Group Evaluation

As part of our assessment tasks we individually write an analysis reflecting our group, evaluate the project and the design process.

Our group, the little library, I think resulted in a very successful project. We had a very refined concept, an interactive AR application which provided the user an information layer tailored to their needs. This success was due to a number of factors, however I certainly do not believe we always worked perfectly as a group. We were lucky as we had many varying strengths – yet I believe our largest weakness lay in making decisions. I will talk about this later on in the post, as I would prefer to comment on the positives first and dwell upon our success.

The design process of the little library, allowed individual group members to bring their interests and strengths to work. We deemed this highly important through out all stages of the project. When originally assigning roles, which was a requirement at the beginning, I believe we assigned them fairly accurately. For example, I primarily was interested in the user development or the experience our AR system would hold, so therefore focused on persona’s and the visual architecture. Yet my skill set was deemed to also be in the public speaking sphere, so was assigned Presenter.

When working as a group, we often had input from individual’s various interests – we had production input from Martha as she studies industrial design at UTS, dylan was certainly deemed ‘technical support’ but provided a huge array of examples and a distinguished design skill set which he bought to refine most of what we created. Tiia was always extremely organised making sure we all knew what our roles were, she brought a deep knowledge of information architecture from various web sources. Chantel was our researcher and provided great support in this area along with her lateral thinking.

Another aspect to our success is that under pressure we were always able to produce above and beyond. We would assign tasks, and either Tiia or myself would assume the driver/organiser role in setting timelines and making sure people stuck to these. It was important that the division of tasks were even, but that they lay in one’s area of strength. This was vital in making the team produce it’s outcomes, and dealing with the pressure of our deadline.

A task that was always assigned, was the synthesiser – which meant everything was sent to them and they were to correlate the final project (be it for the interim or final) to make sure it was ‘to brand’ with a consistent aesthetic and there were no gaps in our project. If there were, roles were quickly assigned to fill them in.

As mentioned earlier, we certainly had weaknesses, one of which being attendance. I, of which am a large culprit. But I do believe this was handled well by all members, making sure that emails were written or phone calls had and maintaining the workload outside class. The main weakness in my eyes was the groups inability to make decisions without a driver present. I want to stress, that I do deem this group to be fantastic and the final outcome a real success, but unfortunately this weakness was one that was constantly in my mind. I found that if Tiia or I were not present, then not much was done. Certainly many great ideas were thrown out there, yet when a decision needed to be made this was overlooked and we continued to brim with brainstorming. It was frustrating because I wonder where our project would be if we were able to have made decisions a lot earlier on. It was also frustrating having people wait to do work until they had be assigned a role. Sorry I do not mean to gripe, as I mentioned the group did work really well. This was however certainly a weakness.

Working as a team as always has it’s ups and downs. With each round of group work you learn more about yourself, how to work with others, where your strength lies and how to work on your weaknesses. I often felt like I was bossy assuming the driver role when needed, but do believe that this was important to make final decisions.

Our project achieved our mission of creating a platform which enhanced the social aspects of the library and providing a digital life for a book which portrayed it’s history not just it’s content. Further development can certainly be made however, and I hope that those who are willing, and I certainly am, can be involved in the processes. Development into the way-finding aspect, the random shake-n-shuffle for the gestural interface, giving the user an option of how to visual represent the application are all options we would like to develop more. I would like to be involved at all stages, particularly the validation and customer testing stages.

I have made some good friends, great connections and a design I am proud of. The strengths of our groups certainly outweighed the weaknesses and our final presentation’s comments are a tribute to this. Well done team.

LAB 8; was a great class and was what I deemed it to be at the beginning of the project. Ian and Kier were great mentor’s to have as they provided us with great feedback at multiple junctions of the project. But also provided great exposure to the industry, not only with those that came and spoke to us or the field trips we were taken on, but also the examples shown.

I do believe that their was inconsistency with assignments – especially the blog posts, as at one stage we were only to have them marked at the end without any criteria of weekly postings being noted, then their became specifics of which were to be marked. But I believe this was truly as it was the first time the class was run.

I really enjoyed learning about Augmented Reality and is one that I hope to pursue. I have been in contact with Danielle Lee, who’s contact details I passed on to a colleague at my internship and hopes to do work with in the future. We have also spoken about the possibility of an internship down the track in the validation stages of tiger spike’s process. I hope this eventuates into something, but without LAB 8 I would not have heard her inspirational talk or seen the process they go through.

