Amanda Hayes

Week Five - The Gold Side of the Moon

This week we focused on making and prototyping our tangible 3D printed space vessel. We decided to prototype three different shapes to determine what would be more economical, efficient and optimised the rules of Physics. We picked the following three shapes based on research from SpaceX and Blue Origin as these two private companies are the forefront of space technology. 

For the rest of the week we will review these and determine what prototype we would prefer to create. 

Week Four - The Gold Side of the Moon

Roles & Responsibilities 

Miles and I are good friends, work colleagues and have previously been studio partners so we understand what each others strengths and weaknesses are and who is responsible for what area of development and execution without delegation or conscious communication. Because of this relationship, we didn’t even talk about who was team lead of specific areas we just did it. 

Miles - Creative Developer 

Amanda - Creative Director 

For the assessment we will flesh these roles out a little more but for now this is a good indication of who is responsible for what. 

Time Management 

As both Miles and I work nearly full time, it can be difficult to find time to focus on studio work, or any uni work for that matter.  To combat this Miles and I set up meetings twice a week while in the office to sit in a meeting room and work on the development of the project. The office environment is more focused, calm and quiet than studio making it easier to maintain a steady work flow. So far this has been successful in the development of our project. 

The Trello board created by the TA’s for the Lexus Design Awards especially the key dates section helped us plan ahead around work the due dates we needed to make. We are yet to find time to create our own time management board but we will in due course as this is important for the assignment. 

Week Three - The Gold Side of the Moon

This week we focused on finding resources and information on the positive impact and negative implication of mining the moon in order to be well educated on this topic to make informed decisions. I think the more contextual research a project has it shows a deep understand of the concept from both angles. 

Positive Impact to consider

- Reduces the critical environmental cost 

- Reduces global warming 

- Solar system has an endless supply of resources 

- The lifeblood of the world’s economy 

- Helps future generations on Earth 

- 220m years to deplete 1% of the moon’s mass (this wouldn’t change the affect the gravitation that causes tides or orbit)

- Reduces potential human risk and error (health and safety)

- Increases precision, accuracy and speed

- Will not be affected by hostile environments 

It is good to be well educated and informed in the negative implications of moon mining to have a counter argument established in discussions. 

Negative Implications to consider

- Devaluing resources on earth (gold)

- Geopolitical issues 

- Stakeholders in Lunar heritage

- Moon role in human culture 

Week Two - The Gold Side of the Moon

The Lexus Design Brief 

Design for a Better Tomorrow

Concepts must anticipate a challenge of the future, address that challenge with an innovative solution, and captivate the imagination with it exceptional design.

I knew to make life easier for myself in COMP711 - Intelligent Agents and Environments, it would be a smart idea to do a project focused around artificial intelligence and technology. We broke that concept down into four categories that could be improved to design a better tomorrow. 

- Earth 

- Water 

- People 

- Space

In the end we decided on space as Miles had watched a couple captivating youtube videos about mining the moon and thought this could be an interesting topic to explore. We broke the Lexus Design Brief down and categorised our brief into the Lexus brief to make sure we were on the right track and the idea was viable for the brief. 

Challenge

Currently mankind is obliterating Earth’s finite rare earth materials supply, creating an economical and environmental issue for Earth and future generations of humans and other species

Innovative Solution 

The moon and other seemingly barren rocks in our solar system may actually be the gold mine of rare resources vital to the Earth’s future. Could mining the moon hold the potential to solve this crisis?

Design 

Creating a 3D printed prototype of the reusable machinery that would mine the moon for gold, copper iron etc, bring it back to earth and be viable. Using hydropower from the moon to fuel this mission. This would be prototype would be the tangible solution we would hand in to Lexus. 

For showcase and interactivity purposes we want to create an AR video/insulation of mining the moon to demonstrate visually how we expect this to work.

