Lecture Pods Summary
The lecture pod this week covered the following areas:
Design Patterns in Interactive Design:
- Having similar design patterns to others is not necessarily a bad thing – it is indicative of the way the web has changed based on consumer need and preference.
- For example, the hamburger menu is one of the more widespread symbols on the internet – it makes it simple and easy to use.
- It’s a great way to hide drawer content – content that the designers may not want to be constantly visible.
- Due to the use of mobiles, long-scroll sites are also more common to create a clutter free navigation system.
- Cards on sites such as Pinterest are also used more often to allow for the expansion or shrinking of pages for different devices.
- Hero images and animation are also being used to give personality and storytelling elements to a site. They have more impact on users and add interactions to the site.
- These animations include hover animations, loading animations, slideshows, etc,
- Material design is used to create realism for the user through shadows and the simulation of movement, with the goal of creating cleaner user-oriented design patterns.
- Responsive design is a simple, cheap way to be accessed on all devices. It tends to be minimalistic and focuses on rearranging the site’s elements to fit each different screen size.
Reflection
The main thing I took away from the lecture pod this week was that Interactive Design has its own universal conventions. The demonstration of how common some designs can be – making them patterns – was very interesting as it showed how well elements such as the Hamburger menu actually work, as well as how often they are used by industry professionals. I learnt from this that those patterns can be used by several designers and form parts of completely different projects, as well as that those elements are OK to use in my own work.
However I think I didn’t learn as much as I should as the lecture pod only went over the basics. It didn’t discuss less common alternatives, nor show particularly different examples of the conventions or how they could really be used in unique ways. I would have loved to learn about more ways these patterns could have been applied.
For example, Renaud Rohlinger’s Design Portfolio uses one of these more common patterns (Long Scroll) in a creative way, showcasing his own art and animation skills throughout the site. The scroll is a zoom around the illustrated world Rohlinger has created, and gives the illusion of a super-fast zoom to the other parts of the site. It takes something common and makes it an exciting and unique layout. Examples from the site are seen below:
Image Source: Rohlinger, R. (n.d.). Renaud ROHLINGER [Screenshots]. Retrieved March 17, 2020 from https://renaudrohlinger.com/
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