Category: Uncategorized

Posted on

Harrison Klehm — Review 4

For my final web review, I chose to review another portfolio site that is built in the same style as mine.

https://www.christammar.com/projects

This is a very well designed portfolio site. It is similar to mine in regard to its minimalism. The layout is quite simple and easy to navigate, making it work very effectively as a portfolio. The layout focuses primarily on images and uses words only where necessary. The navigation is also well done, and extremely simple. There are only two buttons at the top, which are “Projects” and “Contact.” The colors are extremely simple and minimalistic, which lend to a modern design, which is good for a Graphic Designer’s portfolio. As for texture, due to the website’s simplistic nature, it is all kept very simple. It is mostly white pages with images and minimal text on it, all to keep a modern feel.

Like Steve Krug mentions in Don’t Make Me Think, non-essential information should be cut from a website. This portfolio website takes that to the extreme, in that text is extremely minimal. I think it is done sort of well, however many of the images are left without context and it may be rather confusing as to what each of them represents.

However, another topic to consider covered in Don’t Make Me Think would be how quickly a user can use a site without thinking. And one key feature this site lacks, in particular, would be titles for some of these sections. The images act as links in this site, and when you hover over them, they turn nearly fully white with an eye icon over them. This is what indicates to the viewer that the image is clickable. However, the images alone do not make it fully clear what each image is supposed to represent, especially that in the bottom right. Without any headings in the image or any words to match it whatsoever, the viewer can be lost in this type of website.

My website aims for clear navigation throughout the entire system of pages. I have it split into three sections instead of two, as to not let each section get too cluttered. I also make frequent use of headings as that is what website viewers typically look for when they are looking for something in particular. I also use images for navigation, but in the My Work section, where it is clear that those images are my illustrations due to the presence of other illustrations in the area.

My website also uses quite a bit more words. Though I agree words should be kept minimal, I believe this website’s words are kept minimal to a fault. It feels like some important information is being left out. I am also unable to learn about the designer himself, as the website is primarily just images of his work, and very little about how it was made, or about him himself.

Posted on

Jenna Hall Fairy Tale Info

Story: The Horse and the Stag by Aesops Fables

Domain name: thehorseandthestag

Host: wix.com , $14 a month plan would be the best, unlimited bandwith, 10GB storage, Free domain, remove ads, free site booster. With this site I don’t think you would need a email.

Posted on

Thoughts on Interaction Design Responses

1.

Interaction Design, according to “Thoughts on Interaction Design,” is the creation of dialogue between user and product. “Elements of User Experience” gets a bit more poetic, and calls it a dance between the two of them. In any case, this “dialogue” or “dance” is a figurative description for interaction. Although this dialogue or dance is a 2-way interaction, designers need to plan the entire choreography beforehand. This means predicting user responses and designing accordingly. Unsurprisingly, then, Interaction Design borrows substantially from psychology. Beyond that, it also borrows from the fields of industrial design, engineering, art, and business strategy. Interaction Design obviously has plenty of similarities with a plethora of other types of design, however Interaction Design focuses on humanizing the end result and making it usable and intuitive. Some of the industry’s challenges can be viewed optimistically as opportunities. As new media pervades our culture and software development becomes outsourced, the job of the Interaction Designer becomes both more difficult and more sought after by companies. In a world full of variously sized rectangles that display pretty pictures, Interaction Design can serve as an improvement and differentiation.

2.

Ethnographic tools try to understand the what and why behind users’ actions. Ethnographic tools differ from traditional surveys or interviews in that they attempt to maintain the context of the actions – instead of asking the user in a controlled setting about their opinions on themselves, these tools try to understand these qualities in action. In the case of an online banking website, these tools can give the designer insight into how and why a user would use such a site. They might uncover useful information about which features are most helpful, which are in the way, and why a user usually logs on in the first place.