Week One - The Gold Side of the Moon

Coming into this semester I had no idea what I wanted to do or if I wanted to collaborate with anyone, which is a pretty daunting place to be in. However, after watching the Lexus Design Awards I knew I wanted to adhere to that brief. After spending a few days trying to mask my anxiety around studio, I had an idea on who to partner with on a studio project - Miles. I thought collaborating with Miles would be a good idea because we both work nearly full time for the same company so it made sense to align our schedules and put our heads together to create our project. So that was one worry now sorted, next was a project idea. 

Concept - Revised

To design an interactive website/virtual installation of trans disciplinary efforts to display the concept of internal monologue through personal exploration” (Hayes & Henwood, 2020).

This project is designed to educate people, through the use of interaction and immersion to emphasize the topic of internal monologue and people’s ability to process information. Do we see differences in people’s ability to connect knowledge with thoughts and ideas, internally and externally? How can we demonstrate internal monologue or lack of? in order to be more inclusive and understanding of others, (Hayes & Henwood, 2020).

Roles & Responsibilities

Within the roles and responsibilities of the project, Amy and I both have similar skills useful in our development phase so share multiple responsibilities in this area.  Delegating tasks and responsibilities was a simple process as we both understand each other's strengths, weaknesses and work styles from previous projects. Evidently leading to no coordination or management issues. Formally, we discussed and determined the following titles/responsibilities.

Amanda Hayes

Amanda is the Creative Director and Developer of the project; in charge of planning, task allocation, task tracking, administrations and management. Execution of the coding aspects and overall outcome. Playtesting, feedback, idea initiation and reflection in closure phase.

Amy Henwood 

Amy Henwood is the Creative Designer and Developer of the project; in charge of initiation, development and creation of the visual, audio and physical elements through multiple soft and hardware’s. Execution of the overall outcome. Playtesting, feedback, idea initiation and reflection in closure phase.

Stakeholders - Individually written 

Partner - Amy Henwood 

Contact Details: [email protected] https://amyhenwoodbct.tumblr.com 

Very high power, very high influence

Amy’s reputation and grades are tied to the project, its outcome and its success. She had the power to enable, block or alter any decisions I made. Her role and responsibilities are outlined in Figure 3. My business relationship with Amy was nurtured and managed through frequent communications, feedback and reflection in order to create a successful outcome. 

Paper and Course Leaders - Clint and Donna

Contact Details: [email protected], [email protected] or [email protected] 

High power, high influence

Their reputation is tied to our productivity and the result of our project. They have the power to award grades based on how we meet the marking rubric criteria or shut down the project completely if it does not comply with AUT guidelines. In order for us to achieve a high grade and high quality outcome, this relationship needed to be managed closely through frequent communications. This is observed by having 1:1 meetings regularly to request and utilise their feedback. Also by participating and engaging with their in class activities they reciprocated this support by engaging in our project. 

Shareholders/Investors - Auckland Art Gallery

Contact Details: [email protected]

High power, medium influence

The Auckland Art Gallery can be considered a stakeholder as they are considered a goal to showcase our project. They have medium interest as they hold stakes in multiple entities, diluting their unique interest in our project. Therefore to increase their interest and reduce the risk of them blocking the partnership, we communicated with them often and listened to their suggestions. 

Classmates

Contact Details: 2020 Year Three BCT Facebook Group Chat or BCT Group Page

Medium power, medium influence

Prototype of the website display 

I designed initial pencil wireframe sketches of the three possible options for displaying the animations upon, for Amy and I to discuss and determine the success. 

1. (Left). Block layout of each animation, no navigation. This would be simple for the me to create for the user to navigate by scrolling. Animations would autoplay.

2. (Centre). Standard website layout. Text layout above and below small animations. The animations would be smaller which could limit a persons ability to view. Animations would not autoplay. 

3. (Right). Split block layout. One main animation, two smaller animations, text below. This would be easy to navigate but also difficult to create auto play. 

Upon reflection and feedback with Amy, option 1. (left), was most popular. From here I refined three designs based on the initial wireframe. These three includes more features, such as navigation, header and footer. 

