Over the past few days, I've been looking at some potential speakers for my design conference, and I've decided I'm going to do a typographic conference.
I've come up with a list of 8 speakers so far which I'd consider using, who I feel fit the theme quite nicely. I don't think I'll use any of these 8 as my keynote speaker, and I'm instead going to look at using a more famous and well-known designer as the keynote, in an attempt to draw more interest and attraction to the conference.
In terms of a famous typographer or graphic designer that would fit this conference, my initial thoughts string straight to Neville Brody and David Carson. They'd both be a good fit as they deal with typography, and craft it so carefully, although in a very different way to the modern typographer.
The 8 speakers I've looked at so far are:
Fay McApline (NZ)
Kris Sowersby (NZ)
Hannes von Dohren (Germany)
Dave Foster (Australia)
Charles A. Bigelow (US)
Vincent Connare (US)
Matthew Carter (England)
Stefan Sagmeister (Austria)
In my physical workbook, I've also sketched up 2 pages of thumbnails for a few different takes on the typographic conference. I've come up with about 32 different ideas at the moment, and also mocked up a few basic ones on Photoshop and InDesign to show at Tuesday's class.
On Tuesday I'll look to get some feedback on these concepts, and which ones I should continue to develop. I feel like I've got a few more decent thumbnail concepts that I will look to create digitally as well.
Showing posts with label Research. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Research. Show all posts
Sunday, 1 May 2016
Friday, 29 April 2016
Week One - Lesson Two
During the lesson today, the teachers came around and had some small 1 on 1 conversations with each of us, in order to see what ideas we had come up with over the past few days, and trying to help us clarify and flesh out our ideas.
I had come up with three ideas which I was thinking of using:
1. How to measure success in design: Fame vs Satisfaction, Money vs Enjoyment etc.
2. Confusion around design degrees: Workload, what we exactly do, future jobs etc.
3. Crafting and Polishing of typography: The fine micro details of typography
Out of these three, since I really like typography, I was leaning towards the third one. A design conference about the perfectionists inside of us, and the polishing and crafting details that type requires.
For homework, we have a couple of tasks that needed completing. Firstly, we are required to continue to define our design conference, come up with a name, and try to come up with some sort of tagline/subheading for it, which works hand in hand with the title or imagery used. Along with this, we have been asked to research some potential speakers for out design conference, and then come up with some thumbnail poster concepts. Once we come up with a decent amount of thumbnails, we need to either draw or print in A3, three of these concepts to see how they work once digitally created.
I will come up with these for Tuesday's class, and they'll be in my physical workbook.
I had come up with three ideas which I was thinking of using:
1. How to measure success in design: Fame vs Satisfaction, Money vs Enjoyment etc.
2. Confusion around design degrees: Workload, what we exactly do, future jobs etc.
3. Crafting and Polishing of typography: The fine micro details of typography
Out of these three, since I really like typography, I was leaning towards the third one. A design conference about the perfectionists inside of us, and the polishing and crafting details that type requires.
For homework, we have a couple of tasks that needed completing. Firstly, we are required to continue to define our design conference, come up with a name, and try to come up with some sort of tagline/subheading for it, which works hand in hand with the title or imagery used. Along with this, we have been asked to research some potential speakers for out design conference, and then come up with some thumbnail poster concepts. Once we come up with a decent amount of thumbnails, we need to either draw or print in A3, three of these concepts to see how they work once digitally created.
I will come up with these for Tuesday's class, and they'll be in my physical workbook.
Monday, 11 April 2016
Daily Futures Presentation
Tomorrow is my turn for my Daily Future's presentation in front of the class. The website I have chosen to talk about is called "In Pieces", and it's a creative way of showing animals that are nearing extinction, in an aesthetically interesting way. They use a low poly illustration style for each of the animals, as can see below in the screenshots.
The website URL is: http://www.species-in-pieces.com/#
The website URL is: http://www.species-in-pieces.com/#
I really like the illustrative style of the website, it's very unique and definitely attention grabbing. It's really effective how the low poly shape style is used consistently. It's used effectively when the user clicks to look at the statistics for the particular animal, and the animal blows up into pieces and the pieces fly away before revealing stats in the centre of the page. I have included some screenshots at the bottom of this blog post.
