Untitled

Box Line Lower Third

SXSW Intro, Transition, Lower Thirds and Postroll Animation

Plus Usability Test Plan

In these chapters, Steve Krung really emphasizes how important it is to do usability tests for a newly designed site. He explains that usability tests are more beneficial than focus groups because focus groups only sit and talk about appearance and opinions about the site, where as usability tests show a real user navigating their way through the site and completing tasks so that you can see if the site really works the way you intended it to. For do it yourself usability testing, you need about three people. These people should be very different from one another. It is important to have users that may not use a site like yours to see if they can still understand how to use it. For finding participants, you can use user groups, facebook, twitter, friends or neighbors. You should offer the users $50-$100 per hour for their time. It is generous of them to test your site and is very beneficial to you so you can find problems that you didn't see on your own.  

Testing should be done in a quiet space (office or a conference room) with a table, desk, and two chairs. You need a computer with internet access, a mouse, keyboard, and a microphone. Then you will need to use screen sharing so that others can observe the test from another room. The person who sits with the participant is the facilitator. The facilitator keeps the participants comfortable, focused, and encourage them to think out loud during the process. The facilitator also guides the participant through all the tests that they will complete. As many people as possible should observe this process. This way, there are more eyes to observe the process and more people to pick up on what can be improved.

What happens during the test...Begin by explaining how the test will work so the participant knows what to expect. Ask the participant questions about themselves to get to know what kind of user they are and to make them feel more relaxed and comfortable. Start with a home page tour to see how easy it is to understand the home page and how well the participant knows what the website is for just by looking at it. Then give the participant multiple tasks to complete to observe how well they can do them and to see their reactions of how they do it. After the tasks, ask the participant questions about anything that happened during the test and any questions people from the observation room want to know.

My usability test:

You have tickets to see a show at the WVU creative arts center. You are looking for directions so you don’t get lost. Where can you find them?

What is the current show that you could go see right now? You want to purchase tickets for this show. Get to the page that gives you directions on how to do so.

You are feeling very generous and want to make a donation to the West Virginia Public Theatre to help them create these wonderful shows. Make a donation for $200

You’re a teacher and have heard about the educational ourtreach shows WVPT comes to schools for. You want WVPT to come to your school. How do you contact them?

You want to audition to be casted in WVPT’s next play. What will you have to perform in the audition?

Your favorite show is “Funny Girl” and you are wondering if WVPT has ever performed it. Find this information to answer your question.

You want to contact WVPT because you have a couple of questions about the next audition. Where would you find this information?

We live in a world with continuous problems arising and issues that need to be solved everyday. As designers, we have a special power. We can see these problems in the world and make physical solutions to solve them. Can design change the world? That is a hard question to ask. But what design can do is inform people about these problems on a case-by-case basis. Designers have the capability to solve problems through their creative process. The way we study people to figure out their issues helps us create tons of ideas to arrive at a solution.

The reason I chose to become a designer was simply because of the way my brain works. Math and science classes were always a struggle, but art class was where I always excelled. I noticed that I am a very visual learner who is better with images rather than words. This is what makes designers different than the ordinary individual. Our observant minds help us to pick up on everyday things that others may not see.  We notice the behavior of people and the details in nature that are just everyday background to others.  A tree is not just a tree, but a symbol for the many stages of life. These details provide inspiration for our work. Are designers problem solvers? Absolutely. Clients come to us with a need or an issue, and it is up to us to find a solution. Through our creative minds, we have the power to inform unique ideas that can potentially change the world.

Informing students on why we stand for the flag:

Objective: Informing students why we stand for the flag and why it is important to stand during the national anthem

Issue: There has been an issue in our country lately with athletes and people using the national anthem for protest reasons. Many people need to realize the important reasons we stand for the flag. 

Insight: We live in an amazing country where freedom is offered to us everyday. People don't realize how good we have it and how much worse it could be. We stand for the national anthem to respect those who fought and can no longer stand. Proper national anthem etiquette is to stand at attention facing the flag with your right hand over your heart.

Challenge: Get people to be respectful during the national anthem and take 5 minutes of their time to honor those that have fought for us in the correct way.

Making someone’s day:

Objective: To get people to do the smallest act of kindness in order to make someone else’s day

Issue: as college kids, sometimes we are struggling. School is stressful and times can be hard living on our own. Kids stay up all night studying, are broke trying to provide for themselves and go to school, and might just be home sick. You never know what someone is going through, especially when we are all on our own in college.

Insight: Small acts of kindness can impact someone in a huge way. Giving someone a compliment, holding the door for someone, or even saying thank you to someone you see that is working hard and making our school a better place can make someone’s whole day.

Challenge: Encourage people to do small acts of kindness around campus to make someone’s day

Collecting cans and making money:

Objective: Get college kids to donate their cans from the weekend and make money from it

Issue: Think about how many empty cans are in the town of morgantown...especially after the weekend. A lot of these cans end up in the streets and are thrown around the town. This creates liter and makes our town look trashy.

Insight: Many kids don’t know that if you collect your aluminum cans and bring them to the recycling center, they are worth $0.39 per pound. Struggling college kids are always looking for ways to earn more money. By getting kids to collect their beer cans from the weekend and turn them into the recycling center, it helps to recycle more and also clean up the cans in the streets.

A designer’s main purpose in solving a problem is to produce a design that reflects the needs of the producer without betraying the needs of the consumer and their vision. However, culture jamming attempts to subvert messages of major producers whose practices are deemed to be unethical. Rather than attacking companies and advertisers, culture jammers acknowledge that there is power in subverting them by turning their messages to advantage in a graphic way. I think that this is an interesting tactic that culture jammers use. Rather than solve a problem which is what designers are usually set out to do, they create a problem with the product inspiring debate among others.

Subvertising is known as the is the practice of making spoofs or parodies of corporate and political advertisements. The three tactics to subvertising are vandalism of advertisements (least effective), subverting the meaning of the advertisement by subtle cosmetic alteration of the image or text, or defacing the ads to highlight the underlying “truth”. This was very interesting to me as I didn’t think about different ways that I could culture jam. All I thought about was making fun of a product and promoting it in a negative way.  I think these will be very important key points to know and helpful tips to use as we make our culture jam ads for this project.

The book then goes on to discuss how designers produce products that are used to produce the meaning. However, once once the design is in public domain it is then out of the control of the designer or the clients. You never know how the public is going to interpret design. This reminds me of when I show my friends and family my designs. Non-designers don’t pick up on as much detail as designers do. A design that is too complicated for the public may not read as well as a simpler one. The book then goes on to talk about how everything is is available for re-styling. Every design can be updated and revamped to fit into popular culture today. Cultures are always changing century to century. For example ABC Family just rebranded themselves into “Freeform” and created a new logo and everything. As their audience and generations changed they needed to change up their style to acquire to the taste of viewers today.