Week 2 – 10/03/20

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Lecture Pods Summary

The lecture pod for this week covered the following areas:

Design Processes and Overviews

• There are 8 distinct steps in the process of interactive design. The example used in the lecture pod is pictured below:

• Working through a design process through lower tech mediums such as drawings or sticky notes allow the designer or client to fully address and analyse what the issue or problem is that is being solved, giving them a greater understanding of how to solve it.
• It is important to build profiles of users and clients, as well as perform research of precedents and design software when in the process of design.

Context – FOR and OF use:

• Context is used to define a situation, the people in said situation, and their various needs or wants. As designers it is important to take context into consideration as it allows for us to facilitate for peoples needs and make our products more accessible.
• When designing for a client, we must understand what people are trying to do, how they are trying to do it, what might get in the way of that and where they are doing it.
• What is the situation? It is important to examine where the viewer is physically, and what device they are using. What environment are they in, and are they in public or private spaces?
• Who will be using the interface and how long for? It is necessary to establish who your user is – whether there are one or more people using the interface, whether they will be able to focus on the interface, etc.
• Will the design be simple or easy to use? A measure of complexity must be established based on the needs and experience a viewer has – if there is an emergency or crucial interaction happening on the interface a complex interaction may not work.

Reflection

The lecture pod this week was a reminder to always think about the audience when designing. When coming up with a process it is important to think about problems the audience may have, and when thinking of context scenarios the same mindset must be adapted. I think the questions we were given to ask ourselves were a good way to encourage this sort of thinking and allow in depth analysis of our own designs and processes, as well as whether or not we answer the needs of the audience.

An example of the use of context of and for is Illuminating Radioactivity, a site dedicated to educating its audience on radioactivity and its history. It understands its viewers are trying to learn about radioactivity on the internet and are looking for an engaging website to aid in their experience. They understand that information on the topic of radioactivity can be quite dry or uninteresting, so they designed an interactive, colourful website to solve this issue. Examples of the site are shown below:

Image Source: Illuminating Radioactivity. (n.d.). Illuminating Radioactivity [Screenshots] . Retrieved March 10, 2020 from https://illuminating-radioactivity.com/