I feel like they have gone for this more interactive and unique approach in order to get people talking about the site, and make it memorable. For me, as soon as I saw the site I was interested in what it's about, and continued to look through to find out more. Even if it's just getting the user to have a little play on the website, it's still a way of attracting attention.
Below I have also created a mini diagram showing the information architecture, and what each link on the page leads to. I have screenshotted each screen and drawn arrows going from the links.
Sunday, 13 March 2016
Further Research
Today I went through and did a bit more research, in order to solidify my approach to this website brief. I really want to make sure that the site is easy to navigate, just as much as I want it to look visually appealing. Ultimately, user navigation is the most crucial aspect, as it determines whether or not people will successfully be able to find what they're after, although visual systems and hierarchy can still be used in order to greatly assist with this process.
In terms of the 'USA TODAY' website, I quite like the layout and visuals of it. I like how the tabs are placed in order to filter down the searches, and I also like how there is the 'Right Now' section, which gives you the very latest news as it comes in. The tabs make it easier for the user to navigate through the site in order to find a desired article. Another aspect that I like is the use of the arrow keys on the left and right hand side of the page, which is another way of navigating between the tabs. Each new page is then colour coded as well, in order to make the page more unique, and make it easier to differentiate from the other pages.
In the above snippet, from 'Animation World Network', I really like the general layout, and how it is mainly image based as well. Images tend to be easier to remember and recognize rather than text, so if a user is returning to a site and looking to find the same article, I feel like using an image as a primary feature would be a key way of ensuring success in the user journey. The layout is nice as crisp as well, something I really like.
This approach, called 'News Wall' from Channel 4 News, is a way of condensing the articles into a GIF format. Each individual section is a GIF rather than an image, with the title of the article coming up one or two words at a time while the GIF continues on loop. One of my favourite features which I think will assist with the user journey and make it a lot easer, is the toolbar on the right hand side, which has the dates down it. Upon hover, the articles from that day stay in full colour, while all of the other articles are dulled out and strongly saturated. This allows the user to easily find which articles are from particular days without physically needing to click on the date tab, as the hover element allows for quicker navigation between tabs.
Saturday, 12 March 2016
On Friday we found out that we need to come up with the layout for the mobile version of our website as well as the laptop web version, so it prompted me to go and have a look at the existing Dominion Post one as an example. Even though I'm going to be doing the Open Brief, I thought that I should at least use the Dominion Post as a reference point, to see how easy it is to navigate.
Above, I have attached these two screenshots from my iPhone, which show the mobile version of their site. It is pretty basic, and relies heavily on the scroll feature that a phone provides. On the web version, for computers, the wider screen allows them to fit more content on, where as the narrow screen in this case means that the content needs to be placed into one long screen, then forcing the user to scroll.
The above screenshot appears when clicking on the button with three lines in the top left corner, it's the drop down/pull out menu. This is what allows the user to slightly filter their topics into certain categories. It's quite an easy way of filtering out the articles, although I feel like there would certainly be a more effective way of doing this, which I'll need to do some research on.
My primary focus will initially be on making the web pages easy to navigate for the user personae, although once I've got that nailed, I will then look at ways to enhance the visuals and aesthetics of the web pages. However, the visual changes can also be used as a way of helping with navigation by creating hierarchy, and making thinks appear clickable, headlines appear bigger, and all those sorts of things.
My primary focus will initially be on making the web pages easy to navigate for the user personae, although once I've got that nailed, I will then look at ways to enhance the visuals and aesthetics of the web pages. However, the visual changes can also be used as a way of helping with navigation by creating hierarchy, and making thinks appear clickable, headlines appear bigger, and all those sorts of things.
Monday, 7 March 2016
Paper Prototyping with User Personae
For independent study, we were required to create user tasks for each of the 6 user personae we were given during Friday's class. In my physical workbook, I've written a quick summary of each of the User Personae. From here, we were required to create the user journeys in order to test the user tasks we created.
All of the wireframed paper prototyping can be seen in my physical workbook, while the in-depth analysis of each are on this blog post.
