Personas: Practice and Theory

This article was about designing for imaginary people called personas. Basically it's a marketing concept that involves creating fictional characters based on actual data and research. These characters are very detailed, as they would be in a movie or a tv show. Designing for these characters is useful in the design process by providing a very specific target audience to design for.

Is it possible to touch somebody's heart with design?

Stefan Sagmeister has a lot of good points in this article. One being that there is a bunch of big name high production "fluff" being designed.  Anything that is lacking in meaning, or that doesn't resonate within us. Sagmeister says that the reason for this is that as designers we really don't believe in much. "We are not much into politics or religion and don't have much of a stand on any important issues. I guess when our conscience is so wishy-washy, so is our design." This made me think a lot about how important it is to develop your own personal style, and to believe in your work and also love doing it. Sagmeister says that you should be designing because you love producing good design. If producing good design is what you're passionate about money will follow. Alternatively if you set out to make good design for money instead of love you are destined to fail. 

So it seems to me that most successful designs create an emotional experience, or as Sagmeister says touches our hearts.

www.sagmeister.com/

Moodboard / Sketches / Ideas

Moodboard, inspiration for possible type ideas and colors.

Sketches for Guide and Map

Research

The map in the "Where to Eat guide" is also working well. It displays the name of the restaurant along with a corresponding page number, nice!

Research

I like a couple of things that the "Where to Eat guide" offer.

Directed Storytelling

I thought this was an interesting article because of how useful the process of directed storytelling can be. Everything we design comes from what we've experienced or what we've learned. Sometimes our designs may be lacking meaning or may not resonate with our intended audience. This is where directed storytelling can be a successful tool. Take for instance interaction design. This is an area where storytelling is absolutely essential. The article accounts the educational software "Blackboard." Information was gathered through a directed storytelling session from a students perspective and also from a teachers perspective. The combined perspectives gave the designers a clear understanding of what aspects of the software worked and what needed improvement. 

This process will be very useful to think about when I'm designing my term long. Instead of thinking about the design from just my point of view it will be important to involve the audience that will be experiencing my design. For instance there are many different maps of downtown Portland, some are more attractive than others but that doesn't mean they are better. It is the maps that work and do the job they are supposed to do easily and effectively that get used the most. Maps that don't work very well have numbers as locations that correspond to a description somewhere else on the page. These are annoying because you have to look in two different places before you know what you're looking for. 

Look at these maps: 

What is easier to understand? This map with numbers?

 















Or this map with the business logos as markers?

Schedule

WEEK SIX

11.3 tuesday // illustration and layout

      3 digital variations guide book layout
      2 illustrations of Benson employees
      Compile interviews

11.5 thursday // digital one-on-one meeting

    digital guide book spread with illustration
    refine interview content
    continue illustrations
    reading #8 Intro and Fwd and Chapter 1 from How to be a Graphic designer
    Team post

WEEK SEVEN

11.10 tuesday // 10% day // post to Flickr

    refine digital spread
    5 completed illustrations
    comps of map
    comps of guide book cover

11.12 thursday // further refinement

     continue working on map
     refine spreads and illustrations
     Reading 9, 10, 11: Chapter 2, 3, and 4 from How to be a Graphic Designer

WEEK EIGHT

11.17 tuesday // finalization

    present most completed versions of map, guide book cover and spreads
    Reading 12, 13, 14: Chapter 5, 6, and 7

11.19 thursday // continue final work

    Reading 15, 16: Chapter 8 and 9
    continue revisions based off class critique

WEEK NINE

11.24 tuesday // 15% full class critique

    email low-res .pdf by noon
    portfolio level quality

11.26 thursday // NO CLASS Thanksgiving

    Begin photographing final pieces

WEEK TEN

12.1 tuesday // Small Groups

    All work due, photographed portfolio level presentation

12.3 thursday // Full Class Attends

    portfolio presentation of final

WEEK ELEVEN 

FINAL DUE DATE/END OF TERM

12.8 tuesday //

2PM FINAL PROJECT DUE TURN-IN

    completely finished PDF portfolio presentation burned to disc
    brandbook
    process book
    documentation of research/participation

Methodology

Term long overview: EZ-Portland Guide

Objectives: The goal of my project is to create a hotel concierge suggestion package. The main deliverable would be in the format of a fold out map attached to a booklet.

