Week 6 Outside of Class

Homework due for Monday 10/6:

Readings:

• What's in your pencil case? What I've learned about UX sketching - Medium.com:
• You should be comfortable collaborating with multi-functional teams to build complex, meaningful products. Being able to generate lots of ideas at the early stages of a product's creation. Getting quick feedback allows us to iterate and dump wrong ideas before diving too deep.
• If you show someone a hand-drawn flow of UI-sketches you'll usually receive broader feedback. Higher fidelity mock-ups cause us to stick to ideas too quickly and trigger perfectionism. When using pen and paper we can sidestep those mistakes.
• Time Boxing is a tool to help overcome a barrier to rapid ideation. Artists tend to spend too much time creating perfect lines instead of quick mock-ups.
• Chapter 2 - Interface Design:
• WIMP - Windows, Icons, Menus, Pointer.
• WIMP GUI's rely on input devices such as a mouse, to make selections from menus. You can find WIMP GUI's on personal computers, DVD's, TV's, Blu-Ray, Video Game Consoles. GUI's can also be found on smartphones and tablets. The new input method is the use of touch and gesture.
• 
  

--

Sketches for App Design: 

Week 6B

------

Week 6A

Began class by breaking up into small groups and talking about our previous reading for homework.
For me, the reading kept bringing me back to the idea of creating websites for clients and their expected users. I currently have another class where we are working with clients and creating a website for them. So each one of the key points in the reading helped drive those points home and reinforce all of the work that I am currently doing for my other class as well.
--

We also took a very brief walk outside to explore the application for the different trees and their locations around campus. We thought about different ways that a mobile app works well with versus being on a stationary computer. Obviously the portability is number one, also being able to use a camera function and instantly upload any information that is needed.
--

Did some in class work time on our mini group project. Our group decided to each do a short video tutorial using Quicktime on a specific function that can be used in Justinmind.
For my video I am going to be talking about how to simulate a slide show.
We will each create a video highlighting different functions and the class will be able to view each video on their own and explore that function.

Week 5 Outside of Class

Homework for next class:

Readings:

• Interface Design: Chapter 1 Pages 8 - 35: Visual Communication:
• Method (Design) Objective (Communication) Medium (Visual).
• Graphic Design is not about designing a graphic, it is about designing effective visual communication through manipulation of text and image.
• Each specialist in a UI Design team has a different contribution to make.
• Information Architects create the interactive structure.
• (UX) User Experience creates the experience.
• Developers create the UI code.
• Graphic Designers communicate the visual hierarchy, functionality, and interaction.
• T-Shaped Designers: a metaphor to describe designers who have a deep knowledge of their own discipline. Confident in explaining what they do. Breadth of knowledge, depth of expertise.
• Graphic design contribution: personas, information architecture, wire-framing, paper prototypes.
• A user has certain goals when engaging with a UI, no matter age or gender. The designers must keep in mind functionality and user friendly to navigate or use.
• The term "User" is generic and abstract. Marketing focuses more on characteristics like age, gender, religion, where we live, shop, exercise, work, income level. There are many demographics to think about for different subjects.
• Designing Personas: created to represent the target audience in a form to inspire the design team. Humanizing an aspect of a user experience.

Week 5B

Began class by talking about ways that we learn techniques or new ways to do things in specific programs.
Some of the major ways we learn new things are:

• Lectures
• Web Search
• Videos
• Step-by-Step with pictures
• Asking the Professor

These were the most common and popular ways that our class brought up on how we learn new things.

--

New mini group assignment due on Wednesday, 10/1 based on this concept.

Our group is to learn a application and then teach it to the class, as well as creating a PDF document or video explaining how to use a certain function/tool, etc.

My group chose to do the application, Justinmind.

Justinmind is a application prototype manager that helps you design live prototypes for applications and websites. You are able to upload your own images such as backgrounds and then drag and drop functions such as a slider or a button to create a working page.

Week 5A

Missed class due to being ill.
--

Class presented their final Icon designs and turned them in.
Homework was to redo anything in their design that they wanted to by Wednesday.

Week 4 Outside of Class

Continued working on Icon project for the "application" for the website, Mixmax.

I reworked the colors again to better match the purple theme that Mixmax has.

The final design:

--

Design Project Brief: