#reflectivediary

Third year done and dusted and a satisfying way to finish.

The video: The video was filmed on Sunday as we wandered the streets of Wellington dripping in go-pros, certainly causing alarm with some of the crowds on Cuba. Jodi did a fantastic job of piecing it together this past week and overall the video added this playful, fun and humorous element to the experience of presentation.

Story: The hand is all about showing the routine and repetition of our user Harriet’s life. She’s stuck in the same old, same old - until she meets join. Join takes her to all these new places where she gets to explore and discover the unknown - she’s encouraged to step out of her comfort zone and see new things with all the application prompts. The video even shows the hand getting stuck in the rain to present how Join filters and works around weather barriers. Join shows the app to a friend - they’re both so hyped about it! *wiggle wiggle*

Dossier: The book is final and printed, we made sure it was very graphic (despite it’s size) and used very large pull quotes and phrases to highlight important aspects. 

Some of the app screens present have notes around them, explaining features and benefits. 

Script: Script was written to match the video and called for a lot of timing to be on lock - but hey it worked out well! 

We’ve been working on the construction of our presentation, trying to take on the challenge of not showing the application that much, we want to stay away form invision now purely because we know the teachers see the same thing alot.

Steaming the idea form an online example we have this hand that will travel the city filling in adventures. Jodi is working on all the storyboarding and planning the locations. We intend to use a go pro for that low quality real experience aspect.

Fine tuning the app and screens at the moment, looking at the little things like pop ups, how can we make them batter, added features, weather changes for the visual part of it and layout. Running quite smoothly.

Activations: for the dossier we need to touch base and mock up our in life features.

We set up a large scale iphone for our user test, presenting our screens we worked on over the pervious days. We had put them into invision and had a good journey formed. We’ve booked in with Tristam because he’s all about apps and tech stuff so thought he’d be the one for good, honest feedback.

It was really good to see the screens printed and moving the journeys through the giant phone as a physical realisation of how it works - and it did! tristan brought up some good notes but was overall impressed (notes in different post). Invision was great too for live function.

We’ve spent a huge amount of time this week researching visual style and working on getting something locked in. We feel its an extremely important place to start and have pulled various examples we like but working with the tension of trying to create something that is playful and welcoming but still able to capture awareness and not appear as a ‘joke”

It’s easy to create a slick app and call it cool but does it fulfils it’s purpose?

Also in this time people are fussy on what apps they do download for storage reasons, making the cut is detrimental.

We’ve looked at a lot of current apps, some not related to map styles and some that are to figure out layout etc.

We’ve looked at names from link to ant (they apparently have fabulous self direction) but have settled for join - simple, playful and has that humanistic approach too. We love how it applies to connection, just like out map.

We’ve created this cool hand (very techi) that has crossroads and joins together - perfect. Plus in many ways join is all about giving a helping hand 

Visual style of maps are been built, working out colour tones and the “to google map or not to google map” approach..

Teachers seem to enjoy our idea although we can’t seem to get our 60 second explanation out yet - it’s coming!

From the previous week we’ve decided the main focus is -

Insight: Turning ‘local knowledge’ into something tangible.

We came up with a few ideas for prototyping but used our main physical one as our lead.

By using a range of coloured wool balls and pins we set up our physical recreation of the London Underground lines through destination.

A large amount of wellington places were scattered all the wall and the aim was to create your own journey based on what you like to do. From this we were abel to see:

What people liked to do

Re-occuring patterns and themes

Press people to add to the wall of activities

See the storytelling behind the journeys

Most people were inclined to do things they have done before. Why? Because they know they enjoy it. Further research will be made about the idea of routine.

For another option we had a a huge sheet of paper where people could write down things they enjoy/ or experiences they have had but in relation to the senses: smell taste touch see etc.

It was quite beautiful because people would tell us there stories and the little things they enjoy like watching the salsa dancing once a month on cuba street or grabbing a deck chair and sitting under the building on Oriental in summer as the tide comes in.

What is this? It’s local knowledge.

We decided to change from our last topic despite how different and fun it was we felt a new adventure on the rise and decided  to take on Jayna’s brief of unfamiliar surroundings.

How might we:

..create a fluid transition into a new unfamiliar culture, addressing the issues of:

- Stepping out of your comfort zone, to embrace the new surroundings.

Our loose ideas are currently revolving around maps and navigation.

How can we help accommodate people in an unfamiliar space?

Should we look at future difference?

Local Knowledge?

Human Relationships:

Needs to be relatable

Realistic

Encourage experience and “doing” of things

The lecture on ethics and design research was interesting and has encouraged us to think more in-depth with some of our choices and research, not only or this project but for future.

• What was the biggest learning that you took from the paper? 

• What aspect of your project are you most happy with? 

We had a successful presentation, I think the audience was able to relate to characters and understand through the visuals what was happening. As a moving show it was more exiting than others and think it let us grab the attention more. A lot of similar stories people were touching on, interesting that no one else had a concept like ours. Re-occuring was single parents and exchange students - Obviously a world issue and something that needs to be changes/assisted with.

Now the tricky part, it was hard to go round the books at the end and remove the visual factor from the written. How one style might now appeal to you makes you not want to read it but that brief could be the one for you.. Really wish there was a way to see all the streams presentations but with time and everything its understandable that its just not possible.