Last post of the semester class – sent over by Beth (your critic) who thought of the Rant Away group when she saw this:

http://urbanetiquetteproject.blogspot.ca/

http://torontoetiquetteproject.blogspot.com/

Design superheroes to protect your neighborhood with this Guardians of the City Instructable!  This project is for a community leader and a group of individuals who want to make a meaningful and visual impact, and express problems and solutions for their neighborhood.

Step 1: Think of a place you love or somewhere that needs the protection of a superhero.

Step 2: What kinds of superpowers are needed to protect this place?

Step 3: Draw your superhero and fill out your answers below!

Step 4: Put your Guardian Superhero in the location it protects!   You can use tape, string or any materials you need to put it in place.

Note: Community Leader will facilitate the installation process and permissions.

Step 5: Take a photo and submit it on www.GuardiansoftheCity.com to join the Alliance and enter your superhero into the Hall of Guardians!

Materials: Paper and any art supplies you want!

Examples:  Garbage Dude turns on fire when he sees garbage, you can find him on local MTA trash cans.

ADHD Girl uses her ADHD powers to fight multiple villains in Times Square.

INK has the power to create and you can find her in art school!

References/Resources: 

http://www.guardiansofthecity.com/create-your-guardian

http://www.guardiansofthecity.com/hall-of-guardians

http://www.instructables.com/id/Createing-the-Glue-to-Put-Up-Illegal-Posters-Whea/?ALLSTEPS

The thing I did in this class that I will apply in future projects is critical and detailed thinking. It doesn’t matter if your initial idea is clever or ‘cool’ if the execution is poor and cannot communicate with the audience it is useless. But there are so many details that go into the thought process of a project, so many question to answer where can you start? How does one brainstorm?

What you need:

Pen or any other writing tool, paper or another writable surface (brainstorming should be on a tangible surface, yes laptops are faster for taking notes but there is something more fun and thought stimulating about taking notes by hand)

An open mind and a friend, I have noticed that sitting in front of your desk waiting for inspiration is not as easy. You need something or someone to encourage thinking. If you are alone then try some music, classical always inspires.

Steps:

Just go for it! Start talking, writing, drawing and playing with paper. Put out any idea that comes to mind, even the weak or stupid ones; because even those can always lead to something.

Rise of the Expert Amateur: DIY Projects, Communities, and Cultures

-Stacey Kuznetsov & Eric Paulos

 This article is a large-scale study of Do-It Yourself communities, which focuses on the role of technology and how it motivates and sustains them. Kuznetsov and Paulos’ define DIY as “any creation, modification or repair of objects without the aid of paid professionals.” They also define a community as a communicating group with common shared goals and interests. While modern societies oppose the principles of the DIY culture, it seems to be thriving around the world. The introduction of online sharing tools has renewed interest in DIY practices. Technology allows for easy access and the emergency of new sharing methods. Their research revealed that DIY communities have a unique sense of sharing, learning, and creativity.

The article gives a brief overview of DIY culture and then presents a study of six modern DIY communities: Dorkbot, Adafruit, Ravelry, Craftster, Etsy. All of these communities allow members to share their ideas through a variety of mediums including forums, instructions, images, video, and face-to-face meetings. Previously, this culture relied on mainly handbooks and face-to-face meetings. These communities invite individuals across all backgrounds and skill levels to contribute, lack of equipment or skill is not a significant barrier. With this new form of communication, users are able to rate, critique, question and comment on a project. Most participants belong to several communities and work on more than one type of project.

Do-It Yourself projects are driven by creativity and their communities serve as instruments of learning. Participants do not contribute to gain employment, money, or fame but for expression and inspiration. An overwhelming majority (97%) of participants work on DIY projects in order to express themselves and be creative. Other motivating factors include gaining inspiration, learning new techniques, meeting people with similar interests, and receiving feedback on personal projects.

The researchers surveyed individuals who participate in these communities. On the topic of the motivation to ask and answer questions online, one participant explained that, “It’s like that saying that you learn more by teaching and sharing with others. Every time I pass on a little bit of information to someone else it helps to ingrain that knowledge in my head, even spur on a desire to learn more.”

This was an interesting article to read in relation to our class Streetmeat because this semester’s goal was to create a platform for a specific community, which could open up a channel for communication. This article focuses on what gets people motivated to join such communities. Motivation was something we struggled with throughout the semester: how do we motivate communities to get involved? What is the payoff for them? For DIY communities it was creativity.

For our last class assignment, we had to create an instructable about something we learned this semester. Instructables, launched by Eric Wilhelm, is one of the six communities discussed in the article. Instructables is a “web-based documentation platform where passionate people share what they do and how they do it.” This site allows users to share their projects in a step-by-step instruction format. I found this exercise to be very interesting and I look forward to seeing what Instructables my classmates have posted to the blog.

When pitching a design concept, the most efficient means of medium to use is by creating a prototype. However there are more difficult prototypes to make than others for various different interfaces (operating systems) and leading to a multitude of designs. The most important factor when creating a prototype is to consider what the best route for your specific project. Also the specific stage of the design reflects how detailed the prototype should appear. The reading does “define a prototype as any representation of a design idea, regardless of medium.” For creating any sort in depth complex project, prototyping is the most influential step in the creation process.

