Design Iterations - Installation Brief

Installation Brief 

As mentioned in previous posts we have been set a brief to create an interactive installation created through processing that will be placed within Weymouth House. The brief states that the we have to create a piece of interactive information design to be shared in a public space. This piece of information design is meant to convey or example and concept which could be perceived as key to 21st century media experience. The brief does stipulate that the work that is produce can either be a literal piece of information design or we can choose to create a more abstract, artistic, piece. The brief states that we are to use camera based interaction. 

Looking at this brief I am going to have to begin think about media concepts that could make interesting information graphics. Some of these concepts that could work could be the increasing spread and importance of the internet to peoples lives or the idea of a hyper-reality. However these topics maybe hard to convey into a camera based interactive piece.

Ultimately I will spend the next number of weeks looking at different media concepts and find one which can be convey through an interactive information graphic. It is likely that I will be creating a more abstract piece of work, due to the fact that from the poster brief I have found that for something to be noticed within the fast paced area that is weymouth house, that it does have to be very eye catching and interesting. This means that if I go down the more artistic and abstract route I can create something eye catching that will gain attention from the audience. 

Processing

Digital Clock 

Over the weekend I extended onto a previous piece of work (see blog post 24/10/14) the basic premise of how a digital clock would work in processing. This was completed using "strings". Strings are defined as a sequence of characters. These characters can be coded in such a way that a certain character, i.e. 1, 2, 3, etc, would appear every second or amount of time that has been specified. To achieve this I created values such as second, minute, hour and organised them as ca be seen below. 

  String[]snowden={"S","N","O","W","D","E","N"};

  String ye=str(year());

  String mo=str(month());

  String d=str(day());

  String h=str(hour());

  String m=str(minute());

  String s=str(second());  

  String time=ye+"/"+mo+"/"+d+" "+h+":"+m+":"+s;

What this does is it determines what order the characters shall be displayed in. The bottom string determines this and the inclusions of characters such as "/" and ":", mean that it will be displayed professionally like 29/10/14 11:20:30. The below image shows this. 

One issue that this does seem to have however is that the previous number does take some time to fade out, which does leave the second part to become quite unreadable. This is something that I am going to have to look at and change because the whole part of this is clock is that you can garner information from it, and if it is not able to be read then the whole thing is slightly pointless. 

Design Iterations - Poster Brief

Evaluation 

Having completed the poster brief I have gained some very valuable information about the area which I will later be placing an interactive installation within. The first piece of information that I have learned about the area is that it is a very fast moving place where a majority of people are simply moving through and not standing around. This means that any installation that I make will have to be eye catching and interesting to make people want to stay and use it. The second thing that I found out about the area is that people that are sitting around are generally not aware of their surroundings. This is because from observing people in the area, those hat were sitting were either to engaged with a conversation with friends to pay any attention to what was going on in the surroundings or were by themselves and using a phone, tablet, etc. This means that either I will not target the people sitting down with my installation as they are generally involved in other activities or I will have to ensure that my installation does look eye catching and interesting so that they engage with the work. Finally I have also discovered that as it gets closer to the hour mark within Weymouth House the volume of people within it does go up however so does the number of people rushing through the space. This can be seen with our poster as the number of people that were glancing at the poster or taking time to read it did go down in the 5 minutes before and after the hour mark. This leads me to believe that the closer to the hour mark the less people my piece of work will attract, this is simply because the people that are moving through the space have places to go and are therefore not interested in their surroundings. 

From this experience I have gained a sense of how important it is to study the area that you are placing work within, as people simply do not act the way that you would expect them to. This is means that studying the area is key when making any piece of work because you can make an informed decision about what will work within the area and what won't. 

Processing

Developing Skills 

Using processing I created to three shapes and coded them so that they created a simple image of house. I then duplicated the image and placed them on top of each other on a continuous loop, this added with placing the images on a rotation allow me to create the below graphic designs. 