1. (Left). No header, footer navigation, and copyright details. 

2. (Centre). Header navigation, footer include copyright details. 

3. (Right). No navigation, footer includes copyright details. 

To better display these options I created mockup wireframes as prototypes of the above three options. From here, Amy and I decided option three (right), was the best and most effective option.

Practical Methodologies 

This week we had a presentation on Trans media Storytelling which I found super informative and relative, not only to Studio but my marketing elective paper through the business school. 

Trans media storytelling refers to a variety of emergent new forms of digital and non digital narratives, e.g., web-based stories, interactive stories, hypertexts, narrative computer games (such as mindcraft), audio and video, podcasts etc. Anything with a storyline that is displayed digitally!

Trans media storytelling is also very audience drive because of the necessity to help your audience understand the story through a variety of media. 

The aspect of this presentation which resonated with me the most was about Visual Communication, because of its relevance to the marketing plan and strategy I was demonstrating through a report in my marketing elective. Visual communication is all about graphic design, illustration and animation, books, print, magazines, screen based media, interactive web design, short films, advertising, promotion, corporate identity and packaging design. This is really interesting to me as I recently learnt that 92% of people want an advertisement to tell a story and that is why companies like Nike create such powerful ad campaigns for new products. Taking the user on a journey through visual hues is necessary in creating sales and revenue, which can also be applied to Studio in the form of engagement and entertainment. Through visual communication the user will stay curious and want to discover more information and follow along on the journey of the animation. 

Facts from the presentation

- 90% of the information transmitted to the brain is visual

- Visuals are processed 60, 000 times faster in the brain than text

- 80% of people remember what they see

- 92% of all human communication is non verbal 

- 40% of people will respond better to visual information than text

In relation to Studio, this is really important for both Amy and I, as Amy’s job is to create animations that engage and interact with the user to keep them immersed in the animations and the overall project. And for me this is about creating a website that is visually appealing to the user to keep them engaged also. Without engagement, technically the project isn’t a success. 

“The ideal outcome for our project is to design an interactive website/virtual installation of transdisciplinary efforts to display the concept of internal monologue through personal exploration” (Hayes & Henwood 2020). The ideal process of execution is reflected in Assignment One. In contrast, the visual workflow, and processes outlined in this post reflect the reality of executing our project.

Task Management

To measure management and participation of our tasks, originally I created the task tracking chart, following the Agile and Kanban Model, to record tasks, due dates, cost, time and completion. For this assignment, I refined our system and tried a new method of visually displaying our workflow management using a Trello board. Our Trello board didn’t follow an ideal Kanban design where tasks are categorised into ‘Requested’, ‘In Progress’ and ‘Done’, instead, we categorised into ‘Preparation’, ‘Research’, our individual ‘Diverging’ efforts, ‘Converging’ and ‘Reflection’. Each task has a due date attached that was visible at a glance and each task was listed in chronological order. I made the tasks in the Trello board very vague to accommodate a Work Breakdown Structure rather than specific deliverables, as both Amy and I were aware of the deliverables we needed to achieve from the LucidChart document  and previous discussions. 

Wednesday 20th May 

This week Amy and I had to present our project in a critique session. To begin with, we were pretty unorganised as we were both very busy with university work and other commitments to prepare well in advance so we made the presentation the night before - classic. In our defence, the content had been created but we just needed to put it together in a coherent document. 

The critique session was just my peers/friends and no lecturers/teachers, so it was hard to get an indication of if our work was tracking well in terms of the rubric. 

But, the feedback we received from our classmates solidified the importance of play testing and feedback session which was really helpful. What was really good about this peer feedback to note was everyone commented on how they were struggling with the current situation to create and were disheartened by not being able to truly represent their idea and work like planning. Another group, is using the same platform (a website) to display the final outcome and they mentioned that it will not create the immersion or interaction that the project needs in order to thrive - I FELT THAT! 