The first user was Haiyan Zhang, a 55 year old female who lives with her husband in Petone. For her user task, since she lives out in the Hutt, and 'likes to find out what's going on in the city', I decided to do "locate the article about the Wild Food Challenge in Days Bay, Lower Hutt". The user journey for this would require three clicks if efficiently done. To clicks to filter down the search via the tabs near the top of the page, and one to click on the link to the article itself.
The user journey is quite basic, and very efficient to reach the article. However, the process could be made easier by reducing the number of clicks, and simply having a hover once the mouse cursor is placed above 'Local Papers' and could then give the user the selection rather than needing to load another whole page. Zhang only browses the web and doesn't stay online for long, so the quicker she finds the article the better. I also noted that Haiyan Zhang isn't loyal to any specific news sources, although would return if it was interesting, which would definitely prompt me to change the aesthetic approach to the website.
The second user was a 31 year old male, Hemi Kamana, who multitasks while interacting with the news. He listens to podcasts and music while working out, and then watches videos on demand on his laptop. The user task I set for him was to "comment on the article about IronMaori and IronMan NZ". The user journey can be completed in 3 or 4 clicks if done efficiently.
Based on the fact that Hemi multitasks while catching up with the news, I'd assume he would take a bit longer to navigate to the page, trying to juggle a few things at once, and not fully focused on the news source. The tabs are quite clearly labelled so Hemi would be able to locate the article quite easily. The 'comment' button on the article page isn't too obvious, although worst case scenario he'd scroll down the page and would quickly be greeted with the comments section. In order to improve the layout and approach to the web to specifically suit Hemi, I would look at making an audio feature which reads out the article, so that he can listen while working out, rather than reading the article. Any audio or video related approach would best suit Hemi Kamana.
Third was Mike Richards, a 48 year old news junkie, who constantly sits at work refreshing the home page waiting for the latest news to appear. For his user task, I assigned the task of "sharing the most recent news via Facebook". This can easily be done in 3 clicks, as the article can be immediately accessed via the automatically updated 'Latest News Headlines' segment on the homepage.
Out of each of my user tasks, this would most likely be the quickest and most efficient user journey. Mike would access the article directly from the homepage. Once the article page has loaded, there are a series of icons right next to the title, one which clearly represents Facebook, and once clicks, gives the option to share the article. However, there are only about 8 or so news headlines which appear in the 'latest news headlines' section, so if I were to make a change, I would add a tab up the top as well for 'Recent News' or 'Todays News' which would allow anyone to go onto a page and view every article from that one day. This would be handy since a new article on average appears each half hour, and would allow Mike Richards to access articles he missed before he arrived at work, and was wanting to catch up on.
My fourth user persona is a 27 year old female Sarah Blake, who is a freelance designer, and uses all of the primary social forms of social media, particularly Instagram and Twitter. She also believes that there isn't enough news coverage for everything going on in Wellington. Therefore, for her user task, I assigned her the task of "Sharing the an article about 'What's on in Wellington'".
For this user test, the user could easily click on a tab such as 'culture' in order to try and find what's going on, when they should click on "local papers". This would cause an extended delay in the journey. Once on the 'local papers' page however, it's all slightly more straight forward, as you'd then click on "The Wellingtonian" and then the article appears on the next page. Once on the article page, there is a clear Twitter icon near the heading as well, which would make it easy to share to one of her primary social media sources. In order to improve the user journey, I would add a drop down menu when hovering above the tabs, which would mean Sarah could easily see which tab "The Wellingtonian" falls under, rather than clicking on a certain tab and hoping for the best.
My fifth persona is Andrea Pazmandi, a 32 year old female who is extremely into sports, especially the All Blacks and New Zealand's other international sporting teams. I set her the task to "locate the article about New Zealand winning the 7's plate in Las Vegas". This task, much like the others, can be done in a couple of clicks.
However, where the user journey gets tricky, and would cause some confusion and hesitation with Andrea is where the Dominion Post's sporting tab doesn't have any options within to further filter down the search, such as choosing a specific sport etc. The user then needs to click on the 'Sport' tab right at the top, which is the general stuff.co.nz tab. This would cause some confusion and a bit of a delay in the process, as I can imagine she'd click the wrong sports tab and then find herself needing to backtrack. Therefore, to change this, I would add in some more filters into the 'sport' section of the Dominion, to easily narrow down and find specific articles relative to the user's interests. This could be done via more tabs, or simply adding a menu which drops down by hovering over the 'sport' tab on the home screen.