Thank you once again Ian and Kier.

Week 14 – our poster

Our Final week, which purely involves making the poster for the exhibition. It is to follow a set grid and style guide. The roles were divided up as so, Tiia was to work on the images, Martha was to print the final and hand it in, Chantel and I were to work on the writing and Dylan was to follow the style guide.

Week 13 – FINAL PRESENTATION

Our final presentation went down without a glitch, it certainly had been a rush to the end but our concept was strong.

We were lucky enough to have library officials attend, not only to be present on the judging panel but also to give feedback on our presentation.

Dylan and I were to be the speakers, I was to use the more emotive language and speak of how the app made the user’s experience stronger within the library and dylan was to talk more about it’s technical aspects and further developments. Tiia was steering the presentation, as mentioned it was her role throughout the past week to create this presentation.

LittleLibrary-Presentation

The feedback given was also very inspirational – although they did comment on our wording. “Current system is archaic” may have been brought up. They mentioned that they are currently running research and developing a similar concept. They liked that we were on a similar wave length to their research as it provided further validation. Plus they gained some ideas, what I hope is that we get brought on board with helping the library to develop not only the interface but also the the information architecture and functions. I would love to be involved in the validation stage, the customer experience as that is what my internship is.

Here is our final pdf process work which Chantel developed:

LittleLibrary-Process2

Overall it was a great presentation and is certainly something I will be including in my portfolio. I just hope it continues further

 

Countdown- 1 week until final presentation

Unfortunately I had been unwell for the last few weeks, but had maintained my work level, which was exploring various IA (Information Architecture) of apps, I was exploring infographics and visualisation, along with refining the concept. When I arrived at class, with our last week to work on the project, it was very interesting to see where we were up to and I had a hard time getting everyone to use the class effectively to move us quickly forward. This was a constant battle throughout the semester.

In the tutorial we had two presentation’s. The first of which I found incredibly useful from Danielle Lee, who was an Executive producer at Tigerspike. Her role was to be involved at almost every part of the projects of making apps for various clients across various platforms. It’s a role I could see myself doing. I was particularly interested in her process when it came to customer validation, as they use techniques like card sorting, prototyping, scenarios etc to find out if this is an experience customers wish to have and if the information architecture is correct. I asked alot of questions around this, and spoke to her briefly afterwards. I have been in touch with her since, which I will talk about in the evaluation.

We stayed back after class, and I created outlines of an iphone wireframe and we sketched up what we through would be the process. As a group we divided up what needed to be achieved for the following week prior to the presentation. Originally Martha was to create the initial frames, however had trouble with the programs, so she was to work on the demonstration film with dylan later. I created the initial and developed the wireframes that we had tried to sketch up in class. Dylan then refined these with his designer finesse. Tiia worked on the presentation pdf and Chantel the process work pdf that we were to hand in.

Please see below the development of the wireframes:

We started with a hierarchy of the app interface that explained the breakdown of it’s ability. It was a roadmap of how our application, the little library would work.

As mentioned earlier in this post, we sketched up some photocopied outlines of iPhones to make our rough wireframes. Unfortunately I could only capture one, however I think you get the idea:

Over the next two days, I then created the following wireframes which were based around the MOMA and 2Thousand City Guide applications:

Dylan then created the final refined applications, using his amazing design skills and eye to make it a really smooth looking app, and definitely one I would use:

It is amazing to see how much can be achieved in one week, when you knuckle down and really pull together. Although it did take a bit of pushing and shoving from my/tiia’s direction we created a great looking interface, presentation and Pdf.

Week 12 – Stephan Hajkowicz “Megatrends, megashocks and future scenarios”

Coming from the CSIRO, stephan detailed the CSIRO’s predicted “Megatrends” and how they will impact us in the coming years.

http://www.csiro.au/resources/Our-Future-World.html

The predictions are forecasted according to 4 categories – probable (incl. predicitions which are evidenced based) preferable, plausible, possible.

Now lets step back one moment, a megatrend is a pattern of huge implications for how we live. Megashocks however are sudden, hard to predict and single in occurrence. Scenarios are a mixture of imagination and facts. Through these three patterns, and the criteria used to evaluate a possible occurrence we can explore our future.

The 5 medgatrends as predicted by CSIRO:

1. More for less – concerned with the resource challenges we will face. At our current rate, it is predicted that energy consumption will increase by 44% in 2030. Stephen raised the point that countries which share common resources statistically have a higher probability of military dispute.

