nowWhichway - photography and design

Emotional Design by Donald Norman

admin — Tue, 15 Dec 2009 10:27:53 +0000

Last topic for this year: Donald Norman’s book Emotional Design.

He discusses the non-practical, non-rational implications of design. What makes people love or hate a particular design. After the rational, usability centered investigations of D.O.E.T, he realized that much of our lives are governed by not by the choices about what works best, but how something affects our emotions.

He breaks this down into three levels of design:

Visceral-’what nature does’; how something affects our senses. Taste, smell, visual appeal, texture. My question for you is: What is a website with Visceral appeal?

Behavioural-’all about use’; how well does something suit its purpose. What we call usability, functionality.

Reflective-’…message…meaning…culture’; what cognitive associations accompany a design. Are you drinking Starbuck’s or ‘Joe’s Fairtrade Local Jobs Supporting Environmentally sensitive Java’? Nobody gets a tattoo for the functionality; it’s all about meaning, expression.

Notice your responses to your everyday tasks, and how these terms relate to your choices. When are your activities governed by these different levels of response, and when are you surprised that what you thought was a purely rational decision is in fact based more on how you think other people will respond to your choice?

Marketing people are all over these concepts, trying to convince you to buy something for some spurious reason. But it isn’t just useless marketing speak. How can the designs you create take into account these different levels of response by your target audience? Can you make your design more successful by looking beyond usability and incorporating your audience’s non-rational responses?

How to Design a Digital Media Course

admin — Sun, 15 Nov 2009 11:40:38 +0000

Design Practice
MA-Creative Digital Media

What kind of final project would suit the topics of this module and meet the learning objectives of the course document?

In the past, I’ve had people write their own Brief for a Design Problem/Design Solution. Students would identify a problem, analyse that problem in the form of a Design Brief. The brief would define the relevant issues and serve as a call for submissions. The students would then propose their own solution to the problem, including costings.

Previous year’s proposals included a redesign of the entrance to Connolly Station, a website design for the Irish Kickboxing Association, and research on cables that deliver data and power to tv’s, dvd players, etc. to reduce the cable clutter.

In this way, people get to take the concepts from the module and apply them to subjects that particularly interest them.

The learning outcomes for the module are defined in the course document:

Learning Outcomes:
On completion of this module, the learner will be able to:
• Analyse the priorities of a design project;
• Evaluate and specify the usability and HCI requirements;
• Discuss design choices and evaluate the impact on the success of the final
design.
Implement and produce coherent on-screen design for interfaces (i.e. web
page, DVD menus, interactive games/e-learning apps, etc.)

After several years of my “Write a Brief” – project brief, I’m looking to see if there is another method that would work well for this class. What other ideas do you have for final projects that address the learning outcomes and don’t impose too much on the work for your other modules? It could be individual or group work. It should combine elements of analysis, design, and visual presentation. I see this in some ways as similar to the initial stages of your final project: concept, analysis, presentation, design, execution. You can sort of leave out the ‘design and execution’ phases for this module.

So let’s brainstorm a bit and see what we can come up with.

Design Practice, vers. 4.o

admin — Tue, 29 Sep 2009 16:16:20 +0000

We started the new term last week with a new version of the class ‘Design Practice.’ It used to be called ‘Design Principles’, in the sense of learning how to apply some enduring ideas (ie. ‘principles’) to the process of design. Then as now, we’ll look at a variety of products and services and try to critique the elements that contribute to successful designs.
The class is part of two Masters degree programs; the MA in Creative Digital Media and the MSc in Digital Games, both in the Dublin Institute of Technology. It is great to have a mix of some technical types and some less tech-y people.
So for the first class I wanted us to critique something most everybody has owned or used at some point: the multi-tool/Leatherman/Swiss Army knife. Some of these tools are great, some are terrible, and some are just too fancy for their own good.
Consequently the first assignment is: create your ideal multi-tool. We broke up into groups and 20 minutes later, ta dah! Great stuff. I liked the drawings so much I thought we had to share them with the world. So in no particular order…

The Light Sabre
Note the umbrella, the flotation device, the electronic attachments for heating and cooling drinks.

