Week 6

CLASS

We had a class on how to collect useful data to inform design. Our lecturer gave us a little class exercise where we had a brief to make a new social media all for socially active teenagers. We were given 4 questions to reflect on and we were split in groups of 5.

These were the things we came up with for the brief

What questions from the brief do we need to understand?

• How to communicate in an informal and direct way?

• How to make an app customizable?

• What patterns can be observed between all social media apps?

• How are other social media brands promoted?

• What are ways socially-active teenagers communicate on social media?

• Why are other social media apps successful?

• When do socially-active teenagers use social medias?

• What could be improved from observing other social media apps?

• What are the current interests of socially-active teenagers?

What research techniques is the best for the question?

• Observation

• Review statistics

• Online surveys

• Focus group

• Interview

• Experiment

• Secondary data analysis

Why the research technique?

• Observation

Understanding user interaction/behaviour

UX design

• Online surveys

Better understanding on socially active teens

Likes, dislikes, behaviours, needs, attitude, lifestyle, etc.

• Focus group/crowdsourcing

Analyze a broader range of user interactions with different social medias

• Interview

To gather further info on why they like the competitors’ social media apps

• Experiment

To beta-test

Finding out pros and cons

• Secondary data analysis

Observing trends

Observing demographic factors

Review statistics

Collect numerical data

How will it be used to inform our project?

• Understanding patterns in social media apps

• Understanding socially-active teen’s behaviour on social media

Accessibility to different demographics (gender ,race, education level, etc.)

• Recreating similar functions for smoother user interaction

• Designing the app based on trends

AR filters, social media stories, live streaming, etc.

This class exercise helped me expand the way I think when I have to design things but I think doing it on my own I will prefer doing a mind map to organize the information better.

I AM AMPLIFIER

In my latest tutorial with my lecturer, she told me that the first idea I did for the "Be Circular", the one that's degrading, it may give the impression to some people that circular economy is bad. Therefor she told me to go for the second idea. However she said that it was not obvious that it was an earth as it looked more like a pile of leaves. She suggested that I try some stuffs like putting an outline or make a circle and make the globe look 3D with some lines, but when I was reflecting on what I could do with photoshop or illustrator I figured out that I will lose a lot of time and I may not be able to fix it. So I decided to go back from the start and rearrange the world with the leaves that I still have but do it better this time and with a proper method.

So the first thing I did was to redraw the earth and making a template, therefore I will not have to deal with pencil lines that may stayed after I removed the the whites from photoshop.

After that I arranged the leaves like I did last time but with more patience and also a bit more strategic this time. I found out that with big leaves it was looking more like a pile of leave rather than the shape of the world so I used more smaller leaves and I also tried to cover all the white spaces. My classmate Dhanesha came to help me with this one so it was a bit more fun and less hard to do haha.

These are the pictures I took as you can see in the first one, the South America was not very filled up so I had to filled it up again and take another picture. unfortunately at that time the sun had already gone down a bit so I decided to merge the filled up America and still use the first picture as it was a better shot.

Here's after I've photoshoped it. While doing my layouts in illustrator I figured out that it was still a a bit dark the second picture. So I tried making it clearer with different lighting in photoshop. The difference is really little but I found that the 3rd was better.

Here's the different trials I did on Ai. I figured out that the blue was making it look more like earth and also making the continents pop out more. And I put a really light green background to make the whole thing look more complete and also to emphasize the idea of green economy/ circular economy.

And lastly these are my trials with the template. It was a bit annoying that the arrow was behind the text that we were not supposed to edit so I decided to make it smaller and move it aside a little bit.

GD MAP

From my last tutorial my lecturer told me that the idea is good, but I can try make it more customizable and related to the 4 fields of design instead of just using random things

So I did some more reflections on how I could personalize my map and I've got this. However I am still not so sure about the discursive if I'm really going to use a post office or something to represent it or if I can come up with something better.

And this is what I've illustrated so far

23 THINGS

For the 23 things I was thinking about tools because I wanted to do something that was ancient and common so that I could get a lot of different histories about it. But then I was able to narrow it down to 1 that I use a lot everyday, knives.

Knives can be used

• as a tool to cut, do art, do surgeries

• as a weapon to hunt, protect, kill

and

• some people use it to play games do tricks

• some people collect all sort of knives for pleasure

The first knives were made of flint to Hunt, cook and for carpentry it was made using a rock and an antler.

There is a Persian wedding tradition to dance with a knife. The cake knife basically and then the groom and the bride will give the people money and they will pass the knife to somebody else in the audience and repeat.

Superstition

Sticking a knife in the door will protect all the people in the house

Eating from a knife will make you angry (Russia)

Licking food from a knife will make you a bad person (Russia)

Never give a knife to a friend without a coin or it will cut the relationship

Keeping a knife under the bed will keep evil spirit away (China)

Never let knives cross on the table or there will be a fight (Ireland)

Knife cross with a fork is an insult to the cross in italy

Playing with knives will keep angels away (Romania)

Sticking a knife in a pregnant woman matress will guarantee that she will get a boy

Stiring food with a knife will stir in troubles

Dropped knife is badluck

Never close a knife that has been open by someone else

Bibliography

Krudo Knives. n.d. 6 Knife Traditions You’Ve Never Heard Of | Knife Superstitions & Beliefs. [online] Available at: https://www.krudoknives.com/krudo-khronicles/knife-traditions-knife-superstitions/ [Accessed 5 October 2020].

Knifecrimes.org. n.d. [online] Available at: http://www.knifecrimes.org/History-of-the-Knife.html#:~:text=The%20earliest%20Knives%20were%20made,for%20hunting%2C%20cooking%20and%20Carpentry. [Accessed 5 October 2020].

gregpryorhomestead, 2018. Making A Spearhead Using Only Rock And Antler. [video] Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gvauon4Y3t0 [Accessed 5 October 2020].

Lansky.com. 2015. Lansky Sharpeners :: 16 More Knife Superstitions (Knife Superstitions & Folklore Part 2). [online] Available at: https://lansky.com/blog/16-more-knife-superstitions-knife-superstitions-folklore-part-2/ [Accessed 5 October 2020].

Lansky.com. 2014. Lansky Sharpeners :: Knife Superstitions & Folklore. [online] Available at: https://lansky.com/blog/knife-superstitions-folklore/ [Accessed 5 October 2020].

All About Events. 2017. The Persian Wedding Experience (From A Non-Persian Perspective) | All About Events. [online] Available at: https://www.allaboutevents.net/persianwedding/ [Accessed 5 October 2020].