Within figure 1 in the reading, they have designed the three most important factors when prototyping a prototype and its final product. First they define what how the ‘Role’ is to be developed, for example how the product will go about presenting itself to the specified user, and its final and overall purpose. Then they define that the ‘Look and feel’ aspects refers to the overall aesthetics and implementation it will pose once created. Finally they have the ‘Implementation’ meaning how the final product will actually be produced. In past projects, creating the first prototype is to squeeze out all your ideas and to be created with simply pencil, paper and sometimes adobe illustrator, and to not feel attached to any solid concepts early on. The second step is to pitch your idea as simply as possible to someone that is completely new to your idea. It is the ultimate method to receive the quickest critique about whether your ideas are headed in the right direction. Whether it be the overall concept or structure of your idea, the color theory of your project, the user interface and what they have learned/absorbed from your project. Earlier in the semester, Eric Zimmerman had said that this practice must be done within two weeks with multiple people so that the designer can quickly add adjustments to the overall process and project that one has created.

The project, Urban Challenge, was another opportunity to go about creating prototypes. Subodh and I had spent the first three weeks paper prototyping our concept until we molded a concrete concept into further investigating. We had initially been paper prototyping an old concept and quickly realized we were not happy with the structure. The simplest way we figured this out was through paper prototyping on a note card to resemble an iPhone. The paper prototype worked most efficiently because the user is simply pressing buttons on the ‘screen’ navigating to others. The application of ‘Urban Challenge’ is simply a structure for games that are played in the physical real world, therefore the game did not heavily rely on other senses, ie visuals and sounds. After creating the paper model of the app, all we needed to do was digitally mock them, and flush out more in between frames of the game. I had then learned how to digitally prototype the app through Keynotes and creating button links over the fake buttons linking the user to different frames of the app.  The document was then able to transfer over to my smartphone where the user can navigate through the app and felt 90% like a real one. Digitally prototyping the application allowed the user to jump around slides within a second, where as the paper prototype took a few seconds to find which screen they needed to be on and therefore, possibly losing ones short attention span.

Urban Challenge Paper Prototyping :

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d2nSBQ0IK0g

Urban Challenge Digital Prototyping :

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DFmC4a5d3A8&feature=youtu.be

The user experience extends to all aspects of a product as perceived by users such as interface, graphics, and physical interaction.

This semester I learned about creating a user experience map. The map is a means of visually presenting a sequence of interactions between a user and a system. It is created to support the users and the systems goals. It is important to keep the users experience in mind when creating the system so that the two combine positively.

User experience maps are generally drawn in the early stages of a project. If you have a new project, you need to make a user experience map quickly to examine the strengths and flaws in your plan. It is better to catch flaws in the early stages of your work so you can avoid wasting time and easily change directions.

As a designer your goal is to make the user’s experience simple and efficient. Organization is important to make your project easily navigational for the user.

It is important to always keep in mind your main goals as well as for the user and system to have a clear and open path of communication. Also, think about how the user is rewarded for getting involved with your project. What do they gain?

The diagram itself should be clear, neat and easy to follow leaving no room for ambiguity. It is typical for the steps of the diagram to be represented as boxes of various kinds connected with lines or arrows. If your experience is complicated and you distinguish different types of shapes and lines it is important to provide a key. All written information within the shapes should be brief.

Follow these Steps.

Step One. All you’ll need is a pen and paper. It’s a quick and budget friendly way to start brainstorming.

Step Two. Think about one type of user for your project. It is better to pick one specific target audience.

Step Three. Detail out the path this one user will follow. Ask yourself… How does the user find out about your project? What is their first step when getting involved? You want your project to be easily accessible for your target audience. What does their involvement lead to?

Final Step. Challenge your diagram. Work from step to step asking yourself if you have correctly represented the sequence of actions and decisions involved in the process.

Example map:

userexperience

It’s been an amazing semester! From what I have experienced in this class, it will stay in my head and support me for all the other projects coming ahead. I have never experienced such detailed thinking and how to dig deep into interfaces such as understanding human interaction and thinking in a way that makes sense for others out there. I keep asking myself questions like, Will this work? Does this make sense? How will others be able to use this? Is this telling a story? Does it have meaning behind it? What are the levels of interaction? I think there were a lot of questions for me and that is a good thing. As interaction designers I think its crucial to always remind ourselves of these questions. To be able to step back and gather thoughts and to lay it out also helped. I loved it when we mapped out our ideas. I can trace back to ideas that I have completely forgotten, even if it’s a minor suggestion. I know I can apply the experience of this class in my other projects and I have..its been very helpful with critical thinking and being able to prototype out a solid idea.

Summary is wrapped up within a PDF document due to length of content.

http://ben.termee.com/FINAL_PROJECT_SUMMARY2.pdf 

- Ben Shotwell & Subodh Divekar