Studio Reflection

This week's studio provided a useful insight into report deconstruction as well as highlighting methods for conducting user evaluation given the current regulations on social distancing.

I have a fair bit I want to get done over the midsemester break. I do have some little cousins which are in our target user age range so some preliminary probes and maybe an interview could prove beneficial for mapping out some extra detail for my individual design direction.

I also want to plan out the necessary materials and components I will need to obtain in order to start prototyping my concept.

Additionally, an interaction flow diagram will be useful to help me visualise the functionality and interactions that my concept aims to facilitate.

So a fair bit to get done over the midsem but I think it would prove relaly beneficial in the long run if I can get a start on it now.

Miro Boards - Train Commuters

As I previously mentioned, the teaching team provided us with some resources relating to methods for user evaluation in a pandemic situation. We were expected to observe commuters on a train and note their behavioural patterns. I found this could achieved relatively effectively through Youtube. If I had more time I would have liked to somehow get myself a virtual 'seat' on the train. As I later discovered, there were alternative techniques for user evaluation without face-to-face interactions.

Journelling, Big Brother Observations and Online Role Play I think could be really beneficial for evaluating my individual design direction at this stage. Observing the user's perceived interaction pathways and mental model of the design (even virtually) will hopefully be able to shed valuable insight on the respective strengths and weaknesses of the concept.

I might have to have a bit of a reliance on the target user group's parents to observe and detail the child's behavioural responses.

Miro Boards - Team

After the commuter activity, the team moved to our team Miro board and began mapping out our collective team context. The team were all focusing on the same domain, so, intuitively, we would all have relatively similar contexts of use. We came to the conclusion that we should all be targeting similar people, time and location with our individual design directions. We extrapolated on these points as a team and then broke off to create our own mind maps for our individual concepts.

Team Update - Post Report

The team got our report in on time, but I would have appreciated getting it done a bit earlier so that I would have had more time to edit - perhaps a bigger emphasis on the importance of predetermined deadlines is necessary.

Nevertheless, I think the team have produced a high quality report which systematically details our design process to date. Each of my team members have a promising individual design direction as well which is amazing to see!!

Inspirations

I have been trying to expand my portfolio recently and, as such, have been looking through examples of some of the great artists. I got lost when it came to Picasso. He has such a bredth of talent - which, to me, is incredible. I was looking through some of his work and it got me back to thinking about the importance of colour in representing emotion (as it udnerpins my individual design direction, I should hope so). But the mood that Picasso is able to elicit purely from his evocative colour choices was really some food for thought going forward.