Katy Arrington

Final Project Link

mochpresentation

So I first revised the wireframe and sitemap from the feedback. I looked at threadless.com and the kind of information they put out with the scoring of the designs. I did change the context of the scoring in that its not a scoring of how good of a design it is or how much someone likes the design but more on how badly does the viewer want this artwork in MoCH’s gallery as a part of the theme. I liked that submit and vote was under an umbrella called “participate” so I combined those two links into a drop down with participate as header and same with about, contact, and faqs under “info.” I decided to remove the filter function I wanted in the gallery because this is going to be a lot of coding and I thought that part could be removed from the javascript/jquery and leave it with html.

Revised sitemap:

I’m not going to upload all of the revised wireframes because they are apparent in the design comps.

Design comps:

[Show as slideshow]

For now I have this weird looking bunny on the banner which is something I draw all the time and I think it fits with the theme but if anyone have any suggestions on an image they think is a better fit would be nice. Critiques welcomed!

Production Schedule

Museum Visit to Bodies Exhibit

The Bodies Exhibit covered many of the anatomies of the human body, from the bone structures to the reproductive system. What makes this museum different to simply reading a book and looking at diagrams or models of the human body is that every part of the exhibit is from a real human being. The exhibited figures have been injected with a type of plastic that hardens and preserves the body and its parts. There were some controversy with the exhibit since many people thought this was in some way unethical, especially with the section of the museum that showed the various stages of fetal growth and possible deformities that a child could have still in the womb.

The exhibit was extremely fascinating both in the actual exhibit and the way they presented the various body parts. Although we were not allowed to take photos, I did a couple of sketches:

I noticed that in the exhibit, everything was very very dark and there would be a few lights that would point strictly to the body parts and some information on the walls but there was no light for the convenience of the viewers. The lights were strictly for the exhibit and the facts. Although the sketches are scribbly, the depiction of darkness is not exaggerated so if one squinted and blurred their vision, it would look like floating and glowing entities were in the same room.

I believe they chose this type of curating because one of the main reasons why the exhibit was so fascinating is because it is the truth. Our biology classes can tell us over and over that smoking is horrible for us and the tar turns our lungs black but actually seeing a real humans black shriveled lung compared to a diagram in a textbook has a totally different impact. The way the lights are set up highlights this and is a sort of metaphor of shining the light on the truth.

With the idea that I have of dichotomy, I want to play with the idea of light and dark as well, for example having the mouse as a sort of beacon that lights up this dark gallery in a similar way that Jonathan Harris’ design has the images react to the mouse either to repel or to enlarge an image.

Museum name: Contradicting Hybrids

Collection Description and Value: I have an obsession with dichotomies. I believe this love for opposites grew from when I began to realize the meaning of being from two drastically different cultures. It gave me so many benefits and its something that I’m extremely thankful for however the opposites that I’m truly fascinated by are the spectrum of scary and cute, adult and child-like, dark and bright. I love horror and gore movies like Saw but I also love Hello Kitty. In the collection, I want to highlight these kinds of hybrids. When it comes to any two seemingly opposite things, seeing them together I believe helps one be open-minded. The idea that two aspects should never mix limits ones way of thinking.

Here are a few works from my favorite artists (Luke Chueh, Bobby Chiu, Tim Burton) that I feel capture what I’m talking about:

[Show as slideshow]

Target Audience: College students, anyone who is interested in abstract topics.

I tested on college students who have less experience with apartment hunting. I gave them the tasks of clarifying their ideal apartment, adding a finding, and then reading the comparison page. Here are my findings:

One user did not like that the app forces them to fill out their information first and then ideal apartment and after all that finally get to search for apartments. While making the prototype, I thought by doing that it would help organize beginners since it is very helpful to know what you want before searching but some users did not like that. I decided to switch the order of the clickable list in the  main page, which used to be “My Findings”, “My Info”, and “My Ideal Apartment”, and make “My Findings” at the bottom to suggest that “My Info” and “My Ideal Apartment” should be filled out first.

