in industry. I was really excited for this project as I had already decided that I would be producing a different outcome though a combination of stills and animation.

It was further discussed that like in real industry we would be provided source material, this came in the form of music, where we would need to use or respond to a select portion within our work. These music clips would be able to be downloaded through Unilearn. It was then the lecture focused on inspirational pieces of work, where we could get ideas for how the visualization sound could be achieved.

We was then asked what does graphic design have in common with sound. I came to the conclusion that sound can be represented by shapes, such coming from the idea of music sheets. This basic form allows for the production of music, visualising sound. This was a really unique way of looking at the concept as usually it would be more common to make a music video or just incorporating sound, rather than making a key to what each sound represents. However my favorite part of the inspirational material being shown was a video called Cymatics by Nigel Stanford. This video focused on using particular frequencies in correlation with equipment to visually see the effect that sound had on a substance. The way the music video was put together was really well done and had really inspired me to produce something for the project.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q3oItpVa9fs

Overall I thought that this lecture help me think much more broadly about the outcomes I could produce for my formative assessment. It allowed me to think about all the different possibilities I could do and think about which form of media would be the best to portray them in.

APA 6 Referencing Seminar

This seminar was focused on providing myself and the group with information on how to reference correctly for my upcoming 2500 words essay summative. I have never referenced before so this was something very new to myself. The seminar informed me of when and how to reference throughout my essay, giving me the understanding of academic terminology.

Something stressed heavily during the seminar was plagiarism.

Plagiarism: Defining someone else's work as your own.

Accidental Plagiarism: Incorrectly Referenced.

When to reference

Paraphrasing: Putting eternal text in your own words.
Images: Images found from books or the internet.
Statistics: Factual information based from a reference source.
Quotations: Direct information from a source.

In text citations - Shortened versions of references to link to full reference

Example Of An In Text Citation - (Oxford Dictionary, 2016)

Full reference - Contains all references information

Example Of A Full Reference - Oxford (2016). In Oxford DictionaryOxford University Press. Retrieved from http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/subculture

During the seminar it was also explained that their was a reference list and a bibliography, previously I thought that they were both the same. However it turned out that a reference list is where you contain all of your references citated in your work and a bibliography is the lists of reading sources which have been looked at but didn't directly reference in the essay. In addition to this we were shown some assets which could make the referencing process easier, such as Mendely and Ref Me.

Types of references

Articles
Websites
Books
Magazines
Journals

Overall I found this seminar session to be quite useful in clarifying many confusing aspects of the reference process. It also gave a much broader understanding of essay terminology, allowing me to understand how and when to references, whilst clarifying the word Paraphrasing as I struggled to understand the difference between this and plagiarism.

Narrative Design

For this lecture we looked at the process of Narrative Design. Narrative Design is of great importance when it comes to developing visual communication, and although it is commonly used in film, literature and games design, the process can also be used within graphic design. I consider graphic design a jack of all trades, being able to utilise many different medias in order to achieve its goal, design tells story's.

When producing a visual story you need to ask 4 important questions to best understand what kind of narrative you are trying to tell. These questions are;

What is the issue?

What will be the events?

If needed, who are the characters?

What is the content?

All these are very basic questions one should ask them self before producing a story.

Like all narrative processes we start with a beginning middle and end, planning our story and layout of the foundation. Due to the creation of Freytags Pyramid (1862), Gustav Freytag developed a visual graph after documenting the patterns of storytelling.

Afterwards we looked into the 8 series of conflicts. These are the proposed only style of stories currently told today, by Arthur Quiller Couch. I found this interesting as that I have never hear of these series of conflicts before, and it enlighten to me how limited stories really are. I also noticed that many books fall with more than one of the categories provided, which reminded me about the word convergence.

Series Of Conflicts

"Man Against Fate"

"Man Against Society"

"Man against The Supernatural"

"Man Against Machine"

"Man Against Man"

"Man Against God"

"Man Against Self."

"Man Against Nature"

Something which caught my eye during the lecture was Pixars 22 rules of storytelling. I knew that they had principles of animation, however I didn't know they had these rules. I found this rather interesting as I admire the works of pixar. The Rules are as followed;

Overall the lecture showed my that having a good narrative for design can really improve my over message I am trying to communicate.