A design is finished when the designers are finished designing. Depending on the company and perspective, this could happen at a variety of points. For a particular designer, it could happen as soon as he throws it over the wall to the next group of designers, never to see it again. For a certain organization, design could be done when the product goes into manufacturing. For some products, design isn’t finished until it goes through several cycles of iterative development – and for other products, continued updates and support mean that design continues well after the product has been made commercially available. Success and purpose also depend on perspective. Some designs start out to fill a business purpose – the organization needs to make money or retaliate against a competitor, for example. Or, the design might have the purpose of providing the user some benefit. Maybe even both. The design is a success if it meets its purpose.

A product family I use is breakfast cereal, and a specific brand that I used to use regularly was Cinnamon Toast Crunch. Its branding affected me quite negatively when they released an ad campaign that not only personified the cereal, but characterized it as cannibalistic. Let this be a message to all advertisers of food: When I eat food, I don’t want to think about the prospect of eating a sentient being, as you have just advertised your food to be. Secondly, having your personified breakfast meal successfully recreate a miniature version of the Hunger Games in which the contestants eat each other does not make me want your product any more. In fact, it makes me want it quite less – less enough to the point where I haven’t bought the damn thing since your ad campaign was released. On another note, I do recall choosing several technological toys and devices as a child mainly based on their looks. This served as a good learning experience for me, as later in life I became much more concerned with functionality as opposed to aesthetics in technology.

Posted on

Objectified Response

Objectified is a documentary that observes the relationships people have with manufactured objects, how they create them and the backgrounds of the people who design the objects. The documentary takes us through the steps of the designers and how they creatively try to re-invent their designs.
From the statements I wrote down, I think I agree with most of them, the biggest one being “good design is easy to use”. In my opinion, if something is designed to make you think too much or you can barely figure out, no one is going to want to use it. In the documentary another designer said, “design is to make people feel good”, and like I said before, if a design is hard to use, no one is going to use it if they can’t figure it out.
A statement that made me kind of change how I think about design is “design can have a different meaning in other countries or cultures”. I never really thought about factoring in other countries beliefs and I now realize that you must be cautious about that, especially if you’re designing for someone internationally.
I would define design as coming up with an idea to make something better, it changed after watching objectified because I realized how much time, effort and creative thinking you need to do.

Posted on

Review Three: Local Restaurants

In this review I was be going over two different websites that are run by local businesses in the Washington county area. These websites being Sarris Candies, (located at https://www.sarriscandies.com/) and a local Chinese restaurant that I enjoy called Wong’s Wok. (located at http://www.wongswokwashpa.com/)

These websites differ greatly, but I want to describe both before I make comparisons.

Sarris Candies is a restaurant / confectionery located in Canonsburg. When you access the website, you are greeted by images of sweets and candies with links to their special catalogs. When you click on specific chocolates, you are taken to that product’s page and from here you can choose to select the quantity that you specify. Overall it’s a clean website and looks very professional for a local business.

The other website is a local Chinese restaurant in my area that I really enjoy called Wong’s Wok. The website is rather basic and plain, stating the address and an option to see the menu in an online .pdf format. It doesn’t have much, but it shows the menu for ordering with a number to call, so what more could you want from a local takeout restaurant?

Comparing them, it is clear that Sarris’s is much more balanced and professional. As such, their website is nicer to look at and has more features than Wong’s Wok. It is unfair to judge both businesses as they sell a different product and one is much more popular than the other, but both websites serve their purposes well for their respective owners.

I hope you take the time to visit both locations!

Posted on

Review 3

For this review, I am going to compare the two websites: Six Penn Kitchen and No. 9 Park. The two websites are very different in their own ways. Six Penn Kitchen is a local restaurant in the Pittsburgh area, it is a single page website (http://sixpennkitchen.com/index.aspx). The website is simple, it is more of a visual site. There is no navigation to the website. The website is very balanced, the colors they chose makes the content pop out to the user. Also, the light grey lines are settle enough that it separates the content but also makes it look like it all goes together. The colors ties in together with the images, they chose to put on the website, which makes it aesthetically pleasing. The layout is very simple and there is no complexity to it. One thing that seems out of place is the logo, it is confusing because they have their name at the center of the page and their logo on the far left corner, both could be the site id. No.9 Park (http://www.no9park.com) is a restaurant located in Boston, they have a navigation bar. Their navigation is very clear, they have a down arrow to direct you to go down to reveal more content. It also tells the user how to use the site. They have only one site id that makes it clear to the user that they are on No.9 Park, unlike Six Penn. Their navigation bar is clear and it is visible, so if there is something that I wanted to look at, I could easily locate it. They also have a bar on the far right that indicates where I am at on the site. The website is broken down with large landscape images and short paragraphs of text for each image. Their layout is consistent and every style is carried throughout the website. No.9 Park emphasizes their main content by making the text pop with white text over the images and solid dark colors.