From the paper prototype in class, I got rid of the “load” button since no one would really be searching for two apartments at the same time so that the beginning page only had the Image with a “start” button. I had my users start from the app list screen for every task and they began to get annoyed for having to go through the “start” page every time. Users now enter straight to the main screen. The load screen that I got rid of also had a function of clearing the app if one wanted to use the app again for another hunt, so I added that function in the “my findings” screen.

Some users were confused with what the star rating meant in the “My ideal apartment” screen. A couple thought the star rating meant for the conditions of the floor for example instead of what was intended, which how important having a wood floor is. However, when actually rating an apartment from a users visit, the star rating on that screen would be for the floors condition. I decided that I needed to clearly differentiate them by labeling.

Although most users understood the essentials of how to read the comparison screen, it wasn’t clear why certain attributes were highlighted, which meant that the attribute was the same with the users ideal apartment with an importance rating of 4+. In the design comp, I added an option for the user to include the ideal apartment in the comparison spreadsheet to make the highlighting clearer and for those who are more experienced with the app will not need the ideal apt to be in the spread. Also added in the main screen is a tutorials/faq button for questions on the functions of the app.

[Show as slideshow]

Name of app: Urban Hunter Helper

Platform: iPhone

Target audience: It is for people who need help organizing all the information they get from apartment hunting and an easy way to compare their findings.

Why they need it: It helps people really take notice of all that’s good and bad about an apartment thus making a better choice in the end.

How it will work: It will save the data that someone has put in for example how many stars they allocated for the floor conditions and shows all the info in a comparable table.

[Show as slideshow]

1. Beginner’s Guide to Apartment Hunting App

This app would take someone, a student for example, through the step by step process of finding an apartment, from where to start looking to handing in the correct forms to their realtor or landlord. The first thing is the user would let the app know their budget and priorities. There would be two options before someone begins the process, the first is if they’re going to attempt to find an apartment without a realtor and second with a realtor. This configures how the app will work because the process is different between the two options. If they chose without a realtor, the app shows its database of available apartments for rent by the owner by neighborhood. If the user is not interested in any of the listings, the app will give tips on finding an apartment through craigslist, newspaper classifieds, and simply walking through a targeted neighborhood. The app will help organize the address, owner phone numbers, prices, visit dates, etc of various apartments that the user have found. When visiting an apartment, the app will give a checklist of the things the user should take note of and connect to the camera to remind the viewer to take pictures. The app will then put it all together in a pros and cons list after the user has seen all the apts. The final steps would be a checklist of forms.

2. What’s wrong?

This app is a database of symptoms in which someone that is feeling not well can list all of their symptoms to the app and it will result in a list of possible illnesses from the most common to the most serious. The most common illnesses will give a beginner’s guide sort of explanation of what may have caused the illness and if the user believes this is the illness they are suffering from, they can look at common ways to cure it or relieve some of the symptoms. This will help for people who are living alone for the first time since they do not have parents that are more knowledgable on the type of drugs that corresponds with certain illnesses. There will also be a list for those that try to stay away from commercial drugs and would rather use a more natural cure. For any serious illness, it would also give possible causes and recommend to go to a doctor and heed to the doctors advice.

3. I Has a Hotdog/I Can Has Cheezburger app

This app is meant for people who find this stuff cute and funny. An important part of this app is the alarm clock feature which battles the annoying way of waking up in the morning. Instead of a terrible sound to wake up to, the user can choose an array of puppy and kitten noises and when they go to turn off the alarm clock, they are greeted by today’s most popular I has a Hotdog/I Can Has Cheezburger image. The app also makes it easier for people to upload their videos or images of their pets doing silly things onto the site. There is also an image editor that allows the user to add text onto the image in the signature way that the site has done it all this time. Here are some examples of I has a Hotdog/I Can Has Cheezburger for those not familiar:

Link to our website through Christina Lu’s server

http://a.parsons.edu/~luc659/corestudio2010/tesla/tesla_home.html

Episode 1 of Inventors of the 20th Century – Akio Morita from Katy Arrington on Vimeo.