Approches To Research - Questions

The task I was set for this seminar session was to attempt to acquire information from a brief set of questions. These questions were then answered with a yes or no response and with this information,  I was suppose to acquire what the person was thinking of. This process was similar to the game 20 questions. However this process required myself to write down questions first before I asked someone the set of questions. This made calculating the answer much harder as I couldn't change my course of thinking while I asked the questions.

Here are the set of questions I asked.

Is it something you eat? NO
Is it a person? NO
Is it someone famous? NO
Is it something you use? YES
Is it something that requires power? YES
Can you communicate with it? YES
Do you use it often? YES
Do you have it with you now? YES
Is it expensive? YES
Is it well known? YES

With these set of questions I tried to best fill all potential outcomes by asking a range of varied questions. Unfortunately even with multipul answers suggesting that the item in question was a mobile phone, the item they was thinking of was a computer. This had shown me that even the most obvious answer can have endless possibilities.

We then started the activity again but this time we were able to think on the spot of questions, with this restriction lifted I felt much more confident about guessing the final outcome.

Is it an inanimate object? YES
Can you eat it? NO
Is it decorative? NO
Can you play with it? YES
Does it require power? YES
Is it expensive? YES
Can you play games on it? YES
Is it made by Microsoft? NO
Is it made by Sony? YES
Is It the latest model? YES

This time I was much more successful in achieving my goal, I managed to guess that the answer was a Playstation 4. The point of this was to solidify the idea of understanding my research approach, becoming much more flexible in the way I work but also not be afraid of changing research patterns if the current one isn't gathering the right kind of information I am after.

Prequel Sequel

The focus of this lecture was around the themes of prequel and sequel. I have heard this term used within the film industry but not very much with design so I was interested to what context it would be relevant. The theory for this lecture was that nothing is truly an original concept, but you can still can design something with originality. With our sense of place project took into consideration it was explained that my exploration of the previous project based of a word, allowed for a range of approaches to design to take form. The time we had to explore possibilities with a lengthy research period allowed for myself to find inspiration from others and form my own development from that concept. While unlike the second project Visualization of Sound, we had little time to research are was therefore forced into designing quickly, coming up with our own ideas.

"Those who do not want to imitate anything, produce nothing." - Salvador Dali

The point was made that graphic designers and animators have the same intentions to communicate a message, but when we seek to communicate we rely on predetermined assumptions to provide context to our purpose. What I understood from this was that everyone perceives a concept differently to one another, and this also applies to design as well, remixing our understanding.

The lecture then discussed these main areas of focus.

Connection

In relation to the sequel and prequel mentioned at the start of the lecture, they were explain to have have many different meanings all of which focus on connection.

Intent

Intent is the purpose of connection. This gives an idea of how in which to communicate in order to successfully connect with an audience.

Tipping Point

The Law Of The Few: Which is the idea that in any situation roughly 80 percent of the work will be done by 20 percent of the participants.

The Sickness Factor: The specific content of a message that renders its impact memorable.

The Power Of Content: Human Behaviour is sensitive to and strongly influenced by its environment.

Nostalgia

A trigger towards both positive and negative emotion, providing emotive connection to an audience.

Continuity

The consistency of a product, for example films that have unanswered questions are deemed to have plotholes, which are relevant missing pieces of information not explained in the story. This is not to be confused by ambiguous ending.

Standard Elements

Combining existing components producing appropriated, transformed and subverted outcomes from the original source.

Movements

The evolution of ideas providing the foundation of future concepts.


Overall this lecture enlightened me about how good design requires good communication and intent. It shows how many different factors can affect design such as nostalgia and continuity, and how can ruin or enhance experiences through communication.

Convergence Seminar

What is convergence?

- Bringing a range of objects together to create a new formation.

- To forcibly blend multiple forms together to produce something new.

What convergence means to me:

 "To generate a hybrid, from using a range of different ideas"

In relation to the word convergence, the group was set a task to mimic a visual representation of the process of convergence. For instance, the task required myself to separate some pieces of newspaper and then after repurpose them by rearranging the pieces into a completely new form.