In the beginning, we had planned to create four animations:

1. the coming together of thoughts, ideas and knowledge from trans-disciplinary pathways

2. the power of emotions 

3. ambiguity 

4. the idea of having external conversations to learn and understand other people’s thoughts and internal monologue. 

But from the critique session, we were left with really thought provoking feedback ‘why don’t you focus more on emotions?’ We thought about this for a while and decided this was a fab idea because it bring more of the idea of interactivity back into the project. 

Amy and I had a meeting after the critique to talk about this and we decided to change animations two and three and add another and keep one and four. We didn’t want to throw away the creative research or overall ideas these animations represented so we discussed ways in which we could incorporate this. This is what we decided. 

1. the coming together of thoughts, ideas and knowledge from trans-disciplinary pathways

2. focused on happiness 

3. focus on sadness

4. focus on fear. 

5. the idea of having external conversations to learn and understand other people’s thoughts and internal monologue. 

The animations are different to the outcome originally planned, however represent both our creative research on the power of emotions and ambiguity. 

We decided what would be interesting is to interview our specific target audience as to resources/objects/weather patterns/colours etc that make them feel this type of emotion and display those responses in the animation to add elements of ambiguity but ambiguity with direction and meaning. This would also start conversations as people could ask the questions 

- do you think object X represents happiness for you as well? or is your happiness more represented in object Y?

Wednesday 20th May

This week Amy and I focused on our respective areas of development. I started to create the HTML and CSS wireframe of the website in which the outcome of the project will be displayed on. 

Next week, we have a critique session, so it is really important we grind this week to have a really good outcome to playtest and get feedback on in this session. 

This week’s class activity was ‘Trash to Treasure’. Clint encouraged us to make prototypes made from “trash” that we found around our house to represent the project or something similar. I found this task a little bit difficult as my hour didn’t have many objects that would be useful for this activity. The learning's and teachings of this activity were really important and interesting but the actual making I struggled with.  I think this is highly to do with my lack of motivation to go to the class. I think it is important to note that I am not struggling with motivation to do the work, it’s just going to the class because its less ‘obvious’ if I don’t go now than before. I can book a tutorial session and that adds value to the project but the class tasks I struggle to find the relevance in my projects outcome. I also work 25 hours a week so I try and make sure my time is being used wisely on tasks that have a direct impact to an assignment or project. This is a really bad attitude to have towards the class address and I am actively working to improve this. 

Wednesday 13th May

Rapid Prototyping - Digital 

This morning, I focused on creating rapid prototype drafts of our animations. Compared to the handmade draws they are slightly different as my ideas, thoughts and visual decisions have expanded and changed as I thought more on the topic this week. Tumblr hates me and didn’t upload all of them so we are just rolling with this! 

Wednesday 06th May

Rapid Prototyping - Handmade. 

So, I understand my artistic skills are limited but here are a couple rough sketches I drew up today to visualise our animations. 

This is each aniamtion will be displayed on the interactive website when they are stationary. 

Working backwards from the outcome, the Cyclemon (2013) website uses a simple but effective scroll display layout to show the different options available in block form. This is easy for any audience to understand, use and easy from a design perspective to create. It is very modern, bright and playful but uses the power of colour to capture the audience.

For animation one, we are displaying an introduction to our topic of internal monologue, taking inspiration from the In Pieces (2020) interactive exhibition. In this exhibition they have bits coming together to create different animal species. We think this could visually represent the multiple ideas, theories and resolutions within multiple disciplines coming together to form the multi disciplinary outcome of our project; the Art of Internal Monologue.

For animation two, we want to play on the concept of ‘power of emotions’. This is stemmed from our posed question ‘do we see differences in people’s ability to connect knowledge with thoughts and ideas, internally and externally?’. The book ‘The Astonishing Power of Emotions’ (1986), outlined the concept of happiness creating a platform to share knowledge, experiences and ideas. Sadness helps us to connect with the knowledge and fear helps the knowledge to resonate with us. Can we use this power to help others process information and share it with others, fulfilling our overall idea of starting conversations, internally and externally. Through playtesting we will determine which emotion is more effective to display.