The booklet would be broken into three or more categories 1. Restaurants 2. Tours 3. Things to do. There will be detailed information and photos about the topics in the booklet. Important information will include how to get there, when it's open, how much it costs. There will be options for walking tours, bus tours and self driving tours. Restaurant information will be categorized by cuisine, location, features and price.

The map would be in the format of a detailed view of downtown Portland.

A supporting website may also be developed

Audience: Interview concierges from five hotels downtown and come up with their top suggestions for tours and things to do in the Portland area. Also what are their top restaurant recommendations.

Deliverables: Map, booklet, website

Culture Probes

This is almost exactly what we are doing in class. It is a fun way to involve an audience in the design process. In this case a package of maps, postcards, a disposable camera and other materials were designed to provoke inspirational responses from elderly people in diverse communities. These packages or probes were delivered as gifts to elderly communities. The elderly people would complete and send back the materials to the design team. The completed probes were packed full of valuable materials, and images. They were used successfully to inspire the teams designs and guide their creative ideas.

Audience as a Co-designer

I found this to be a very interesting concept, where the audience is in control and makes decisions about the design concept and form. This seems a bit questionable but with the right circumstance and guidance it could come together to create a very successful solution.

An overview of the problem in Africa is that strong awareness of AIDS prevention through visual communication is weak. Africa is also lacking experienced designers and agencies to develop strong campaigns and the U.S. is lacking understanding of African culture create successful campaigns. The solution is to join with the Kenyan people and work together to solve a design problem.

A virtual design studio was setup between Audrey Bennett’s team and a design workshop in Kenya. They would communicate through interactive technologies such as Elluminate, LearnLInc and Yahoo groups. Bennett developed a three phase practical approach to graphic design. This was used to guide the design process from start to finish. Starting from concept development, to thumbnail sketches, revisions and final printing.

The posters produced by the Kenyan people were far more successful at communicating an accepted message to their target audience.

Term Long: Idea

Portland Tour
Create an easy tour guide book that includes map, and brochure for hotels to give to guests. I'm a bellman at the Benson Hotel and the most commonly asked question is what is there to do downtown. I want to create an inclusive guide book that can be given to guests in response to this question.


Audience participation: Interview concierges from five hotels downtown and come up with their top suggestions for tours and things to do in the Portland area. Also what are their top restaurant recommendations.

Deliverables: Map, website, booklet

Included in the deliverables will be the top, tour, restaurants and things to do. There will be detailed information on what the activity entails, with visuals, how to get there, when it's open, and how much it costs.

Options for walking tours, bus tours and driving tours.
Restaurants, where, how much, cost, sample menus.

Possible names: Easy Tour, Portland Guide, Portable Concierge.

Reading 2: Constructivism

Constructivism emerged in Russia following WWI in 1913. It was in response to the notion that fine art was the forefront of the art world. Social and economic issues along with the rise of the industrial revolution coursed artists into a new trend in painting, and sculpture. Constructivism was considered an invention of the Russian avant-garde. Its themes are usually minimal, 3-dimensional forms of some kind of architecture. It seems heavily influenced on the rise of machinery.

One of the most famous examples of Constructivism is the Tatlin Tower, Model of Monument to the Third International.

It was supposed to be built 400m high, about 80m taller than the Eiffel Tower.

Here are more examples of Constructivism art work:

Team meeting today!

Our team met today for a few hours to get our concept ironed out. We had to decide which direction to pursue, the game or the 13th hour, or somehow integrate the two together. Our final decision was a completely new direction inspired by the game idea. The new idea is called "The Design Flu"

More to come..

Reading response 1

I choose to read Loving Laura More. I thought it was a very good example of how a social interaction site can have a dramatic impact on ones life. In the case of Laura - she began completing assignments on the site "Learning to love you more" one of her assignments was to write her life story. Her life story was so incredibly touching that the site LTLYM created an assignment based on her story. The assignment was to read her life story and create a film reenacting a scene of her life. This was a huge production from people all over the world. I enjoyed reading it, it was a very cool story.

The picture below is of Laura Lark and Harrell Fletcher.