The final user persona is a 64 year old male, Barry Down, who has worked in politics for 42 years. The user task I assigned him was to "locate the article in 'commercial property' about the Council's $10m leaky building". If efficiently executed, this user journey can be completed in two clicks and a quick scroll down the list of articles.
He opts to print and read his articles rather than read them online. Therefore, if I were to make the site more relative to Barry, I could include a link to download a PDF of the article, or even print directly from the site. However, in terms of the site's current design, it's not too difficult to navigate and Barry should be able to easily find his way to the article. However, I would add an extra tab or drop down menu (upon hover) which shows 'Commercial Property' rather than only having it as a sub-heading further down the page. This would be in case Barry didn't end up scrolling down the page, it would help make sure that he didn't backtrack or miss the article.
This exercise on analysing the user journeys for each of the 6 user personae was quite interesting, and it has definitely got me thinking on various ways to accommodate each person's characteristics and traits into make the experience easier for them as an individual. However, website need to cater for wider audiences to attract more interest, although there is always the chance to add features which would also make it cater for the personae we are using for this task. I really enjoyed the wireframing task, and breaking each website and user journey down to it's roots, in order to see the bare basics of each site. Again, the physical wireframes of each user journey can be found in my physical workbook, while the analysis' have been written in this post on my online blog.
All of the wireframed paper prototyping can be seen in my physical workbook, while the in-depth analysis of each are on this blog post.
The first user was Haiyan Zhang, a 55 year old female who lives with her husband in Petone. For her user task, since she lives out in the Hutt, and 'likes to find out what's going on in the city', I decided to do "locate the article about the Wild Food Challenge in Days Bay, Lower Hutt". The user journey for this would require three clicks if efficiently done. To clicks to filter down the search via the tabs near the top of the page, and one to click on the link to the article itself.
The user journey is quite basic, and very efficient to reach the article. However, the process could be made easier by reducing the number of clicks, and simply having a hover once the mouse cursor is placed above 'Local Papers' and could then give the user the selection rather than needing to load another whole page. Zhang only browses the web and doesn't stay online for long, so the quicker she finds the article the better. I also noted that Haiyan Zhang isn't loyal to any specific news sources, although would return if it was interesting, which would definitely prompt me to change the aesthetic approach to the website.
The second user was a 31 year old male, Hemi Kamana, who multitasks while interacting with the news. He listens to podcasts and music while working out, and then watches videos on demand on his laptop. The user task I set for him was to "comment on the article about IronMaori and IronMan NZ". The user journey can be completed in 3 or 4 clicks if done efficiently.
Based on the fact that Hemi multitasks while catching up with the news, I'd assume he would take a bit longer to navigate to the page, trying to juggle a few things at once, and not fully focused on the news source. The tabs are quite clearly labelled so Hemi would be able to locate the article quite easily. The 'comment' button on the article page isn't too obvious, although worst case scenario he'd scroll down the page and would quickly be greeted with the comments section. In order to improve the layout and approach to the web to specifically suit Hemi, I would look at making an audio feature which reads out the article, so that he can listen while working out, rather than reading the article. Any audio or video related approach would best suit Hemi Kamana.
Third was Mike Richards, a 48 year old news junkie, who constantly sits at work refreshing the home page waiting for the latest news to appear. For his user task, I assigned the task of "sharing the most recent news via Facebook". This can easily be done in 3 clicks, as the article can be immediately accessed via the automatically updated 'Latest News Headlines' segment on the homepage.
Out of each of my user tasks, this would most likely be the quickest and most efficient user journey. Mike would access the article directly from the homepage. Once the article page has loaded, there are a series of icons right next to the title, one which clearly represents Facebook, and once clicks, gives the option to share the article. However, there are only about 8 or so news headlines which appear in the 'latest news headlines' section, so if I were to make a change, I would add a tab up the top as well for 'Recent News' or 'Todays News' which would allow anyone to go onto a page and view every article from that one day. This would be handy since a new article on average appears each half hour, and would allow Mike Richards to access articles he missed before he arrived at work, and was wanting to catch up on.
