explorative design

Every one of us, no matter if he/she has a handicap or not, knows situations on the street, in public places, or public buildings where he/she has a lot (!) of daily duties to do, is in a BIG rush, and has to go from on place to another in order to finish these duties, but is faced with an obstacle in the shape of bad design or a lack of technical support. I am speaking of bad design of public places where someone with a handicap, such as a wheelchair user, or someone without handicap but with other issues, let's say a parent with a baby buggy and two bags full of groceries, cannot enter or pass through it. 

My idea of a mobile app to attack this daily issue is following: - each citizen who comes across a public place where he/she thinks there could or must be improvements collects these information in the app - the app user can set points on a mobile city map, and add description about the bad design, so others who might have to pass this place can avoid it - users can personalize the app with his/her personal data about his/her health status or needs - users can plan routes through the city, whereas the routes are already  showing the fastest way, including avoiding places, according to the user's personal data - data can be categorized in different groups for comparisons of interest, such as regions, cities, type of public place, countries etc. (=> this data then can be compared with other data to find out the reasons for it, e.g. Why does Bezirk 1 in Vienna have more issues concerning street design than Bezirk 2?) - users can send in suggestions to solve the issues (maybe they saw an "invention" in another city, which is successful and therefore can be a solution for a current problem)

Infographic about the color "Red"

For the seminar session on December 18th, our group task was to design an infographic dedicated to a color - in this case we chose "red".

In our last seminar meetup, we've already started to gather ideas and inspiration, which could have been useful to add to our infographic. From the beginning on, we've already wanted to include the story with the red yarn somehow into our design, and after brainstorming in class with the other groups, the idea of a maze with a red yarn running through rooms where information and graphics about the color can be found was the end result.

As one can see in the picture above, we've included information about - physically aspects - traditions in other countries - red characters in media - figure of speeches - flag colors - meaning of the color red - blood types - brand logos colored in red - Santa Claus - and the story about the red yarn.

For the seminar meet-up on the November 27th we had to create a design for a product wrapping, which user group isn't usually known to use it.

In our group (Eva, Herbert, and I), we've decided to design a packaging of a ego-shooter-game for women. Our goal was not to use too much of the women's clichés, but still show a feminin side of the game.  The results is a clash between "classy-confident-woman-liking-hair-dryers-and-nail-polish" and "killing-men-with-said-items" ;-) Our design looks a bit cruel at first sight and probably produce ambivalent feelings for some, but you just have to look at it with a bit of humor, some tolerance, and a lot of ;-) 

Check out the details at Eva's blog entry here: https://auskundschaftendesign.wordpress.com/2014/11/26/die-waffen-der-frauen-produktverpackung-details/

Typography Posters

For tmrw's meetup, we were asked to create three different styles of typography, which represent a well-known slogan. For this project, we worked in groups with two people. My partner, Astrid (http://strawberriiii.wordpress.com) and I chose the slogan "Auch ein blindes Huhn findet mal ein Korn."

The first typo-poster is traditional typo only, the second poster should also consists out of traditional typography, but with usage of the space of the poster. For the third one, we had to use effective typography. You can see our results in the pictures above! 

For last week's meetup, we had to bring one bad and one good example of typography.

This one is a very bad usage of typography: there are at least 8-9 different styles of typography for just one advertisement. I don't know where I should focus on!

Tomorrow's our next class meet-up and we had to prepare for Typography this time! Therefore, we needed to read on following articles:

http://designinstruct.com/tools-basics/the-basics-of-typography/

and

https://medium.com/re-form/a-refutation-of-the-elements-of-typographic-style-3b18c07977f3

and check out a TED-Talk: http://www.ted.com/talks/david_carson_on_design?language=en

My "Good Design"

For the last class meet-up, we had to bring one thing that we think is a good design. I brought this "rice paper divider".

A "rice paper divider" is a kitchen utensil which is used to get the wet and sticky rice paper separated from each other. If you know asian food, you've probably already had some "Fresh Springrolls / Summerrolls". It's like the asian burrito, you can say ;) Therefore you also need some kind of wrapping for all the ingredients you want to eat simultaneously! And that's when the rice paper comes in! 

How do you use this divider? You basically stack rice paper onto one plastic divider, and put another plastic divider on top of that, continuing with a rice paper etc. Then, you hold this stack of rice paper and plastic under water for like 5-10seconds, pull it out and place it into the holder (see pictures). Now the water can drop out, and you then can take a paper for wrapping! TA-DAAA! :)

I chose this divider because I love things, which support me in everyday life, are easy to understand and simple to use. Do you know the moments in life, when you pick up something and think "Oh my god, why haven't I found this earlier?" or "Why haven't I come up with this?!?" >.< Well, that "OMG"-moment is the case here!

Upside-Down Sketching #5

Hybrid Sketches

Our task today was to combine our sketch with a photo of yesterday's household device. I chose the washing machine. Additionally, we had to come up with two functions which are only possible due to our new touch screen design from yesterday. 

The Vanilla Sketch

Supportive parameters of a sketch could be annotations (to clarify and explain specific features), arrows (to strengthen the connections between elements), or textual notes (for adding any important and general information about the sketch itself).

Our task was to convert a household appliance's control panel into a touchscreen control panel.

Upside-Down Sketching #4

This time: Mickey Mouse :)

Upside-Down Sketching #3

Sketching Vocabulary: People in action / with emotions

Today we had to sketch people who are either in some situation/in action, or faces with different emotions/facial expressions. This should help us to illustrate people interacting with technology in future work. 

The facial expressions in the picture above show the emotions: happy, disappointed, angry, sad, surprised, ashamed, sneaky, smirky