Final Major Project: Evaluation

I feel that my Final Major Project has been a success, I completed all my briefs to a standard I am happy with and I believe I got the most out of the time I had. I have developed a greater understanding of interaction design and improved on my design practice since the start of this module through the five briefs I have completed as well as my design context publication.

The three main briefs all involved proposing an interaction design supported by promotional material and other deliverables. My Quick Reader project allowed me to explore creating an app that improved a user’s reading experience. Creating an experience is something I wanted to explore though my fmp and I feel this brief helped to realise this. If I had more time I would have liked to create a demo video to show the concept in motion; but I think the ‘narrative’ designs I created for the website mock-up did address this.

The Cat Trails app allowed me explore creating a promotional video and also proposing an app that interacted with another device. This project also involved creating some fun character illustrations to be used on the app designs and promotion pieces. The idea of combining my illustration with interaction design is something I wanted to attempt in this module; I believe that I did a good job of this and that the final product benefited from it. I really wanted to create a motion piece for one of my briefs and I’m glad I pulled it off for this one, though if I had more time I would have produced a more in-depth demo reel for the app.

My NHS Therapy project also involved both creating an overall experience for the user though the proposal of a service. This brief tackled the subject of clinical depression and hitting certain emotive qualities was key. I created a smile-inducing doctor character for the app design and promotional material and kept everything in an upbeat visual style. I really enjoyed creating something with the aim of delighting the user rather than just performing a task, I’d say the emotive element was key for this project.

Creating my context publication was another great experience to have had, as I actually produced a functioning iPad book using iBook author. The production of a fully functional app is something I aimed to do in the module from the start, although I would have liked to produce something alongside a developer for one of my other briefs.

My other two briefs were the surveyor website and DFGA yearbook and I feel that I leant quite a lot from them even if I consider them the less influential projects. I managed to propose some digital aspects to the yearbook and even though I didn’t end up coding the surveyor website (due to time constraints) I did develop a better understanding of design for web.

I would have very much liked more time to produce a more detailed video for one of my briefs and to have also done a collaboration with a developer, if I could go back I would have given myself more time for these two things. Overall I think that I addressed many key elements that I had highlighted on my statement of intent through my final major project and I have learnt a great deal, expanding my skills as an interactive designer.

DFGA - Final Boards

Here are the final boards that I will be submitting for the DFGA yearbook brief:

DFGA - Board Sketches

These are my initial ideas for my 5 DFGA boards, these will be submitted as a PDF as it isn't one of my main three briefs:


DFGA - Book Proof Photos

We got the proofs in the DFGA yearbook and I took a few photos to possibly use on my final boards. The colours came out strange on a couple of them so I'll have to re-touch the ones I plan to use in Photoshop.





DFGA - Image Touch-Up

A quick job was to tidy up this picture of an SLR camera for one of the filler pages. I removed the tape that was covering top top part of the camera:




DFGA - Cover Submission Development

Here are the final designs for the yearbook cover. I had to add a spine, some more information on the front and the college logo on the back to adhere to the brand guidelines we were given.



Final Crit

Here is the final feedback I received:



Action Plan:
  • Tidy up blog.
  • Consider printed material.
  • Annotate boards.
  • Finish context publication

Crit 3 - Feedback & Action

Here is the feedback I received:





Action Plan:

  • More visual development needed for some briefs.
  • Movie forward with context publication, blog more content.
  • Code the surveyor website.
  • Start working on presentation boards, try not to make them repetitive.
  • First presentation board for each brief should be able to communicate the overall concept of the brief.
  • Video demos would work well for some of the apps, especially for context publication.
  • Expand range of deliverable for the Pet Trails app.
  • Perhaps include an explanation of RSS feeds for the Quick Reader app.

Interim Evaluation & Tutorial

Here is a scan of the feedback form from my latest tutorial with Lorenzo:




The general target for the next week or so is to finish off my current briefs so that I can progress on to a final couple of projects for my fmp. Below I will explain in more detail how each project is going but overall I realise that I need to start seriously thinking about how I will present my development and final digital designs for submission and my portfolio. Two ideas we discussed were development boards shown as either an issu document or an iBook on an iPad. As far as my final products are concerned I feel that a mixture of promotional videos and in-context photographs will work well to communicate them to an audience.

