2009.05.31
Thinking about the exhibition and while working on content for it, it was easy to see that some projects by their very nature will clash colours with the branding. Most notably the RSA stamp project which has many colours in the presentation as well as the concept itself. After much fudging around in Illustrator there is a tweaked brand that will unfortunately still clash but looks awesome as a whole. Take a look.
On the left are the RSA and collaborative project boards, in the middle are the individual project boards and on the right are the corresponding briefs, logs / reports and sketchbooks. They will still be on the table on front. The only problem is that there will be very little in the RSA sketchbook. Maybe when compiled in one place it will show more.
Also you might notice that it uses the same colours as my website. A coincidence that I have just noticed myself!
2009.05.29
This evening has seen the purchasing of display folders, bluetack and a table cloth for the exhibition. Given the recent ‘branding’ of myself it seemed only prudent to incorporate this into the exhibition space concepts. The A4 pages at the sides of the boards are in fact display folders and will be on the table in front rather than on the wall.
The images are just to give an idea about branding.
2009.05.22
The exhibition space is an important part of presenting the work. A bad idea can be perceived as a ‘fair’ idea if it is presented with very good graphics and layout. So by that logic a pretty good idea could be perceived as a great idea.
Last year each student was given two large boards about 3m x 1m each on which to display their work.
As such there has been some illustration and concepts about what the exhibition space will be like for the three projects there are to exhibit.
RSA – 4 x A3 boards, 1 x A4 board
Collaborative – 4 x A3 boards, 1 x A4 board
Final Major Project – 6 x A3 boards, 4 x A4 boards
Below is a concept for the presentation of the exhibition area. It consists of the two large boards, papered in white with the project boards stuck to them.
On the left is the RSA project and the collaborative project. On the right is the final major project. In front is a table (probably one from iLab) with a white table cloth on it.
On the left side will be the sketch books and logs for the RSA and collaborative projects. On the right will be the sketch books and project report for the final major project.
In the center will be a laptop with a flash application running. The app will show the screen split in two to depict the two sides to the large boards. Click on the left side and you will see the video of the collaborative project in action. Click on the right and you will watch the screen recording of the final majpr project demonstrating how the toolbar would function. When the videos finish, they will fade back to the selection screen.
2009.05.22
Today people were asked specifically to ‘pick holes’ in the concept as it is easier for people to see what is wrong rather than suggest what might be right.
There were no major issues raised or functionality that had been ommitted but there were a few perspectives that had not been considered.
‘Where is the project set?’ – The concept was initially aimed at the next evolution of the web where the system would have a knowledge as well as an understanding of the content and the context. Since then it has been re-branded as a step between now and then as to be functional, the concept needs to have the next evolution in place and as such people may not be able to relate very well.
‘What about bad data?’ – The toolbar relies on meta-data at the current level of the internet, data about data, so if there was a ‘bad’ meta tag either accidental or malicious there could be incorrect generation of links. The solution to this is a system by where each sentence is evaluated at a time and a positive or negative number associated with it based on whether it matches the rest of the content or not. The same applies to any other data that is searched. The page is then given a total and a decision is made as to whether the page is ’safe’ or ‘unsafe’. These are displayed depending on the safe-search preferences, similar to Google. All this would be done by a crawler that indexes websites and their content, like the way Google and other search engines index.
‘Is it social, can I comment or rate?’ – No it is not. The problem with social networks and searching is that the social aspect of it would detract from the functionality of the search. There is no direct user interaction with the information provided other than a passive observation of it. Users can not comment, ‘like’ or ‘dislike’ links generated, again similar to how the Google search works. The main function of it is to provide and answer to a search query. The main function of the toolbar is to automatically link sites together to make the browsing / searching process much more fluid and natural.
The development of ‘extras’ continues but will not be fleshed out, more added as a chapter in the report about possiblities, extension and the future.
2009.05.21
After some deep brow rubbing and a headache, the realisation is that the funtional aspect of the toolbar will not be able to be demonstrated so time has been spent making an animation that was as natural as possible. Based on mouse clicks starting animations when others have completed but also inclusing text input and browser functions.
A test has just been run with a piece of online screen recording software called ScreenToaster and a small animation.
The results were automatically uploaded and are now displayed below. Just click the full screen icon to automatically play in full screen.
2009.05.20
Today there was an insight into years gone by and what would be expected and required for the summative assessment on June 17th.
The main thing that came out of it was focus on conveying the idea when you’re not there to explain it. To this effect there were several videos and interactive walkthroughs. This is something that needed to be addressed in the current project timeline. There was little time for a prototype due to the complexities of creating one and what aspect to focus on.