My fourth user persona is a 27 year old female Sarah Blake, who is a freelance designer, and uses all of the primary social forms of social media, particularly Instagram and Twitter. She also believes that there isn't enough news coverage for everything going on in Wellington. Therefore, for her user task, I assigned her the task of "Sharing the an article about 'What's on in Wellington'".
For this user test, the user could easily click on a tab such as 'culture' in order to try and find what's going on, when they should click on "local papers". This would cause an extended delay in the journey. Once on the 'local papers' page however, it's all slightly more straight forward, as you'd then click on "The Wellingtonian" and then the article appears on the next page. Once on the article page, there is a clear Twitter icon near the heading as well, which would make it easy to share to one of her primary social media sources. In order to improve the user journey, I would add a drop down menu when hovering above the tabs, which would mean Sarah could easily see which tab "The Wellingtonian" falls under, rather than clicking on a certain tab and hoping for the best.
My fifth persona is Andrea Pazmandi, a 32 year old female who is extremely into sports, especially the All Blacks and New Zealand's other international sporting teams. I set her the task to "locate the article about New Zealand winning the 7's plate in Las Vegas". This task, much like the others, can be done in a couple of clicks.
However, where the user journey gets tricky, and would cause some confusion and hesitation with Andrea is where the Dominion Post's sporting tab doesn't have any options within to further filter down the search, such as choosing a specific sport etc. The user then needs to click on the 'Sport' tab right at the top, which is the general stuff.co.nz tab. This would cause some confusion and a bit of a delay in the process, as I can imagine she'd click the wrong sports tab and then find herself needing to backtrack. Therefore, to change this, I would add in some more filters into the 'sport' section of the Dominion, to easily narrow down and find specific articles relative to the user's interests. This could be done via more tabs, or simply adding a menu which drops down by hovering over the 'sport' tab on the home screen.
The final user persona is a 64 year old male, Barry Down, who has worked in politics for 42 years. The user task I assigned him was to "locate the article in 'commercial property' about the Council's $10m leaky building". If efficiently executed, this user journey can be completed in two clicks and a quick scroll down the list of articles.
He opts to print and read his articles rather than read them online. Therefore, if I were to make the site more relative to Barry, I could include a link to download a PDF of the article, or even print directly from the site. However, in terms of the site's current design, it's not too difficult to navigate and Barry should be able to easily find his way to the article. However, I would add an extra tab or drop down menu (upon hover) which shows 'Commercial Property' rather than only having it as a sub-heading further down the page. This would be in case Barry didn't end up scrolling down the page, it would help make sure that he didn't backtrack or miss the article.
This exercise on analysing the user journeys for each of the 6 user personae was quite interesting, and it has definitely got me thinking on various ways to accommodate each person's characteristics and traits into make the experience easier for them as an individual. However, website need to cater for wider audiences to attract more interest, although there is always the chance to add features which would also make it cater for the personae we are using for this task. I really enjoyed the wireframing task, and breaking each website and user journey down to it's roots, in order to see the bare basics of each site. Again, the physical wireframes of each user journey can be found in my physical workbook, while the analysis' have been written in this post on my online blog.
Wednesday, 2 March 2016
Independent Study - Article Analysis
For homework this week, we've been asked to analyse three articles from the Dominion Post, and also 3 online articles from stuff.co.nz.
It's very interesting seeing the difference between online and published news sources. Online sources have the ability to take the user to another article within the click of a button, and allows the user to search via their search bar as well. It's also super quick to navigate between stories, in comparison to flicking back and forth through pages. The online resources have an advantage because of this stage of the user journey, which allows a fast transition between stories and articles. Published news articles have a benefit in a sense that the user may become more engaged due to the materiality of the newspaper itself, and physically being in contact with the resource.
For my first article from Dominion Post, I chose an article names "Meet Grey's new Kiwi McHunky" (attached below). It wasn't so much the content of the article that drew me to it, it was more the scale of the images and story that caught my attention. The story took up the whole page, with the main image taking up about a quarter of the page, and being placed right in the middle of the page. The article was located in the TV Guide section, one of the few articles in that section of the paper. It was fitting to be in the TV Guide section as it was talking about a TV show, Grey's Anatomy.
