Friday, April 29, 2011

IA: ARC design screens

 Moving forward with the design approach I made all the screens that were needed, but I plan on adding a few more to expand the scenario out more.
some feedback that was said in critique:

-consider a texture or pattern to put in the top bar.
-Look for a way to go back in the app.
-Don't necessarily need the age, maybe something more of what they are in the bike community.
-take the word "image" out
-Make the image bleed off the page.
-Make the type a bit more thick.
-Show examples of the other icons that would come up except for the car.
-watch craft.
-add some photos to the scenario
-add some type to the icons
-what happens when you click on a button that doesn't have a warning on it.
-work a bit more on the icons.








Thursday, April 28, 2011

UX: Family Prototyping Day Fixes

After critique on Wednesday while showing some corrections I addressed from the family prototyping day, I had some additional corrections.
 Adding an airplane or bird to the inside to show more of what my concept is.
While trying to integrate the side note of rolling down the hill between two sculptures.
 Also, adding an image of what the bird eyes look like on the instructions page. There was a suggestions of showing images for instructions, but when I started doing that I found there were more images than space let to have.
Then I added some pattern pages to incorporate in the arts and crafts station.

Wednesday, April 27, 2011

UX: Family Prototype day


 The Junior Design class got to have the privilege to have a prototype day with actual children in our age range we're trying to design for. Here are some images of that day:













Tuesday, April 26, 2011

type4: movement?

Trying to move forward with my concept but testing my studies in the environment. I'm not sure if this is exactly the direction I want to head in, but I definitely wanted to test what these pieces of tool having the letter A in them would look like in movement, due to while they are in a paused moment they look like they are already moving.
Here you can see a little bit more of the A.

The one below I enjoy more because of the falling movement it has, while still having the formal qualities of an A.

type4: Felting some personality

 The Skinny T came along because I wanted to see how flimsy one of my letterforms could be, and this one definitely wins.

It can't hold itself up what so ever, and it really reminds me of a worm due to it's skinny shape. Considering the material used which was felt, probably didn't' help it stand up very much, but thinking about the rest of the materials I'm using, I doubt that this shape would stand up straight anywhere.
 The A ball was to see how a sphere shape would render a letter. Felted balls are pretty popular for jewelry right now, and I thought it would be just dandy to make an alphabet necklace. But, that will just need to be a summer project. As for the rendering of the letter, it's still legible, and honestly doesn't look much different than if it were flat, I should probably cover more mass of the ball if I wanted to see the manipulation of the letterform come into play.
 When needle felting, some people use little acrylic stencils to make shapes, so I did my best with a piece of cardboard with a clarendon T cut out of it. While doing this process it was frustrating because I would turn it over, and it was just mess the shape up, so I need to experiment more with how plastic versus cardboard works, and see if it works any better. Although keeping an idea what shape I was going for was nice to see, it definitely made things more accurate which is what I was trying to figure out, how accurate I could get with one letterform.
Adding some googily eyes always is a good decision too.

type4: "A" new experiment

 My big new pillow A.

When doing this experiment, I felt that I would have been able to just whip it out no problem, but then I realized my sewing skills were just not up to par with what this was asking of me, or I just didn't have the brain power at the time to figure the right way to do it at the time. When I was making this, I was trying to see the relationship between the material and the size. I had made other "plushy" A's before, but not at this size, and the difference between the two is: that this is definitely helpful when trying to sleep. I realized right away that people wanted to interact with this size of soft object, obviously because it does resemble a pillow of some sort, but also because it has character.


Here is a good friend sleeping while standing up, it has to be comfy!
 I wanted to show that it had personality, almost like it was somewhat of a sesame street character or something.
 And, I'm definitely taking it on my next airplane right...it's even better than those dog bone pillows.


I felt that this was a nice experiement due to how large it was in comparison to my other experiments, also how simple the "A" was. It's a pretty straight forward, san serif A where some of my other experiments are almost illegible letter forms.

Designalogue banner experiment

 Doing a long word like "designalogue" was a bit challenging, but I think it looks alright.
I like the bottom one better due to the depth it shows, trying to keep the letters some what consistent with their form was difficult due to making it by hand, but I think I went okay.

Friday, April 22, 2011

IA: Visual Direction iphone app

 Moving forward with a mixture of two of the previous visual directions I decided to keep the color bright, but the same family. Overall I enjoy this first one the best, I'm just not so sure how well a bike wheel is being portrayed in the buttons. I tried some other ways, in the background, or up in the header as well.


Keeping it still very simple due to the nature of the app, it's an on the go kind of thing...they could very possibly be using it while on their bikes.

IA: iphone/touch design approaches

 For this first approach I kept a very similar look to google maps and the apple aesthetic. I used a picture for the background to keep it simple and clear the app was about bikes.
 Possibly adding more red in could be an option...
 Moving on to the next design approach (while I moved into illustrator), here I wanted to keep the bright colors that they would want to see clearly. Also increasing the size of the buttons I though would be good, incase they were on their bikes multi-tasking.
In the last approach I wanted to simplify the map to it's core. So that if they wanted to push on a certain location, or zoom in on one it'd be clear and easy.

Keeping the colors still bright and fun with a touch of somewhat pattern.
I'm not so sure about the type on the first frame, or if that could even be possible, or legible.
On this one it just has a more simple vector feel compared to the one above which as an image of a wheel with vector shapes on top of it.










I chose the name "ARC" for Alternative route checker. I'm not sold, but I do like the way it looks typographically, as well as it being nice and short.