Week 15 A

Monday

Week 14 - Outside of Class

Outside of Class

Heuristic Markup Method

For the Heuristic Markup I decided to focus the three levels of the website around a problematic area. I took on a user and pretended to be "Kyle Mattheus" the volunteer undergraduate student. Through Kyle's journey his goal was to register and sign up as a volunteer for the Arc of Lancaster County. Through the multiple levels I circled areas of interest and disappointment. I represented each circled area with an emotion to illustrate how he was feeling at each highlighted area. By adopting his needs I was able to show how frustrating his experience was. Kyle was unsuccessful in the end because he did not receive any information about volunteering through the journey or thought process he would take. 

Wireframes

Here is the beginning sketches of the Wireframes.

Week 14B

No Class - Thanksgiving Break

Week 14A

Monday

In class we reviewed over our projects and received feedback during our mini critiques. We spent the time going over each student's project. During the critiques I really enjoyed how Kelly used the Insight Research to gather the problematic areas and ask open ended questions through a five step process. Every question you responded by asking "So What?" to gather problematic end results. I think I may switch my research method to the Insight Research instead of the As-Is Experience. I feel the As-Is Experience is fairly similar to the Heuristic Markup and by switching the methods I will gain better knowledge of the problem areas.

Some of the students suggested that I...

• Should not over stylize the webpage by using too many colors in my visual style tile but keep it clean and make small accents with the colors. 
• That I should not rely on the Lightbox feature but show my images on the webpage at a larger size. 
• The green color on the persona is hard to read. Add some black tone into the green for the quote.

Monday- Outside of Class

OFF CAMPUS EVENT

Timothy Goodman – AIGA Central PA. – Pennsylvania College of Art & Design – “How to get away with shit”

The AIGA event was featuring Timothy Goodman and how he got from point A to point B in his career. Timothy focuses his designs around 3 areas. 1. Stupid shit. He is inspired by silly, immature, interesting information and anything that makes him laugh. 2. Stand up comedy. Observations are highly important as a design. 3. Design. Taking cliche material and making it into something new. Taking the ordinary and making it memorable. In the beginning Tim graduated from the School of Visual Arts in NYC where he now teaches and after a few years of freelancing received a once in a lifetime opportunity at Apple to work for a few years. He noticed that Apple became very mechanical and that wasn’t the right fit for him.

By finding inspiration everywhere and being a designer there were a few rules to know when trying to “get away with shit”. 1. Know the rules. 2. Have adversity by taking risks. 3. Don’t ask for permission for anything. 4. Listen to yourself. 5. Get into your work. 6. Being curious about everything. To make his story different from everyone else he needed to be bad. He started off copying tardy slips in work and forging signatures. This one only one example during his earlier years.

Some main points that struck out to me was how he came from a fatherless home and by writing a thesis statement to the School of Visual Arts to apply for a scholarship was the beginning of his career. He was inspired by writing which lead to his acceptance because he was different. He created poetry slam projects. Made editorial illustrations for almost every major publication. Wrote on walls and focused a whole phrase of his career around sharpies. His whole thought process is around the idea that if you don’t like the way your designs look then you need to change your tool. By changing the tool then you can change how you start every project. By rethinking the way you normally design, you can change the result through accidents which can lead to great projects.

His one experimental project was called “40 Dates of Dating “. The fundamental questions was about understanding themselves as people and as well as designers. They structured guidelines for themselves to follow such as seeing each other every other day, going on certain amount of dates per week, etc. It was interesting because this one idea lead to one thing after another. Their project became famous and every producer, tv show, newspaper, magazine wanted to get in on their story. Because Timothy broke the barrier of letting his personal life into design which is very taboo lead to a hallway of open opportunities.

This lecturer was very inspirational and got me inspired to keep sketching everyday. By drawing on everything you can get your hands on, allows you to work with new mediums. I enjoyed a few of his quotes. “Find what you love and let it kill you” and “approach design as a practice and not a profession”. His work opened the doors into the experimental world because he was using cliche material and recreating it into something you wouldn’t expect.

What are some things you liked/didn’t like about the lecture/event?

I really enjoyed this event because it got me inspired to do more design experimental work. Sometimes I believe I hit a designers block and I get stuck in my designs. Timothy explained that once you hit a wall then you should find another avenue to explore and take a U turn to get over your troubles. I thought it was inspirational that Timothy believes in mistakes and they are a good thing because it allows a design to improve themselves.

Week 13 - Outside of Class

Outside of Class

Week 13B

In Class

Mini Critique

We broke off and talked to individuals who haven't seen our process yet before. I talked to Ty and Noah about the work I've completed so far.

Ty's Comments

• Glad I changed the color scheme from the similar color palette used in a previous project.
• Style is organized and colors are working well together
• Looking forward to seeing the visuals for the As-Is experience method. 
• Graphics are done nicely

Noah's Comments

• Gave me an interesting way to bring the final Heuristic markup evaluation together by showing the process of each scenario by the level of success or disappoint while navigation through the webpage. 
• Card Sorting illustration infographic was done very well and can easily identify each element. 
• Personas are well organized. 

In class I placed the final touches of the personas. This version of the personas truly grabs the job description, background, needs and behaviors each user faces on a weekly basis. From the personas I can use my findings and establish the main purpose of the website. Through theses methods another web designer can take the findings and organize the website according the personas needs. 

Week 13A

MONDAY

In Class

I spent my time refining my proto-personas to truly reflect the goals and needs of each possible user that may arise through the Arc of Lancaster County. I focused my time by created a cycle or better known as a pinwheel that easily identifies that weekly tasks and behaviors that each of the users may take part in during the week. By creating the cycle you can see how the user divides their time based on certain tasks. The overall user needs will explain the purpose and expectations each user would like to have and how Arc of Lancaster County could help improve their expectations.