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.