My blog in general is going relatively well, but I need to catch-up on the context side of things as I seem to have neglected it. Both my context publication content and brief research sections need to be updated with bookmarked content over the next few days. I also need to show a wider variety of experimentation in my practical work from now onwards as I have become set on a slightly narrow with some of my briefs. I may also need to re-title some of my briefs as the development of several has changed the subject slightly.

Surveyor Website

I am happy with the direction this brief has taken although I am still unsure whether I need to actually code the final website design or not for submission, I think it will depend on the time available towards the end of the module. The next stage for this brief will be to extend the brand/logo over to business cards and other stationary for the client, although this will most likely be limited to mockups due to the digital focus of the brief.

DFGA Yearbook

This brief is almost complete and should be going to print over the next couple of weeks. The only parts left for this project is work with my team to complete the final designs and then design some presentation boards showing my involvement with the project.

YCN: BLYK Messages

This brief has gone well so far and I am now working towards developing some promotional graphics for the app concept. I will be putting together a website and mocking up several other designs such as the app icon, store page and online advertisements. The presentation of the final app screens will be of particular importance for showing how the app would fit into everyday life.

Pet Tracker

The main problem I have encountered with this brief is making as personable as possible. The strength of the concept is that people love their pets and the playful nature of this relationship. The next stage for this brief will be to update my designs to me more fun and 'game' like so that they will connect with the target audience better. After doing this I plan to put together a promotional video mixing live-action footage of my own cats with animated app-screens to explain the concept of the app. 

D&AD Microsoft

This is another brief that needs to be pushed in a more emotional direction. The current designs are much too clinical and lack emotive consideration, something that is of critical importance to the subject matter of depression. To do this I want to develop my app into a 'personal therapist' with an on-screen character that guides the user through their treatment in a much more personable way. One idea is to use a retro pixel-art visual identity as found on old videogames and the more recently a contemporary resurgence of the style, although this needs further experimentation/research. After finishing the final app-screen design I'll need to look at promotional advertisements and how to the explain the app functionality and how it will benefit the target audience.

Context Publication

There is plenty of blogging that I need to catch-up with for this brief and I also need to find some more primary research sources such as interviewees and library research. Alongside completing the content research, I need to experiment and develop my publication design for submission. My current plan is to use the free iBooks author tool to create an iPad eBook. I talked with Lorenzo about organising an iPad with my publication on for examination, which I was glad to hear should be doable. Over the next week I have to test out my design ideas and try producing a small section of functioning iBook to test on one of the college iPads.

DFGA: Front Cover Development

Here are some experiments with typography for the front cover of the DFGA yearbook:



After talking with my yearbook group we decided to rework the cover.

Firstly we needed to use the shape found in the yearbook, which has alternating curved and angled corners rather then just one curved corners.


The next change was to alter the different sizes to represent the number of students under each discipline rather than the keywords used in their general umbrella statements.

Here is my experimentation with the new direction:








Here is my favourite new design mocked-up, I also extended the design into a pattern for the back-cover:




DFGA - Cover Mockups

I have taken a couple of my designs and mocked them up onto a photograph of a previous yearbook:

DFGA - Yearbook Cover Visual Ideas

Here are some more visual ideas for the infographic yearbook cover:




And my current favourite with a side-key:



DFGA - Infographic Ideas

These are some ideas for the yearbook cover, each series of coloured shapes represents each of the top-used words in the DFGA student's personal statements. The shape is found throughout the yearbook and so should fit to the visual identity well. Here are the words the shapes represent:

Design: 7
Concept: 6
Life: 5
World: 4
Experience: 3






DFGA - Statement Analysis

I took the umbrella statements given by the DFGA students and ran them through some online text-analysis tools to find out what words were most frequently used. I want to use this information to create some infographics that could be used within the yearbook.



Here are some notes I made on the results and also some initial ideas on how to visualise them:


Crit 2 Boards & Feedback

Here are the boards I had for the second feedback crit:

A4 Brief Summaries:



A3 Progress Boards:




Here is the feedback I received for course-mates:

  • Ideas have been thought through well but I need to show more development & visual experimentation.
  • I can explore the Handyman website more throughly and look at different colours and logo ideas.
  • More development is needed for the Pet Trails app design and also need to look at how the app would be advertised & marketed.
  • I should look at how the NHS therapy app could be explained and advertised/delivered to patients.
  • With the reading app I need to look at the types of content that people will want to access.