After this had been done, I added a rectangle to the image. This rectangle is not visible throughout the image however I was using it in the same way that an example I had seen was using it, which was to create a blur effect on the images so that instead of staying there on the canvas they immediately start to fade away. 

Design Iterations - Poster Brief

Independent Dorset Poster

Today we placed our posters in Weymouth House. As mentioned in a previous post we had observed the movements of the people within the area. We had decided that the best place that we could place the poster would be on the pillar on the Costa counter. This is because we felt that out of the entire space this would be the place that would garner the most potential and actual views. This is because when we observed the area the queue that lead up to the place where we wanted to place the poster had people who were generally facing forward and would notice the poster, and the queue at no point stopped, therefore there would be a steady stream of people that would possibly see the poster. However one thing that we had not anticipated was the other people in our group wanting to place the poster in the same place. This meant that when it came to use placing the poster up the place that we had decided as a first choice was taken. This meant that we had to place the posters in another positions. 

The above picture shows where we placed the first of our posters. We had placed the poster on a pillar that was directly facing a set of well used doors. This turned out to be quite a successful place to position our poster because due to the fact that when you exited the doors the peoples eye line was directed straight towards the poster, therefore the poster received a lot of glances. However one thing that we had noticed was that if there was more that 2 or 3 people then none of them would look at the poster, it seemed as if when they were in a group that the people where not concerned with their surroundings and therefore did not really pay any attention towards the poster. 

The above picture shows where we placed the second of our posters. We had placed on the main door, with our reasoning begin that it should get a lot of attention as it will get a large amount of traffic. However this turned out not to be a great place to position our poster. This was due to the fact that like with the pillar if there was a large group of people then no one really payed any attention to the poster. We also had another problem, with that fact that as we had placed the poster on a moving surfaced that when people tried to start reading then the poster would move and they would lose interest in trying to see what information was on the poster. The final problem that we encounter with this position was that because the poster could move there was a case that for large amounts of time, while people were using the doors the poster was out of view. 

Out of the two places that we had positioned the posters the best place was pillar. This was because the poster was not obscured by anything and was direct in the peoples eye line, which meant that matching that with the design of the poster which was eye catching it generated a substantial amount of views. 

Design Iterations - Poster Brief

Poster Decision + Area Research 

Today we presented our two poster designs to the group to gain some feedback on areas that we could improve and what design they actually preferred. We received mostly positive feedback on the posters with people stating that it was clear and straight to the point, which is what we wanted it to be. Other feed back that we received was that the text at the top of the poster could do with begin made slightly bigger, this was due to the fact that people at the back of the room was struggling to read the text. Finally from the feedback that we received, we have decided to use the blue poster. This is due to people saying that they preferred the colour of the blue one and the words that was used on it, was more catchy and memorable. They also said that the imagery that was used on the blue poster matched the words that was being used which made it better than the green one. 

Chosen poster 

Along with receiving feedback on our poster we also conducted some research of the area that we would be placing the poster, to see where would be the best place that we could put it. From observing the area for a while we have found some things. One thing that we have found that people that are sat at the tables in the area are not looking at there surroundings, they are either socialising with friends, eating or drinking and not paying attention or they are on some sort of device. Because of this we feel we not target the people that are siting at the tables because unless we can print of many posters and place them on the tables it is unlikely that they would notice it. An area that we had found that could be of great use in terms of getting our posters seen is on a pillar on the counter of Costa. This is because we observed that people that are in the line are generally looking forward and therefore they would glance at the poster, and once they reach the counter they would notice the poster anyway. We feel that this would be a good place because one it would people in the line would notice it and secondly it would get a new people looking constantly because what we noticed is that the line really never ended, there was someone always waiting to be served. This means that the amount of people that there would be a chance of seeing the poster would be increased. 

From our observations of the area we feel that that the pillar on the stand of Costa would be the best place, however there are other areas that would be appropriate such as the pillar in front of the main doors, as people leaving it would notice it as it is straight in there eye line the moment that they step out of the doors. 

