This week is pretty much the final week of 3850, with the exhibit on Wednesday night and the final portfolio and team report due on Friday. Over the weekend, I completed the final elements of my portfolio which is now ready to go live on the IXD website. To achieve the curved text feature that I included in the mockup, I using svg to create a shape that the text curved along: CSS-Tricks. (2020). Curved Text Along a Path. Retrieved from https://css-tricks.com/snippets/svg/curved-text-along-path/

I am really happy with how my portfolio has turned out. I not only managed to achieve the intended design but I also feel that the text/media conveys my concept well.

I also finished my prototype, making final changes to issues that were revealed in the testing session I conducted. At this point, I feel pretty confident in my deliverables as my prototype is working as intended and my portfolio paints a clear picture of my concept and processes. Today (Tuesday) Michelle and I tested our setup for the exhibit on the Discord server. We experimented using a combination of screen sharing and then switching to the mobile Discord app to provide clearer footage of the actual prototype.

I also completed my videos to show my concept & prototype form for my portfolio:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=humyeoOht9A

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=__0Ixj0spwI

Exhibit:

For the exhibit, my team decided to each take turns in presenting our concepts when visitors arrived. Through out the exhibit, we experienced quite a lot of traffic through our channel, with many visitors including friends, family and UQ staff. Throughout the exhibit I began by giving visitors an explanation of the task and our collective theme before explaining my individual concept. As mentioned before, I presented my concept through a combination of sharing my screen to show the digital display, and using my phone or adjusting my laptop camera view to show my mat. I also shared my portfolio on the screen to show the "intended concept" which a few visitors said made it a lot easier to understand the concept. We received some great comments and feedback, with a couple of visitors saying that our concepts fit well within the studio domain and were very creative.

Reflection:

I was really impressed with how the studio ran, especially considering it was the first exhibit to be run virtually. The positive feedback we received as a team really solidified my confidence in my final course outcomes and it was good to see others interested in the work I had completed. Having a team channel also allowed a clear view of all of our individual concepts and how they fit together under the broader domains. As a team, we reflected on how the outcomes would have been different under normal circumstances. Seeing the work we all produced individually, we would have been able to make an amazing concept if we worked on the one prototype. Nevertheless, the course has still been extremely enjoyable and I have been able to learn so much from technical skills to specific information on my focus domain.

Over the next week, we still have the final portfolio submission, team report and then the critical reflection essay to submit. I aim to make some changes to my portfolio for the final submission, such as including some reflection on the success of the exhibit and adding some extra detail into my process section. This work is mainly just report writing and doesn't require any design process application, therefore I likely won't have much to document next week. I expect that writing the reports will really allow me to reflect upon all of the work I have completed this semester and just how much I have actually learnt! Overall it has been an amazing semester despite the many challenges that we had to navigate!