I produced some collages using pieces of newspaper and overlaying them at different amounts and angles to produce a convergence of material. I thought that a collage was a great representation of convergence as it expressed the process quite well, though it wasn't the most visually appealing work created, I think that by doing this process that it allowed me to fully understand what I had to do for my sense of place project. 

I did the same process with this design, however, I used red card rather than black to see what effect it had. Overall I prefer the black collages.

I created three pieces for this seminars convergence theme, the third piece was created afterwards using my photographs I acquired at the Yorkshire sculpture park, and integrating my own creative material.

Though this is a simplistic concept, made popular by writer William Burroughs, it helps provide visual solidification of the meaning of convergence, and with this process I have found it easier to understand what to research and produce in relation to this weeks theme.

Design And Emotion (Seminar)

In relation to the previous lecture we had on design and emotion. I was set the task of creating a visual transformation from one word to another in the process of nine stages, similar to a storyboard. This was to show the transformation between two stages, for instance happy and sad. This process would be show through illustrations or text. I decide that I would create a timeline crossing the seasons, spanning across two years. This is because I wanted to explore how I could slightly change the second season to give the message that somethings change while others stay the same. I was looking for a simple expression to create a strong emotive response, because I fins that design works rather well that way.

The simples forms of communication work best for me personally, and if a message is kept simple, I tend to find that it translates rather well. I decided that I would only include one type of colour for each season throughout the sequence, to enhance the simplicity of the design.

I thought that this seminar was quite relaxed and allowed for myself to better concentrate on producing a concept that would for the idea of design and emotion. I believe that the best design invokes a bittersweet sort of emotion.

Design And Emotion Lecture

For this lecture we began by being shown an photographic image and to express our current thoughts and emotions for what we could see. Collectively the group concluded that the image was of a under exposed photograph of a lamppost. For the emotive effect however, this created a generation of varied emotions towards the photograph speculating what the meaning behind the photograph could possibly be. I personally thought that the photographs was of a sinister looking nature, showing intense dominance due to the low angle shot. On the other side I tried to think of a more positive reason behind the photograph, this came to be with the expression of the light at the end of the tunnel, where the light symbolizes hope within the darkness.

This is done through a process called Sensory Information Processing.

We was then met by a series of illusions and perception challenges, the first being colour vision, where there were a range of dot patterns with some of the dots being a different colour to the background. This was to understand the effect colour blindness, and how colour can effect our perspective. We also looked at some of the more common illusion designs, where an overlaying pattern of colours consisted in a circle, created the effect of them moving in your peripheral vision, this was explain to be because of the, intensity of your brain capturing each colour simulating that they are moving when they are in fact not.

Something that caught my attention during the lecture was the way our perspective can be tricked into seeing something complete, when in reality it is not. Almost like a mirage. This is done because of the way in which our eyes process information, using pieces of data to construct for what we would commonly see as normal.

This has been shown by the upside down mouth on a photograph illusion phenomenon, where your brain is tricked into think that it is normal at first glance but isn't at all. However this was shown in the lecture through a You Tube video of a T-Rex, where when you position changes, the T-rex eyes keep following you. I was really impressed at how this was occurring and was trying to guess how this was happening. This eventually was revealed to be complex arrangement of mirrors design to reflect the T-rex, showing that our eyes can be easily fooled by great design.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A4QcyW-qTUg&list=LLaJu6gGe3ieAEdT8PfprfOA&index=44

Perception = We Override Our Own Reality = How we Interpretate information

It was quoted in the lecture that "We Expect What We Expect To See", meaning that when our brain is met with some foreign information, it try's to normalise the situation, by processing what we perceive to be normal.

Example of this are show through: 

Inkblots

The Exceptions Effect

Priming

Depth Perception

Overall I found that this lecture opened my eyes to how we underestimate our mind, and sometimes to not fully question if what we are seeing is truly what we are seeing. I felt like this lecture was more about psychology, but the idea of design is to produce visual material for that which creates a certain emotion, and I think that I understand more about how to create emotion though design.