2. A personal touch – personalisation of products and services. 30% of a typical workday is lost processing irrelevant information, 42% use wrong information atleast once a week. This predicition raises issues over data, and privacy issues related to personal information.

3. Iworld – digital & physical world converge, becoming more prominent in our everyday lives and services. Currently it is sweeping past each other. This was great to listen to for AR.

4. On the move – Rapid urbanisation and increasing mobility is heightening pressures on our cities and our infrastructures (and the individual). Stephan asked “How do we accommodate for this overwhelming rural migration?” Increased mobility means that work patterns may become fragments due to the range of emloyers and jobs as opposed to previous patterns of long term employment. I could relate to this aspect, as in my team each person has specifics to do with time that they are actually at work. These range from someone arriving two hours earlier so he can go to the gym for two hours, to mums/dads leaving before 3, to someone working 1 week of a month from his farm 8 hours away. It is amazing to see how productive the team still is.

5. Divergent demographics – as we are an an ageing population we will need to service for all kinds of people. The trend will place pressures on our welfare system as we require more and more services, unless we do something.

Unfortunately I was once again ill but was on emails with the group throughout class. We were reminded regularly in class that we needed to push our designs and visualisations as our application needed to enhance current and future students. Plus distinguish itself away from the current library aesthetic. I researched current applications that existed and were eye catching. Along with this I looked at various info-graphics that would support or inspire our own:

Two thousand, City Guide App:

logo for the city guides

The layout of choosing which city would would like a guide for.

 

The MOMA application:

Various Info-graphics:

Post-Mamal:

Feltron:

Fransisco Adriani

 

These are just a few examples of IA/Visual information that I explored over the last couple of weeks however provided a large contribution to the making of the wireframes I created later on.

Week 11 – Nick Rittary’s “9 meals from Anarchy: how urban food production is everybody’s business”

Nick came to speak to us from Milkwood Permaculture.

http://milkwood.net/

He detailed how ecology and permaculture ideology does in fact relate to the city. For those who don’t know it (as I didn’t) permaculture is a design science based on three main principles, care for the earth, each other and limit consumptions/population. It is a new way of living which is sustainable, and brings humans their needs.

Here is an interesting article

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/gardening/organicgardening/8066239/Permaculture-is-more-relevant-than-ever.html

Week 10 – Tom Baker’s lecture: “The Australian Timebomb!”

Our 8th lecture explored the current situation in australia and as the title suggests, a ticking timebomb which is heading the wrong direction according to Tom Baker.

Neglect of opportunities and innovation are linked to our current culture of equality and inability to detach ourselves from the past. Our unproductive leadership positions which have almost turned trivial and we, the public along with our politicians, end up worrying about how to maintain realtions with each other over spending time developing our industries and culture.

Whilst a pessimistic topic, Baker maintained presenting this lecture from a relatively neutral position/perspective. He discussed our insular psyche and how this is also seen in our leadership. Despite our wealth and population we are far behind other developed countries when it comes to generosity and charity, there is lack of global responsibility.

He expressed our failure to accommodate the “Asian Miracle”. Whilst we maintain a protectionist policy in regards to the region, yet the booming economy of Asia could bring great advantages to our own. Our resources are depleting, and we remain heavily reliant on existing industries. Our growth could extend into developing emerging industries such as the creative industry, yet supporting them is seen to have little to offer. I saw a great video on TED where Sir Ken Robinson (my new favourite presentor) comments on how schools are killing creativity (on a higher level, looking at the western world stage). That our school/educational system was developed to deal with the industrial age, yet we have moved far from this age and the school system remains there.

As Ken examines and expresses, begin by nurturing the creative and joyful of our diversity. Not just in race or ethnicity, but it likes and dislikes, in how we use our brain or how we communicate. That is when we will become a strong nation and a globe.

Idealistic … you betchya!!

Week 9 – Hank Haeusler’s Lecture: “Media Facades: History, Technology and Media Content”

Our 7th lecture in the subjects series was conducted by Hank Haeusler. He talked about the roles of the media in current contemporary urban environments, whilst also paralleling to the possibilities that could be conducted by the media.

