Design Journal #5 - ED and UD

Emotional Design (ED) and Universal Design (UD)

This week I have been sick, which is bad and good. It is no fun being sick, but when I got to stay home from work, I was able to work on a few scrapbook pages for my project. I have been having a lot of fun being immersed in the projects. The hardest part for me is not to get nostalgic when I am going through the old pictures and video. I can sit and look through those all day long!
Specifically, I have worked through the bath page and the food page. ( food and bath ) Although I am getting faster with Photoshop, creating the pages are still time consuming. I am thinking about the time that I have left and the amount of work that I have. Originally I wanted to have a page for each month. Lately, I have been considering combining the months (1&2, 3, 4 &5, etc..) so that I can complete my project on time.

For today's literature review, I chose to listen to Donald Norman's presentation of Emotional Design. In the beginning, he wanted to make a statement to all of the techies in the room that creating products that "are pretty is nice. Make it fun! Make it enjoyable!". This is what I am trying to do when I create Elisa's pages. But the ironic thing is that I am having fun and it is enjoyable creating the pages, so I hope that it shows through my project. Norman also stated that the "technology has to be flawless, but no one cares about it too much".... unless it doesn't work! I have not started creating the website that will encompass my project, but I need to make sure that it works so that it will display my scrapbook correctly. Another interesting comment that Norman discussed was the issue of the cognitive model. I want to make sure that I am reaching the goals that should be met by the brain. For instance, the visceral part of the model should affect the surface attractiveness. "Beauty is skin deep". I want my pages to be beautiful, enjoyable to look at and impactful. I want them to engage the audience and make them want more. The second part of the model is behavioral, its usability. This is the part that I haven't started on, but is one of my future goals. The last section of the model is reflective. This is the section that I hope, litterally, attracts Elisa because it asks the question of "do you see yourself in it? What does it mean to you?". I hope it means an insight to her past, but also a record for my family of her first precious life.

I was also drawn in by the reading of Rose, D.H. & Meyer's Universal Design of Learning. In their text they spoke of the three rules of universal design:

• To represent information in multiple formats and media.
• To provide multiple pathways for student's action and expression.
• To provide multiple ways to engage student's interest and motivation.

I thought about it and I am going to provide some rollover text on some images of my wall gallery to achieve the first goal of UD. I want to also post my scrapbook as individual pages and something that people can breeze through in a book format. I hope that checks off goal number three. I still have to think about goal number two!

Next steps:

• Continue hamering out my scrapbook pages
• Use Dreamweaver to construct my site
  

References:

Chapter 4 of Rose, D.H. & Meyer, A. (2002). Teaching Every Student in the Digital Age: Universal Design for Learning. Alexandria, VA: Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development.[On-line]. Available: http://www.cast.org/teachingeverystudent/ideas/tes/

Norman, D. 2004. Emotional design. Presentation made at the 2004 O'Reilly Emerging Technologyconference. [podcast] Available: http://www.itconversations.com/shows/detail69.html

6210 Meeting Reflection

Team Alive

An immediate difference between this team and the previous team that I observed is the fact that papers have been replaced by laptops and papers. It seems to me that this group is at the stage where they are reviewing their content and structure that they have posted on the web. They are in the middle of implementation. There is a white board that they are using to create a sitemap for their data that will be used during their project. There is a lot of discussion about the learner and how they will use their product. It was interesting that the group wanted to include "reflections" because they wanted students to have an experience such as we do with our journal in the Studio. It was also interesting that the group members have had different impressions from the client and it is good that they have all decided to get clarification from the teacher. Another interesting thing is that they keep on bringing up Gagne's levels of instruction, which is something that we learned in 6190.

Interesting Links

Whether it is through conversation or surfing the web, one always comes in contact with interesting links. My plan is to post the links as I continue through this journey of design.

• ColourLovers


• Smashing Magazine


• Font Garden


• My Publisher


• Photoshop Tips


• LivE simply


• Picnik Photo Editing

Design Journal #4 - Foothold For Design

During a simple conversation with a Sabrina, a fellow Studio member, I finally got the Ah-Ha moment that I was looking for. I should have known that it was going to be a special day since I decided to break from the norm and move to a seat different from my norm. While Sabrina and I were conversing, I so happened to look up and see a picture of an old calendar and then it clicked! I wanted the front of my web page to resemble a calendar to include the different months of her first year. This was the breakthrough that I was looking for. I immediately began searching on the web for ideas and found a scrap sheet of paper to begin scratching out some details. I felt that it was the push that I needed to initiate the process.

Well, since that time, my design has changed, but in a good way. I sat down with Sabrina and Sean (another Studio member) to critique my project. They both made a great point in that the initial calendar design and the background were contradicting each other. Sabrina mentioned a beautiful ornate frame. From that comment I pictured a wall full of beautiful frames in which someone could browse over the frames and be taken to the scrapbook page of that particular month. From the words of Gal, design is similar to “a rock climber (who) knows that she wants to get to the top of the mountain. She chooses a route for the climb based on her knowledge when she is at the bottom of the hill. As she climbs, she constantly faces new situations where she needs to choose a new footing to proceed.” (217). Since I had a clear idea of what my project was going to exhibit, I had to think of how to get there. I first chose the calendar look, I incorporated a flip notebook, now I am on the wall of frames example. “Each foothold is both an endpoint that sums all the steps she has taken so far, and a point of departure from which to plan the next one.” (217). As I continue on this path of a better design, I too have to resemble a rock climber in that I have to “ continuously face a challenge of making future decisions based on the here and now.” (217).