While observing the area we also picked up on something else in terms of the behaviour of the people. This was that as it approached near the hour (when the lectures start) people moved through the space slightly quicker and were more focused, where as in the middle of the hour people were in less of a rush and seemed to notice there surrounding more. Along with this we also found that people that were in large groups were almost oblivious to there surroundings and more concerned their group.

Design Iterations - Poster Brief

Independent Poster Design 

After receiving some feedback on our original ideas for the independent Dorset we decided to scrap the idea of having a puzzle themed idea. We felt that this idea would not really scream to the person that this poster is about an independent Dorset because it would be to dependent on the graphics. 

Through some further research and brainstorming we decided that we would go on a simple colourful design that did essentially scream that the poster was about an independent Dorset. We felt that this would be a good idea because we felt a poster that was colourful and had large text on it would grab the attention of the passers by in Weymouth House and very quickly get the message across. Below are the two posters that we have created. 

We feel that these two posters do meet the brief because they very concisely get the message across that this about an independent Dorset. We also incorporated some landmarks from Dorset such as the Bill Tower and Durdle Door, as we felt that this made it more personal to Dorset people and make them pay more attention to it as it is something that they would recognise. We also used a hashtag to make it seem as this was a real movement and due to the fact that most campaigns do have a hashtag to allow people who are interested to find there movement easier. 

As the brief only asked for one poster we are going to wait for feedback to one see if there is any changes that need to be made and secondly what version is the most preferred.  

Design Iterations - Poster Brief

Independent Dorset Brief - Initial Ideas 

As mentioned in the earlier blog post, today we were set the mini brief of creating a poster promoting an independent dorset which would be placed in Weymouth house, therefore me and the other members of my group (Aaron Baker: http://abaker.co/blog/ Daniel Burden: http://dan-burden.blogspot.co.uk/) brainstormed some ideas which we could use for our poster idea. 

In our brainstorm we first looked at what could set us apart from the rest of the UK, which lead us to thinking we could implement something about Dorset's natural beauty and that the possibly the UK is ruining the beauty of the UK. We felt that this could be quite a good idea to go on because we could use images of some iconic Dorset landmarks such as Durdle door. Another idea that we thought we could go on is the using iconic imagery of Dorset people, like what some of the Scottish independence posters had used. However apart from the stereotype that the dorset is fall of older people we could not find any iconic imagery such as the the Scottish kilt and ginger hair. We then though about going down the route of using famous people that had hailed from bournemouth and although we had thought that this could had possibly been a good idea, we felt that just because we a picture of a famous person that nothing about it would scream an independent Dorset. 

Scottish independence poster, playing on stereotypes and "Braveheart"

After some more research and brainstorming we decided to go on the line that Dorset was sort of an odd piece out, a puzzle piece that didn't quite fit. We felt that we could draw upon the counties beauty and over exaggerate the "greyness" of the UK to make people want to be independent. However when we pitched the idea we received mixed reviews with the most notable begin that it doesn't say make Dorset independent, it says Dorset is nicer than the UK. 

With this feedback me and the other members of the group will do some more research and create a poster that does say an independent Dorset. 

Design Iterations - Poster Brief

Independent Dorset Brief 

Today I was given my first brief of this design iterations unit. This brief is to create a poster which creates awareness of campaign that Dorset should be an independent country which will be places in Weymouth house. For this brief we were placed into small groups of our choosing. 

This brief I believe was set for a number of reasons, one is that it is attempting to make us think about the entire design process. By this I mean it is making us start questioning our own assumptions about who are audience is and how they react. So this means that we are going to have to conduct research into who are audience is and how they do behave. This brief is also going to test us because all of last year we were creating designs that we wanted to make, or in the words of our lecturer "designing for yourselves", when in reality most of the things that we are going to be designing in our careers is going to be other peoples tastes and not ours. Therefore we are going to have to adapt our designs to not what we want them to look like but to how the audience reacts to them.