Integrating media facades into the urban environment, completely changes our relationship with and within it. This connection between the city and the citizens, is something we have certainly seen and dwelt on in LAB 8: Augmented Reality. How an additional information layer gives the user a sixth sense. That the exposure to AR environment and/or technology increases the environments “usability” and enhancing ones environment to suit an individuals specific needs/wants/desires. The world can be viewed through a specific lens that is tailored to who is using it. As mentioned by Hank the urban environment may involve a dynamic interface via this ‘media facade’ – he mentioned films such as blade runner (which I sadly still have not seen) and minority report (i have that one covered, don’t worry) as predicting this interface.

Haeusler looked into the issue of contextual and environmental issues which surround a media facade. Screen technology now enables size/resolution to no longer be a factor. As we see in our class, one of the library groups (not ours) have taken advantage of such technologys and wish to create an screen which surrounds a large chimmney like tower outside the library. Something to consider though is whether this is always appropriate, in the above case it is but you have to explore if the chosen technology is unified and integrated into the surroundings.

Another really interesting point made by Haeusler was the comment about our constant bombardment of Hi-Res images/screens, that perhaps a screen interface that provides something else, such as a duo-tone mechanical cards or lightbulbs, will stand out more and perhaps be something worth stopping for in a world of high-res images.

This was a great lecture for us to apart of, not just LAB 8; but all the design disciplines. As it displayed the importance of how digital technology is becoming an integral part of all. It is instantaneous and allows our reading/understanding of a city or environment to be expanded.

Unfortunately I had a meeting for work, but it was AR related (Will talk about later in the post). I had made my group aware that I would not be in, but that I would be on emails. They advised me we received additional feedback from our Interim:

• Narrow our concept, perhaps to focus on the social aspect of our application.
• Develop our visual’s to make them more engaging and easier to read. This is where visual information and infographic research was of high importance to developing our own.
• Simplicity was the key, but personable would also be a rating of it’s success.

This was great information given, and something that we had at the forefront of our minds to creating the final concept, it’s structure and interface. The meeting I was at was really interesting, and one that was very similar to what we are studying in LAB 8. I work for one of the big 4 banks, I believe I have mentioned the name previously but I won’t in this post, as an intern. My ears pricked up when a colleague of mine said he was attending a meeting with a digital company which specialised in AR. I asked whether or not it would be appropriate from myself to attend and he was more than happy for me to come along. It was a free lunch and a pitch about how we could blow CommBank’s Reality App out of the water (mentioned earlier in the posts). It was definitely very interesting and it was great to be on the other side of a pitch. They gave some great example of existing AR, yet it was not one’s they had created. I also will not mention who the company was, but I felt like they were underprepared, and so did my colleagues. I raised questions that this class had help me formulate and deepen my knowledge of. It certainly impressed my colleagues and I was even able to pick a few holes in the pitch. But overall it was great experience and it was interesting to see other opinions of what AR is and how it’s absorption into the broader public will occur.

If I hadn’t had chosen this subject then I certainly would not have even been interested in attending this specific meeting, and I am so glad that I was able to actually hold my own within this meeting – not being the simple intern. Thanks Kier and Ian

Red Bull team up with Eness and some of the worlds best skiers/snowboarders to create this interaction

Week 8 – Bert Boengers Lecture

AXA Insurance: The first i-AD for their App.

This weeks lectured once again delved into another aspect of “the city”. Bert lectured was focused around behavioural information of people can easily be found, by looking for the marks left behind. Eg. grass where people walk, chewing gum on the ground, collections of rubbish, cleaning marks from pressure hoses and tyre skid marks. These are unconsidered elements and their are many other bits of ephemera traces in our urban environment that can be helpful in designing.

Another point made by Bert was that traces enhance our understanding of something, often without conciously considering them. However when designing digital systems this becomes an issue, as digital artifacts do not necessarily leave a visible trace for a user to follow and therefore traces often need to be designed into the system. Earlier on this year, I read an interesting Essay about Virtual Reality and artefacts, I guess it was a feminist take on Virtual Reality, however it looked into genders of objects in reality and how this didn’t occur in Virtual. A hammer is seen as a masculine tool, where a wooden spoon is seen as a female in reality. A coffee machine is seen as a masculine tool, a beater a female. Yet in Virtual reality, these ideas or motifs behind objects does not occur because we have trouble seeing these as the real objects they are based on. Thus becoming a new playing field for Feminists.

Throughout our time off, I began to explore various IA of iPhone applications. This was largely accessible as I myself have an iPhone but I wondered what it would be like to an android user. I explored various app platforms and how they changed across. Something like 80% of our class had iphone. 15% another form of smart phone and 5% or smaller were classed as ‘other’.