For animation three, we want to create something ambiguous to display the concept of demonstrating internal monologue, or lack of. How would you describe an ambiguous visual to yourself internally, and others externally? We drew inspiration for this animation from Lglooghost’s ‘Clear Tamei’ (2017), video clip, which goes through an intense transition of nothingingness from 1:00 to 1:00. As well as SIAMES ‘The Wolf’ (2018), which uses a simple black and white graphic about being an alcoholic but displayed in a vague format to trigger the audience to experience other possible themes within it and build personal conclusions on such ideas. 

For animation four, we wanted to create something similar to animation one but in reverse to represent the idea of external monologue and having conversations with other people to gain more insight and understanding of others and how they interpret concepts, information and the Art of Internal Conversation.

Animation five is just a closing screen with our scope added, to once again reinforce this idea. 

As you can tell from the following drawing, Amy is clearly better at art. This is here wireframe/storyboard. 

Wednesday 06th May

Creative Research 

This week I did some creative research to help with the initiation and planning of the four films.

For film one, we found the following website, which I really liked the bits coming together to form a shape, which represents the idea of information and ideas in multiple disciplines coming together to form our concept and proposal statement of Internal Monologue. http://species-in-pieces.com/# 

For film two, we wanted to play on the concept of power of emotions expressed through colour. This article helped me to plan and demonstrate this concept and the importance of this theme. https://www.socialmediatoday.com/news/how-the-emotional-power-of-color-can-tap-into-your-audiences-brains/454066/. This article was really helpful in finding ways to covey the power of emotions in art and insulations. https://www.creativebloq.com/features/10-ways-to-convey-emotion-in-your-artwork. 

For film three, we wanted it to focus more on ambiguity. We used this video as this video has a storyline/purpose/theme but portrays it in a very subtle way it creates the opportunity to build conclusions personally. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lX44CAz-JhU&feature=youtu.be. This video  from 1:30 to 2:30 goes through an intense transcription of random weird graphics and audio which is hard to describe to someone without actually watching it, this is an idea we want to show. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eWku6kzJA80

For film four, we want to do something similar but the reverse to film one. Representing the idea of external monologue and having conversations with other people to gain more insight and understanding of others and how they interpret concepts and audio visual insulations. 

Wednesday 29th April 

Due to Covid-19 and the new online learning environment, we are no longer having an Open Studio exhibition and therefore are unable to create the outcome we had planned which incorporated physical aspects, so instead we need to revisit our idea and outcome to follow the new guidelines. 

Housekeeping 

Typically, Amy and I would work together collaboratively in person but as that is no longer viable we have scheduled in twice weekly zoom meetings to having face to face contact (kinda) and chat about the project. It is easier to generate ideas and develop our concept verbally, than trying to type it all out and get misinterpreted.  

Outcome

We discussed multiple avenues we could take in order to create an outcome for our proposal statement and the most effective idea was to keep the audio/visual experience and reflect this through an interactive website. 

Research 

The following links were website examples we will use in the planning phase and to create a storyline to our website. 

https://apps.ua/en/

http://species-in-pieces.com/

http://www.cyclemon.com/

https://resn.co.nz/#

https://www.nike-react.com/

https://shopify.github.io/draggable/

https://honda-f1-history.webflow.io/

https://rotational-parallax-illustrations.webflow.io/

https://www.webfx.com/web-design/how-to-make-website-more-interactive.html

https://www.ucraft.com/blog/7-best-ways-to-make-your-more-interactive-websites

https://www.isitwp.com/best-web-design-software/

https://www.wpeka.com/wordpress-interactive-site-plugins.html

https://www.weld.io/tutorials/animations-and-interactive-content-in-wordpress

Homework

For our ‘homework’, we set ourselves tasks to achieve and then in our meetings we can discuss them in detail, how we are tracking to achieve them and if we need any help/guidance to finishing this task. 