The Man’s Tool
Useful, effective, everything I’d need except a bottle opener. Notice the combat knife inspiration.

The Party Girrrl-illa
The first group to explicitly target a specific audience. Includes hair-straighteners, speakers, bottle opener and a disco ball, to liven up those impromptu Friday parties.

The “Succi” (I can’t remember what that is supposed to mean)
My notes fail me here: knife, mp3 player, usb stick, and don’t forget “it has bluetooth”. In an easy, pocket sized design.

The Survivor
Clever disc design, the essentials like knife, scissors, and spork. Handy dandy laser pointer and what every pocket tool needs, an inflatable pillow. Now that is improved functionality.

and finally, The Student
Every college should hand these out and failure rates would drop to zero. I won’t point out anything but the ‘neverending teabag.’

take computers out of classrooms, or, Just teach better

admin — Tue, 21 Jul 2009 08:59:36 +0000

Interesting article on chronicle.com about a dean removing computers from classrooms. Actually, he just wants teachers to stop using boring powerpoint presentations. He says, put the powerpoint online beforehand, quiz students to make them read it, then use actual class time for discussions. Seems pretty fair.

article is at: http://chronicle.com/free/v55/i42/42a00103.htm

video at:http://chronicle.com/media/video/v55/i42/bowen/

With a jazz soundtrack on his personal site at:
www.josebowen.com

Digital Portfolio Submissions

admin — Wed, 27 May 2009 15:31:14 +0000

Last week the third year students had to submit a digital portfolio by mail. The plan was to identify potential clients and tailor a promotional piece that would attract their attention and get an appointment to show a tangible portfolio, which should (perhaps, maybe) lead to a job.

There were three questions everyone needed to consider:

Consequently it takes a bit of honest soul searching to try and figure out what kind of career you want, and what you are good at. The end of your third year of college is a good time to figure this out, but I’d hope people have been thinking about it all along.

So some of the digital portfolios were excellent, some were pretty good, and some needed a lot of work. Generally, the quality is obvious from the moment the prospective client, in this case me, opens the envelope. Some people take great care to present their cd with a nice label, cases with a printed insert, and a few even made their own letterhead. (I seem to remember I covered designing letterhead in the first class last autumn…)

Here are a few examples, good and not so good. The first one came in an A4 envelope, with a plastic folder, cd case with label, business card and letterhead all with the same design. Excellent, except the cd didn’t have a sticker on it.

Christina Ebel

Hand written notes on the sleeve aren’t so impressive.

Handwritten note

Here was an attempt at an insert for the case, but the cd has a label made from plain paper, cut out very badly using scissors or a butter knife. No way would anyone put that into their computer. I tried to take the label off, but the edges are loose and the glue underneath is gooey, so I hardly think anyone will get out the white spirits to clean it off. It will just go in the bin.

Bad labels

Here is a great label, great image selection. Looks great opening the envelope. Could use a better printer, but still looks really nice.

Nice, well designed label.

I suggest creating a portfolio as an Adobe Portable Document Format(PDF). It gives you total control of the layout and will play on virtually every computer. Many people do them as Powerpoint files, but I find that program more difficult to create the appearance I want, and I’ve seen a lot more Powerpoint files fail to open than PDF. With both programs, problems arise when the images are embedded as hi-res files. If your .pdf or .ppt is 100mb, you should realize you have a problem.

File size is important, but so is page size. Some people designed their .pdf for the printed page, A4 vertical, so then the client has to shrink the display so it fits on their screen. It leaves a lot of empty screen space when viewing the portfolio. It is better to design for a 1024×768 pixel size. That is virtually the minimum screen size now. It lets you maximize the size of your images and hopefully create more impact with the audience.