Six Penn Kitchen does a really good job implementing Krug’s five important “things” by putting very little text on the home page, to showcase their dishes and have the customers want to seek more if they are interested in trying out the restaurant. In the book, Krug also stated that putting more into a to make the page shorter helps with people being able to see the content so that they do not have to scroll anywhere. Six Penn does a really good job implementing this on their homepage. No.9 Park, on the other hand, makes you scroll up and down to see the content. Which makes it hard for the user to skim through the website. It makes the user slow down, and that is not how you really use a website. This makes the website harder to navigate around because you can only scroll. However, both of the websites have a clear hierarchy. You can tell what’s the most important content on the website and what is secondary. Even though Six Penn Kitchen does not have much on their site, they omitted any needless words to help the users skim through the site without thinking too much about it.

In my opinion, I thin No.9 Park draws more attention to me than Six Penn Kitchen because it has more content to explore. When you land on No.9 Park, you land on the home page with an arrow that tells you to scroll down so you can read more about their “Chef Barbara Lynch’s Flagship Restaurant in Boston’s Beacon Hill.” They also have a very clear navigation menu, so if you want to know about something then you just press on it. It is also easy to navigate from one page to the other. In addition, it is very easy for me to locate the home page because you just click on the site id and (poof!) it takes you back to the homepage. They also have more clickable links that Six Penn Kitchen.

Posted on

Week 6 – Game Design

Prototype Playtest: Destination Stranded!

The playtest went very well because I received a lot of good feedback on the game rules and concept. The game card types seemed to work well but the duration of the game was too long due to the difficulty of finding the cards needed to win. This will be solved by either introducing a cooperative element, less matching needed, or having duplicates of those cards.

Game Review

Bang! has an American wild west theme in which players are on unknown teams and must find out who the other players are. The game rules seemed rather easy to learn but many player actions seemed random and not as caused as it would seem. The players had to eliminate other players not on their team without causing other players to notice their motives. I think this could be a gateway game because of its easy to learn ruleset and replayability.

Posted on

Week 5? Games and review

Cantan was a really fun game. I really liked the idea of each time you play the game, there is a different playground to play on. I learned that I like trading and collecting games, making sure that you have more paths, settlements, and roads to get to other environments to collect more cards and make more things. Splendor went quicker than Cantan, but I also enjoyed that game.  Again, you needed to trade and spend money to collect more items.

 

Building Games:

Ingredients:

-cook/trade

-Thanksgiving

 

Art thieves

  • Get the most expensive art
  • trade/money
  • work

 

Posted on

5 Building Game Ideas

Desmond Rossignoli

  1. Warped Space – I am not sure how this game is to be played, but I envision players placing new tiles and expanding the board.  Tiles would come in shapes that tesselate (such as triangles, diamonds, and rectangles), and would have grids on them which the player could move along.  The grid squares would be varied in size, and proportioned 1:4:16.  This would allow players to move quickly on some areas of the board, and quite slow in other areas.
  2. Obstacle Source – Players will increase their stats (jumping, running, climbing, dodging, etcetera) while collecting obstacles.  Players may play obstacles in front of each other, ideally building up an obstacle course in front of each player.  At the end of the game, the players run their courses simultaneously, and the first to the end is the winner.
  3. Demonlords – A new layer of hell is being developed, and God has appointed some new Demon Lords to take charge.  As the new layer of hell begins to expand, players will take over swathes of land, build up various torture rooms within their territory, and populate their rooms with sinners as they begin to flow in.
  4. I Want to be the Dungeon Master – Ever play a round of Dungeons & Dragons where everyone wants to be the Dungeon Master?  I know your pain, which is why in this game, each player plays as a dungeon master, competing for various tiles to add to their dungeon, placing treasure and monsters as they go.  In phase 2, each player randomly gets assigned a dungeon other than their own, which they must survive and loot.
  5. Sanitation Frustration – A cooperative game where pollution gets placed on an ever-growing map, and players must work together to fix the environment.
Posted on

