Documenting my process and the work behind my work at the School of Visual Arts IxD program.
“The journey of not knowing to knowing was his work.”
- Richard Saul Wurman on Charles Eames
The remainder of my graduate school process can be found on my thesis process blog. Thanks for following along over the past year or so, now back to making and breaking!
Nieman Journalism Lab talks with Clay Johnson, author of The Information Diet
People aren’t going to Google wondering Are Republicans stupid? Are Democrats socialists? and searching for answers. They’re going, Johnson argues, to find affirmation. And media companies who cater to search traffic, who worship the pageview, will produce more media to satisfy that demand. Cheap, high-calorie, easy-to-manufacture media.
This happens all the time in grad school: you study and work like mad to develop innovative ideas only to discover your amazing, new project is a recently launched product. It happens so often in fact that it has become a bit of a running joke among my classmates at SVA. A few weeks ago, my…
I just got back from this year’s Interaction Design Conference in Dublin, Ireland. It was my first trip to Europe and everything exceeded my expectations: great food, beer, people, signage, architecture, and the conference was amazing as well. Read more about my trip as well as first-year Tash Wong’s experience on our department’s blog. Along with Christine Aaron and Frank Bonomo, we also documented our travels in a tumblr blog.
Jeffery Zeldman teaches our Selling Design class which is kinda awesome. Apart from venturing down the occasional Internet black hole, we’re learning how to present our ideas and ourselves to client and peers; use different methods for promoting and marketing our work; and the how to’s of bring a design professional.
In a recent class, we discussed responsive web design and the importance of content; one tactic for getting the right design for the appropriate content is designing for mobile first. Mobile has many constraints: screen size, bandwidth, and user urgency. But when a designer puts mobile first, content strategy and utlility quickly rise to the top of the priority list. This sets the tone for design, usability, and content, and can help mitigate issues when designing for larger screens (tablets and laptops). It was a great insight, and made me reconsider my approach for the web.
A few additional words from class on designing for the web:
1. Content is a design problem. Good web design starts with content. Yet our designs are often hostile to content.
2. If our designs don’t serve content, users will find ways to get the content anyway.
3. Progressive enhancement rethinks to put great user experience (and content) first.
4. Responsive and mobile are creating a new interaction design landscape that puts users and content first.
One of my sketches for thesis was Seed Cloud - a product that makes the act of uploading data to a cloud-based service perceptible to others. The Seed Cloud generates steam relative to the upload size: the larger the upload, the more steam produced. The user connects the Seed Cloud to his/her computer via USB, fills the device with water, and can activate it through the seed cloud website. View the building process.
This sketch is for a hypothetical product that measures data stored in your cloud. If users were given feedback about how much data they produce, would it have an impact on how they produce/consume digital content? View the building process.
Cranking away during finals on two thesis sketches, the Seed Cloud and Read Cloud devices. View see more of my process building them.
User journey video for our final concept in Design and the Service Experience class with Phi-Hong Ha. Our final concept was called Streamline, a service that empowers locals to rent their idle goods to tourists who want to travel light. You can view all of our process in our team scrapbook (pdf) and view our final presentation (pdf). My teammates were Chris Cannon, Tina Ye, and Kristin Brevik.
For our Design Management final, we have to answer an RFP. I designed and made 3 hardbound proposals as leave-behinds for our presentation. My teammates were Benjamin Gadbaw, Erin Moore, and Carrie Stiens. View the proposal (pdf).
A few images from our last 3 meetings for our Design and the Service Experience class with Phi-Hong Ha. Our final concept was called Streamline, a service that empowers locals to rent their idle goods to tourists who want to travel light. You can view all of our process in our team scrapbook (pdf). My teammates were Chris Cannon, Tina Ye, and Kristin Brevik.
Our team had a great sync up and planning session Karen McGrane’s Design Management final. We got all of our work on the wall and organized everything for our proposal and presentation.
For Karen McGrane’s Design Management final, we have to answer an RFP which entails: create a firm; outline our values, approach, capabilities; outline a few case studies; create vision concepts for the proposal; outline a budget and timeline for deliverables and project; and finally design a leave-behind and present.
Benjamin Gadbaw suggested a name for our firm, and our team, with Erin Moore and Carrie Stiens, settled on “Skip Intro”. I designed logo for our presentation and leave-behind materials. See more of our process.
Just getting some ideas on a wall helps. Our service design team had an epic meeting today, creating a service blueprint, concept map, and outlined a few user scenarios. We started placing all touch points and actors involved in our service to create a rough concept map, then moved everything to form a more organized service blueprint. Our revised concept is called “Streamline”, a service that enables tourists to travel light by renting goods from locals who want to utilize their stored items. See more of our process.
After refining my idea for my semester project, I created a concept map to outline how all the involved parties and touch points connected. The concept is not just about the interface itself, but how content is created, who is building the installation, and veterans can give user feedback. The project is sited in different outdoor locations in New York City, and will serve as a platform for learning and engagement with wounded vets returning from Iraq and Afghanistan.