 Some additional comments from my tutorial with Si Scott:

  • He thinks I should experiment with more illustration and stimulating graphics to see if I can make the apps more engaging for the audience.
  • An example of this is that the Pet Trails app could change its theme depending on species of pet the own has.

Action Plan:

  • Research the marketing and advertising of apps and other software.
  • Look at how I could expand my briefs to cover how the apps would be promoted and explained to their audiences.
  • Experiment with and expand the visual development of my app designs to try and make them more engaging for their intended audiences.

Progress Tutorial

Here are the main points from my tutorial with Lorenzo that concern my design practice briefs:

  • I need to look at the deliverables for my briefs and how I will present them for submission.
  • One possibility is to produce a narrative to show my proposals in context, showing the viewer what the interface does in a visual manner.
  • A direction I could take is looking into producing animated demos of my proposals to communicate the concepts and visuals.
  • This secondary element to my design process is similar to how websites for apps communicate their products in a clear and concise manner, aiming to persuade people into downloading them.
  • I need to start producing digital mockups of my proposals as soon as possible to show during the crits later this week.
  • This direction means a look at not just how the app will work and look, but also how it will communicated and marketed to potential audiences.
  • These changes should help give my designs the human element that they are currently lacking in.

We also discussed these issues with my design context publication:

  • My design context need to be restructured to follow the processes behind interface design, to tell the story behind creating these designs.
  • I need to relate interface design to people and how it works within people's lives.
  • One idea is to initially focus on what functions interface design can perform for people, how people relate to these designs, how this relationship influences the delivery of the interface and then break them down into usability, emotive design and other elements.

Action Plan:

  • Start producing the digital mockups of my app proposals, looking at different visual elements to help them relate to the audience.
  • Start looking at the different methods used to promote and communicate applications to their potential users.
  • Begin sketching out possible narratives for explaining and promoting my apps, looking how to describe their essence to people.
  • Work out a new structure for my design context publication, discuss it with Lorenzo and then start producing it.

FMP - Crit 1 Feedback

Here are the boards I used to present my ideas and initial designs:



Some of the feedback I received:

  • Experiment with colour more on the surveyor website.
  • Start posting about my ideas for the other briefs mentioned in my statement of intent.
  • Start considering how my infographics could work on the front cover (once we have the information to start producing them properly!)
  • Information overload idea for BLYK is strong - needs more research though.
  • Need to start working on wireframes for my interface ideas.
  • When producing designs I need to focus on how the user experiences the product/service. How does it fit into their everyday lives? I need to be empathetic towards the user and consider their wants and needs.

DFGA Student Portraits


This is the setup we had for taking the student photos for the DFGA yearbook, we got some really good help and advice from one of the photography staff which was much appreciated. We managed to get most of the students to come down and get a picture taken, but we need to organise another photo shoot for the 6 or so missing students.

I was in charge of taking and editing the photographs whilst Maya and Robyn took the student's details (Naomi was busy working on the layouts). I took three photos of each student, making sure I got at least one good shot of each. We decided as a group that it would be best to include the photos as black and white images for the yearbook, so I loaded the selected picture for each student into photoshop.

I used the special black and white tool (rather than just using desaturate) because you can modify the contrast between the different colours within the original image. I didn't crop any of the photos because Naomi said that it would help her to position the photos (and therefore cropping them herself) in the InDesign layouts, I guess as a sort of digital bleed. Here are the final images of the students we managed to photograph:

Yearbook Ideas and Infographic Mockups

Here are some general notes about the direction our yearbook project is taking:


And some ideas for the infographics we could include:




I digitalised some of the better ideas loosely using an RGB colour scheme:




Yearbook Initial Ideas & Logo Concept

After our initial meeting we got some good feedback on our initial concepts and Mike went though some of the things he wants from the yearbook. Here are some of the key points:


  • Gender Neutrality
  • Don't over-emphasise the digital aspect of the course
  • Communicate how the course is evolving without provoking a negative attitude towards the current course structure.
  • Show the storytelling aspects of the course.
  • Show the transmedia nature of the course.
  • Mike likes abstract patterns and the style that 'processing' can generate.

I then started to jot down some ideas for the branding of the yearbook/course thinking about what he wanted to communicate:


I then moved into illustrator to tidy-up my logo concept, taking into account some of the contextual designs we had discussed previously:

These are the two variations I want to show at the meeting tomorrow:


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