Week 4 Board Game Reflection

Desmond Rossignoli

Of the two games brought in today, my group only had the opportunity to play Nano-bots (because of interviews).  Fortunately, RMU’s Tabletop Club will be purchasing Carcassone and its expansions soon, which will give me the opportunity to experience it in the future.

Nano-bots was frustrating to play but in a good way.  Not only were moves extremely strategic, but they also provoked loud debates between players, advising alternate moves (which might be more advantageous).  I enjoyed this atmosphere a lot, as it introduced a cooperative element into an otherwise competitive game.

The third act came very late in the game, as it took a while for any of the players to get a firm lead.  If I had to guess, I would say that the mechanics of this game were developed (mostly) before a theme was concocted.

Posted on

Death Sentence Rules

Death Sentence – Desmond Rossignoli

Materials Included:
6 Play Mats
120 Noun Cards + 5 Blank Nouns
120 Verb Cards + 5 Blank Verbs
48 Adverb Cards + 2 Blank Adverbs
48 Adjective Cards + 2 Blank Adjectives
48 Location Cards + 2 Blank Locations

Set-up:
1. Shuffle all of the cards into one deck
2. Each player starts with a play mat in front of them
3. Deal 5 cards to each player
4. The player who read a novel for leisure most recently begins, and play proceeds clockwise.

On Your Turn:
1. Draw 1 card
2. Place 1 card from your hand to the corresponding space on your mat
3. Trade 1 of your cards with a random card from one of your opponents

End of Game:
After the 10th round, the game is over, and points are tallied.
1. Earn 1 point for each card present in a complete sentence
2. Each player chooses their favorite sentence which they did not write, and awards 1 pt to that player (this step is skipped in a 2-player game)
3. The players vote together for their favorite sentence, and award it 2 points
4. In the event of a tie, the person with the most verbs/nouns in their hand is the winner.  If there is still a tie, the player who was last in the turn order (between the tied opponents) is the winner.

Prototype Play Mat Format:
[Verb] and [Verb][Adj] by [Noun]
[Adv][Verb] in [Location]
[Adv][Verb] by [Noun]
Killed by [Noun] in [Location]
Death by [Adj][Noun]
[Verb] by [Noun]

Posted on

5 Ideas for Card Games

  1. “Who Said It?” 2-6 players: Based off a tv show/movie. A quote is laid in the center of the playing area, players will have cards with the characters names from the show, and the first player to lay down the correct name wins the round. The player who gains the most cards wins.
  2. “Finish the Lyric” 2-6 players. Cards will be color coded by genre. Part of a lyric is placed in the center of the playing area, each player will write down the next line. Whoever gets the line correct wins the round, the player with the most correct answers wins.
  3. “Stars” 2-4 players. 16 stars will be placed around the table. Each round player will pick up and discard one card. Per round, the player will pick up a card with a task (ex. lay 4 spades). Whoever completes their task first takes a star. The player that collects 6 stars first wins.
  4. Multi-Solitaire. 2-4 players. One person lays down a card and calls whether they want it built up or down. Other players must build up or down. ex. player 1 lays down a 2 and wants to build up, player 2 will lay a 3, player 3 will lay a 4. If you don’t have the correct card on your turn, you must draw 2.
  5. 2 players. Each player has 6 cards in hand . They simultaneously choose one card for their opponents hand and the highest card wins the round. The player to get to “50” first wins.
  6. Lyrical “Cards Against Humanity” One player puts down a card that contains an existing lyric. All players put down a card that could serve as the next line. The player who laid the initial card chooses the best.
Posted on