“The process of design evolves as a process of identifying emerging new questions to address.” (225). I had to address the question of navigation, which I had not thought of during my calendar design. I now have an idea of how I want others to interact with my page. With the ideas of using a frame, I can introduce and explain the website in a beautiful ornate frame in the middle of the wall. Or, if I have time and am adventurous, I could use flash in a way that incorporates the frame idea as well. Then, when a user scrolls over each frame, it can create a rollover explaining which scrapbook page it is linked to. Just now, I thought of incorporating a hanging bookshelf with a book that the user can click on and view the scrapbook in its entirety.

I don’t foresee myself changing the design of the front page again. As Gal states, “I stuck with it because I felt good about it.” (224). I am excited with the concept and what I can do with it.

Next steps:

• Continue creating scrapbook pages. (Thanks to the addition to my RAM memory on my laptop, it will make my time with Photoshop much quicker).
• Continue working on the front page.

Resources:

Gal, S. (1996). Footholds for design. In Winograd, T. (Ed.), Bringing Design to Software (pp. 215-227). New York: Addison-Wesley.

Design Journal # 3 - Design as a composition

"To design is to be creative and innovative, but more importantly to... cause things to stand together as a unified whole-- a composition." (207)
Nelson and Stolterman discuss design as a sequence of different parts put together as a whole. This past week in my project, I have been trying to identify the unique and different parts of my project. The parts that I have identified are: the actual scrapbook pages, the website holding the project, the front page of the project (homepage of the website) and the display options of the scrapbook. This week I began work on designing the scrapbook pages. I have identified pictures that I want to include and illustrative elements that I want to add to the book. What I am having problems with is desiging the "look" of the website. Do I want each individual scrapbook page to be a page, do I want it to look like a book full of scrapbook pages, do I want to incorporate flash.... there are so many unknowns... that it is a bit paralyzing.

Nelson and Stolerman's words spoke true to me when I read this article. "It is not the intent of design to search for the absolute solution, or the one true answer, to a design challenge. Designers must compose a whole that adequately responds to the intentions of teh client, in rlation to a particular context." (209) I need to follow the mentality that it may not be perfect, but it is ok to start designing with the intention of editing and improving along the way. Nelson also states that " a designer can quickly wind up with a crisis of complexity, if his or her focus on the detail is not balanced with principles of organziation, such as systems thinking. A systems approach allows complexity to be taken into account without leading to paralysis. Systems thinking provides skeletal design logic for dealing with this kind of complexity" (222) Paralysis caused by a lack of a plan or insight is something that I need to avoid. Unfortunatley, I am still unsure of the look of the project, but I must press through and work on the parts that I do have a vision for.

Next Steps:
I will continue to work on my project, at least the pages that I have the idea of the direction that I want to take. I will continue working until I reach my "sudden flash of insight, a breakthrough, which is typically reffered to as an ah-ha experience" (212).

Develop my skills: I also plan to search through collegues pages as well as other websites to try to figure out the design of my page. As Nelson and Stolerman explain in their reading, "It is also possible to develop design skills by critiquing existing designs."

References:
Nelson, H. & Stolterman, E. (2003). The design way. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Educational Technology Publications. (Chapter 9: Composition)

Design Journal #2 - How Designer's Think

Enthusiasm and Disillusionment!

Those are the first two words in Lawson's How Designer's Think and I feel that it best describes the stage that I am at in the design of my project. I was so intrigued by this article as it describes the design process as "a map" of different phases. If I were to use the RIBA practice and management handbook that breaks up design into four phases, I would conclude that this past week, I have been enthusiastic about the "assimilation phase - accumulation and ordering of general information and information specifically related to the problem at hand (24)". Since I had gone through the Element K training on the basics of Photoshop, it has opened my eyes to the strength of this program. You can think of any idea or look and go on the web and find a Photoshop tutorial to learn how to do it. Photoshop has consumed my life a bit during these past few days. I can admit that I woke up in the middle of the night (twice!) and started clicking away on the program to see what I could create. There isn't a lot to show, but a few practice files, but I have learned so much and have had so much fun doing so! Photoshop tutorials on the web are a bit addicting in that I find something I like, and now I want to somehow incorporate it into my project. This is where the "disillusionment" comes in. Has the scope of my idea grown to large? Am I biting off more than I can chew--- and I haven't even touched the food (project) yet! As a true addict, I am making myself go on a 12 step program and stop spending most of my time learning new techniques by tonight. From here on, I am working specifically on my project, Elisa's scrapbook. According to RIBA, the next phase of design (which is not necessarily sequential) is "General Study - the investigation of the nature of the problem, and possible means of solution (24)."
The problem: Create a digital scrapbook for Elisa
The solution : Create the scrapbook pages using Photoshop. Order the pages online using Dreamweaver. Present the pages using Flash.
Right now, If I get to the Photoshop and Dreamweaver section of my project, I am happy. If I don't get to Flash, I still feel as I can create a successful project.