My homework is to find out what is involved in creating an interactive website. Or if it is easier to create an insulation 

My homework

Statement of Intent (for reference)

This project is designed to educate people, through the use of interaction and immersion to emphasize the topic of internal monologue and people’s ability to process information. Do we see differences in people’s ability to connect knowledge with thoughts and ideas, internally and externally? How can we demonstrate internal monologue or lack of? in order to be more inclusive and understanding of others, (Hayes & Henwood, 2020).

I think we make a few animated movies in photoshop (or whatever) and I can make a website and the user can click through them and watch them sort of thing.

Film one - introduction

Based off this website http://species-in-pieces.com/#  we create a motion of coming together with pieces to create a brain/mind and it zooms into the brain/mind. (this is an introduction to set the scene of INTERNAL monologue)

Film two - play on the power of emotions and colour. Happiness makes us want to share, sadness helps us connect, fear makes us remember information. Can we use this to show the idea of someone processing information? What does this make you think about? If film two is happy, maybe we ask a (rhetorical) question of “do you want to share this with a friend?” (to display the concept of connecting knowledge with thoughts and ideas, internally and externally with oneself)

Film three - create something ambiguous and maybe ask a (rhetorical) question of “how would you describe this?” (to display the concept of demonstrating internal monologue or lack of)

Film four - Conclusion

MONDAY 27th APRIL

Today, I finished creating the Lucid Chart documents and the task tracker to accomodate post Covid-19 requirements and circumstances.As the university situation has changed to exclusively online, these documents had to be updated to accomodate this new change. I think it is important to have both sets of documents to reflect on the impact of this disruption and use this to better problem solve in the future. 

Wednesday 18th March 

Mood Board

Creative research comes in many forms but is primarily used to help develop your ideas by either exploring different topics to give contextual backing to your project or gather information inspiration that may influence it. 

I found some installations on Google and Pinterest which are similar in some respects to what we would like to achieve (especially the top right and left) and envision for our outcome. I think it is important to have a mood board as this plays an important role in the direction of the team and the goals we set to achieve. From this we can see what we want to achieve and almost work backwards from this. This has helped develop our creative research discovery

Final Questions and Responses for Final Project

How are you feeling right now? (Content, Scared, Excited, Nervous)

Do you talk to yourself? (Yes, No)

How do you talk to yourself? (In an encouraging way, in a critical way)

If you put your thoughts on paper would they be? (full dialogue, pondering thoughts, brief ideas/phrases/words, images)

When you are talking to yourself, do you hear yourself respond?(yes, no)

How loud is your inner voice?(1 to 10 scale)

Do you experience imagery? (red star test)

Pick an emotion to describe your internal monologue? (Red, Blue, Grey, Yellow, Orange, Black)

Next week, I want to talk to the TA’s or lecturers for their advice on these questions and how to best build the audio and visuals in order to create a personalised experience. 

Amy and I also discussed the idea of making the project more of an art exhibition up to personal interpretation and adding objects into it to analyse if people found objects to fiddle with more relaxing or a distraction from boredom. I think this could be very effective if we execute it properly. 

What do the questions look like? 

We are thinking each option will have multi choice options to make it easier for us to develop and code. And based on the answer a visual and audio display will play. This does limit personalisation a little but we will encourage participants to honestly answer the questions. As the questions develop they begin to get more personal and we hope we have made them specific enough for this reason.

Started Assignment One

This week I also started assignment one by collecting all the resources I need together and collating them in a report format for submission. I have the research and time management aspects already complete so now I need to create examples of making this week and next week. 

Today’s Class Activity

Today, in class we focused on the concept of Rapid Prototyping. Prototyping, user testing and intuition will evolve the projects intention. Design is a style of 

- Low fidelity models 

- Designing around problems