Objectified Response

Objectified was a very intriguing documentary to me. It helped point out things about designing that I have not given a lot of thought to, such as how much design goes into objects and how everything we interact with was designed very specifically to meet the needs of the user. Designers have to think about the majority of people that will be using the objects and design for them and not the individual. While I do believe this is important, I also think sometimes focusing on the individual can help pinpoint problems and can help identify problems that a mass of people are experiencing. This would be like the peeler that is designed in the documentary for arthritis. It can be hard for them to use small and simple objects, but without the husband noticing his wife struggling, it would not have been brought to the attention of designers as a problem that needed a solution.

The documentary also brought up some questions about design that I had not given thought to previously. For example, what will happen to the design, as not everything lasts forever? What happens when it serves it’s purpose? It can be hard to create something that eventually fades from existence, so how do you create something that stands the test of time? This may be related to environmentally friendly materials that will not harm the environment when disposed of, but also should make designers think of it’s usefulness now and whether it will still be needed or it will become obsolete by users. Building things to be permanent was once normal, as disposing of these objects was not thought of as a problem a while back.

I also found it very interesting how the designers personality comes to play. From talking about the first time a designer saw an Apple product and the amount of personality it had, to the authenticity of the product to what it is. This would be like the faces on the cars and how humanistic elements are being handled on inanimate objects. The design should be, as mentioned in the documentary, authentic to what it is, emotionally and functionally.

One thing that really hopped out to me is that the individual character being given to something that is mass produced can be hard, and that’s what designers should be looking for. With art, if you like something or are moved by it, it is affecting you personally because that moment comes to you as you are viewing the art. Designers should strive for that kind of emotional impact on the users, especially because the objects are used so often they become a part of “the family.” People attach memories to objects, and as the one designer mentions, we can hold on to objects longer because of this by remembering them as “the chair dad always sat in,” or “the vase that mom always used.”

I also found it particularly interesting that we design from familiarity as well. It was mentioned that cameras were designed at first due to film, but now, even though that design isn’t necessary, we still use the same shape of cameras for DSLR’s even though it does not necessarily need to be that way. We notice bad design, from poorly designed hotel rooms and chairs, and we are uncomfortable but do not fix it. We do not give much thought to the tools and objects we are using, even though they have been designed for us.

Design is much broader of a topic than I originally thought and this documentary helped bring some of the aspects of design to my attention. I particularly liked the variety of designers and how they all spoke of their own personal ways of designing, but they were all mostly saying the same thing. I love that design is so personalized but at the same time so consistent.

Posted on

Scope vs Strategy

Our app is being designed to help a potential user, Jerome, more efficiently put gas in his car on his way to work. During the process of developing this app, the creative team discussed that not only was the “big picture” to make his morning better, but we wanted the app to inform users on where and how to save their money at different gas stations, create a user-friendly experience for each app user, avoid having to see so many people for one small process, as well as give them security and accessibility. In doing so, there were a lot of different tools and features we wanted the app to possess.

We imagine the app to allow the user to connect to their device like Apple wallet and allow the user to connect all of his/her membership cards to any gas station they use to be stored within the app. This eliminates the need to carrying dozens of cards in their wallet. The app would then be able to compare prices for gas within in a certain location radius that the user has selected. Once the station was selected, the user can then order their gas ahead of time and have the pump ready to pump gas for you when you arrive there; the amount of gas you need and the payment would already be programmed into this order as well. The more you use the app, the more rewards you get through the app’s awards program. The programs also tie into store-specific rewards programs that allow you to earn specific things from each station once you collect a certain amount of points. The app also alerts your car when gas is low and tells you if you forgot to put the gas cap back on before you leave the pump. On a more technical note, the app comes with a support feature that allows users to troubleshoot any of their problems or concerns. It is also protected via password or thumbprint so no one can steal your card information or charge you for gas that you aren’t getting.