I loved how Lawson compared design to a chess game. " The procedure suggests that first our player might analyse the current position(27)." Looking back, this is the first step that I did in my design process, as I analyzed my current position. I had the Dreamweaver background, so I knew that I would need a quick refresher course. The main bulk of my learning came with the Photoshop program. Before a few weeks ago, the only thing that I knew how to do in Photoshop was open a file. "The next task would be to clarify objectives - synthesis phase (27)." Since I feel that the semester is going by so quickly, I hope to set up a plan of objectives and time lines to complete this project. If I don't set time lines, I will be stuck in that endless loop of questing the "look" of something over and over again without making much progress to the project as a whole. In my synthesis phase, I will need to "suggest a move and complete ideas (27)" until I have a final project. From there, I can reflect on the end result and "evaluate against the objectives (27)."


Things I have done:

• Gone overboard learning fun and interesting Photoshop techniques
  

I really appreciated Lawson's reading. I think that if I wasn't at the design stage that I am in, I wouldn't have appreciated the importance of a map and the different stages. From here, I will:

Next Steps:

• List objectives and plan my design phase
• Suggest a move!
  

References:
Lawson, B. (1980). How designers think. London: The Architectural Press, Ltd. (Chapter 3: Descriptions of the design process.)

Design Journal #1 - What is Design?

Elisa’s Digital Scrapbook

My project will be a tribute to my first born, Elisa Robinson. I hope to create something that is meaninful and also a tribute to my daughter. Ever since she was born, I had been wanting to create a scrapbook to document the memories of her first year. I had a very creative friend go with me to Michael’s Craft Store, buy all of the supplies that I needed and sat me down to show me some techniques. As soon as I put an item onto that page, I felt as if I had lost control. What if later, I wanted to move the picture, the text? What if I found a beautiful flower and didn’t have space, what if the flower needed to be scaled down. It took me 4 hours and I finally finished my first page, which only included one picture and Elisa’s name. I couldn’t decide on the layout because I wanted to have the flexibility of changing it as I went on designing, and with paper scrapbooking, I just couldn’t do it. Dismayed, I went online and just so happened to fall upon Jessica Sprague’s website (http://www.jessicasprague.com) . She is a leading designer in the “digital scrapbooking” movement that allows people (designers) to create the same style of traditional books, but using digital tools! I was hooked!

“What is Design? What makes something a design problem? It’s where you stand with a foot in two worlds – the world of technology and the world of people and human purposes”
Those words so eloquently written by Mitchell Kapor is one of the reasons why I chose my project. To create digital scrapbooks, I will have to embrace the world of technology, and in my case, Photoshop. I have had this program, in multiple versions, on my computer for over 5 years. I am quite intimidated by its interface and its power. I am ready now to break that fear and enter into using the technology to make something that will be meaningful to others in my family. The other apprehension is the “design” part. I come from a very technical background and when designing things, such as web pages or powerpoints, I know what looks good to me. I lack in the knowledge of what “industry” things looks good, in terms of color matching, typography, layouts, etc. I am very interested in learning more of that piece to help me with my project.

Things I have done:
• Decided on a project (yeah!) Elisa’s Digital Baby Book
• Identified “look” of the first page of the website (modeled after: http://www.templatemonster.com/website-templates/15348.html)
• Identified some template that I want to use in subsequent pages (www.freecsstemplates.org) (personal and compressed)
• Completed Introduction to CS3 Photoshop training online (6 hours)
• Purchased the scrapbook elements to use in my digital book (http://www.deedoos-digital-scrapbooking.com)

My next steps:
• Brainstorm the site map/layout of the site (storyboards)
• Select pictures that I want to use for the project

6210 Meeting Reflection
Last Thursday, I was given the opportunity to sit in during the Russian Summer Camp Group’s meeting. The meeting took place in a room with a large table, and they almost had every square inch of the table covered with documents. This really brought home the point that Dr. Branch always stresses… name, date, and document each page of your proposal correctly. I can see the confusion that could be caused if group members didn’t correctly label documents. It could lead to total disaster. I began observing the group dynamics. It was easy to identify the project leader. The group was comparing their analysis summary to other groups online. The group always kept sight of the client and would reiterate her wishes if they got lost in the documentation. The group was collectively working towards a goal to maintain consistency through the site, even though the site had multiple designers. The only thing that I wish I had seen more of was group collaboration in accepting or rejecting ideas. I felt as if other members of the group had to present their ideas to the project manager and she would say either yay or ney. I am sure someone has to have the ultimate decision on design, but I would have liked to have heard the others in the group involved in the decision making process. All in all, I think the team met well and accomplished their goals for the evening.

References
Kapor, M. (1996). A software design manifesto. In Winograd, T. (Ed.), Bringing Design to Software (pp. 1-9). New York: Addison-Wesley.