Below I have attached my initial article, which is 'stuff"s web version of the article I analysed in Dominion Post. One of the things I like is how they have the top of the secondary photo appear slightly in the screen, as a subtle indicator to keep scrolling. The social media icons are a great tool which then allow users to share the article as well.
I'm looking forward to seeing how I can redesign either of these, depending on which one I choose. When recreating them, I'm going to focus strongly on creating an easy and clear user experience, so they aren't confused or lost at any point. The key aspect will be for simple navigation of the site and between articles. The online stuff articles aren't too aesthetically appealing, and although the navigation is quite basic I believe it could definitely be improved a great deal, by changing the location of things, as well as the general aesthetic of each page.
It's very interesting seeing the difference between online and published news sources. Online sources have the ability to take the user to another article within the click of a button, and allows the user to search via their search bar as well. It's also super quick to navigate between stories, in comparison to flicking back and forth through pages. The online resources have an advantage because of this stage of the user journey, which allows a fast transition between stories and articles. Published news articles have a benefit in a sense that the user may become more engaged due to the materiality of the newspaper itself, and physically being in contact with the resource.
For my first article from Dominion Post, I chose an article names "Meet Grey's new Kiwi McHunky" (attached below). It wasn't so much the content of the article that drew me to it, it was more the scale of the images and story that caught my attention. The story took up the whole page, with the main image taking up about a quarter of the page, and being placed right in the middle of the page. The article was located in the TV Guide section, one of the few articles in that section of the paper. It was fitting to be in the TV Guide section as it was talking about a TV show, Grey's Anatomy.
The second article I chose a sport article (attached below) which had a secondary article along with it. The secondary article seemed similar to a "Next Story" link on an online news site, which encourages the reader to read another similar story. The reason I chose this article was definitely because of the content, as football appeals to me a great deal. The layout of the page wasn't too appealing, as the heading was squeezed into a small box on the left hand side, as shown in the wireframe (in my physical workbook). The way that the columns are arranged is also quite random. This article was located within the sport section of the newspaper.
Below is my third choice of article from the Dominion Post. Although another sports article, the reason I chose it is because it consisted of slightly different editorial components such as the previous results column, with multiple lists within the columns. The layout of this article is what drew me to it, as the article itself takes up the whole page vertically, and about 4/5 of the page horizontally, so it's predominantly the scale that caught my attention.
In terms of online news sources, it's interesting to note the ability to transition quickly between links, and the speed of navigation via the online news sources. Options such as "more stories", "related articles" and "previously read" also allow the user to find more suitable stories for them, as well as backtrack and retrace their steps if they're trying to find an article they previously read and found interesting.
Below I have attached my initial article, which is 'stuff"s web version of the article I analysed in Dominion Post. One of the things I like is how they have the top of the secondary photo appear slightly in the screen, as a subtle indicator to keep scrolling. The social media icons are a great tool which then allow users to share the article as well.
Below is my second article, which is based on Manchester City winning the Capital One Cup. The good thing about having this article online, is the fact that you can include video footage and highlights, which will of course increase interest by giving the user a chance to view footage of the game rather than just see a still photo from the game. Further down are some photos as well as the article as well. Down the bottom is a comments section which allows readers to post comments for other users to see, and is also a tool of communication between 'stuff' users. I quite like how the banner up the top of the page changes colour based on the category in which the article falls under.
My third article choice has been posted below. Unlike the Dominion Post's published article, this one doesn't actually include previous results. However, through the search bar and 'related articles' sections I'm sure it'd be easy enough for the user to navigate through and find the results if they wanted to do so. However, there could be somewhere which directly links to the past results as in improvement, to minimize the amount of work the user has to do, and make their journey on the site a lot easier.
I'm looking forward to seeing how I can redesign either of these, depending on which one I choose. When recreating them, I'm going to focus strongly on creating an easy and clear user experience, so they aren't confused or lost at any point. The key aspect will be for simple navigation of the site and between articles. The online stuff articles aren't too aesthetically appealing, and although the navigation is quite basic I believe it could definitely be improved a great deal, by changing the location of things, as well as the general aesthetic of each page.
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