Today was spent creating a browser in Flash made of screenshots and illustrations of the toolbar concepts and trying to make them dynamic so someone can use the service themselves. This was done using actionscript and not animating directly in the timeline, something that needs a lot more knowledge and thought. The result was a very realistic browser with a slide-down toolbar that acted as it was designed. The features are static images at current but the hope is to make them dynamic too.
Frankly it is more likely that the ‘journey’ the user will take will be done using pre-determined animations and ‘gotoAndPlay’ rather than scripting. This will be quicker and then can be videod using screen capture software so it can be looped to explain the process situated in the exhibition space.
You can download the .swf here created today that you can and run it (ctrl-f for fullscreen) if you want to see progress. Otherwise there is a screenshot below.
2009.05.14
The project log has seemingly disappeared due to doing too much work and simply forgetting to update it each day. This could be problematic in documenting progress but there is still a huge amount of sketches and scribbles, some of which are dated.
Since the last blog post there has been instructions to become more ‘visual’ and to look at how to best present the concept to engage people and really get the points across. There is a really great video about presentations here which gave a number of insights into what to do as well as what not to. It is little surprise that the presentation of the video is very good and engaging. On the back of that some books have been ordered to try and really push the presentation skills to be the best they can be. ‘Made To Stick’ by Chip & Dan Heath and ‘The Back of the Napkin’ by Dan Roam.
The concept itself has been through ‘what it does’ phase and has progressed to the more visual and more enjoyable phase of UI development. They are yet to be tested, that is the next phase, but the elements have been influenced by some existing elements that can be found in leading applications so hopefully they will only need some tweaking.
The best way so far to convey what the project does was to write an FAQ as it would appear on a website. This allowed real questions that could be asked by people will lower levels of technical knowledge to be anwsered in a way that alleviates their concern and also enlightens others to the purpose of the project. Whether this will be included in the final report is yet to be determined but it is entirely possible.
The project yet to gain a name but the working title should contain the words ‘content aware’ as the main feature is dependant on what information is displayed on pages. Perhaps an acronym like C.A.R.S – Content Aware Relational Suggestions.
Below are some shots of the development of the UI and some of the scribbles mentioned above.
2009.04.29
The initial idea was to find new and innovative ways to organise data. This then evolved into organising and navigating photos which in turn mutated into a new approach to photo sharing. Throughout the whole process there has never been one ‘big’ idea until researching future technologies and the future of the internet. Reading into web 3.0 or ’semantic web’ (as opposed to the current ’social web’) provided some insights into what may be possible in the future due to the restructuring of the information on the back-end of the internet.
This led to a new service that would enable people to become much better at navigating the internet to find things they like or need. The premis is an in-browser interface that dynamically ‘reads’ the current page a user is on and then provides recommendations based on the content. This may not sound that innovative but in fact it is very if you consider that the information suggested will be web wide and not just site wide. Coupled with that the fact that it will list every type of media from entire websites to articles and images to music and films based on a user’s preferences. This allows people to navigate quickly to related items based not on a keyword they typed in to search, but based on other content that exists in the page that keyword led them to.
Below are a few simple scenarios and conceptual illustrations to visualise this idea. They are by no means final and the interface will undoubtedly change.
The next step is to investigate different perspectives of using the service and where it can be used; on a mobile phone perharps.
The important change is that there is now some belief in this project and concept as well as a real feeling of pleasure from persuing this course,
2009.04.23
Below is a mock-up of one of the concepts that is included in the final major project.
The basis is a JavaScript widget that users can paste into any web page that allows them to post that page directly to twitter with a tinyURL already in place. The benefit of a JavaScript widget is that it can be made into a Greasemonkey script for any site, so the site itself doesn’t need to implement it for users to be able to take advantage of it.
The example shows it on Flickr.
The tinyURL is automatically included into the 140 character limit and there is a counter to show how many characters are left.
There needs to be some thought on whether the user should have access to the link information or if it should be a non-editbale function.
The user will obviously need to sign into their Twitter account but the Twitter API allows this fairly easily. How and where the user does that needs more investigation.
2009.04.23
Yesterday everyone presented for a formative assessment. What made this different fom normal was the fact that the work was graded as if it was the final summative presentation instead of giving an indicative grade as if the work continued in its current direction.
The presentation was helpful and provided valueable feedback about what to concentrate on and what to avoid.
The project is about photo sharing. The best ways to do it and what areas need to be addressed. The presentation uses Flickr as a base for example and comparison but the principles and concepts that come out of this will hopefully be able to be used by any sharing site.
Download the presentation as a pdf here.
The feedback suggested that expansion of the user profile included would be beneficial and to include some of the detailed infomration used in the previous presentation.
Today was spent working on the milestone plan to show deadlines and what should be worked on when. This should hopfeully allow the project to run smoothly… if it is followed.
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