Most important: Show your best work, without any filler shots. Research prospective clients and target the portfolio to the type of work they use. Make every part of your portfolio, from business card to end title page, show your creativity and professionalism

five.minute.fix goes live

admin — Fri, 15 May 2009 08:11:04 +0000

Hi ya folks-
The showcase of your work hosted at five.minute.fix is online. I’m still missing some images from people, and some people have themselves gone missing, but it is up there for the world to see. The other lecturers haven’t seen a lot of those images, and they are impressed. It is great to see such a variety of material. That shows that you have a real commitment to making images, to being photographers.
Good work.

Index page up

admin — Tue, 12 May 2009 09:12:10 +0000

Hi folks. Progress is happening. I am building the site, and I put up the first page for five.minute.fix.

So, is that a name we can live with? The opening page has nine images that play, and if someone didn’t get their shot in the first batch, for a coffee I might be bribed to drop yours into the mix.

I’ll keep working on the rest of the site, but get your comments and complaints in to me fast because the time for changes is running out fast.

The end of the term is upon us. For this module, you had a number of tasks to complete. Some were done in class, some were files you needed to send me. I checked off your name as each task was completed, but if you have missed tasks your grade will suffer. I can post the chart of everyone, or you can email me if you have questions. I’ll be in Temple Bar tomorrow, normal time, for any questions, but I won’t be running a class.

Your final submission for me are the personal comments that will go in the ‘Stories’ section. So far I only have remarks from five people. Make your comments a few sentences or a couple of paragraphs. Just talk about your response to the year.

File Specifications

admin — Wed, 29 Apr 2009 09:13:36 +0000

Hi yas-
Submit your images from the Flickr selection, and you may add in other shots up to five of your own pics.
Pics must be .jpgs and named ‘lastname-initial-number(01,02, etc).jpg. They must be 600pixels on the longest edge, and make sure they are in the sRGB colour space (in photoshop go to Edit>Convert to Profile>sRGB). Each image must have a 50x50pixel thumbnail to go with it, and just add the word ‘thumb’ to the filename.

Write you little personal stories to add interest and colour to the presentation. Write 2 or 3 sentences about one of the following subjects: Classes, Great Images, Great Books, Student Life. Make it personal and fun, not moany and boring.

Get on it…

Gathering Info

admin — Tue, 28 Apr 2009 14:13:42 +0000

Hi Folks-

You should be frantically working towards those final deadlines.

This week, each group will submit their images for the website, and
examples of written work.

I need you to bring in any written work you have done to class and you
will pick two or three essays that are representative for each group,
for a total of 4 or 6.

Elina started working on a bibliography, so email her with
contributions or bring them in tomorrow.

All the images on flickr will need to be loaded onto a CD with the
proper person’s name, so get yours ready and we will load them up
tomorrow and burn the CD.

Finally, now is the chance for some light writing in the midst of the
deadlines: we need your personal comments about the first year in
photography education. Write them as 1 paragraph treatments- and write
about as many topics as you want. There is space for a lot, but I need
at least two from everyone.

So, gather your images, gather your essays, and be ready to write short
comments about the year…

see you in Temple Bar,

Photoshop Montage class

admin — Tue, 21 Apr 2009 14:41:30 +0000

Okay, this week we try a bit of fairly sophisticated photoshop maneuvering. Head to the nowwhichway homepage, or go directly to sample pageto see the examples and links to the image files.
As I said before, I’m not much into making composites to create imaginary scenes, but here is an example where the orginal photographs all had problems, and we can use photoshop to overcome the limitations of imaging capture technology and create an image that is more in keeping with what we see and remember.
The ‘remember’ part is probably more accurate. How often do people look at a photograph and say “that wasn’t what I saw” when really they mean, “that image isn’t what I remember from what happened. I’m sure the sunset was much more red and that boy/girl I was snogging was much cuter than that…”
There are many reasons for using compositing tools, so practice them.