- What are the goals of Apple’s website? How does Apple’s website address the needs of a user who has just purchased their first MacBook? (Chapter 3)
- The goals of apples website is to not only describe and list their products, but also sell them as well. They describe the physical components of their products and the multitude of ways it is used. In terms of the need of someone who has purchased their first macbook, its a little lackluster. They don’t provide any info on the setup and details of the macbook, rather they just promote accessories for the macbook.
- What are the functional specifications of your preferred social media’s home page? If you are not on social media what are the specs for google? (Chapter 4: Functional Specifications, Content Requirements an Prioritizing Requirements)
- The functional specifications is essentially what the system actually does. For example instagrams functional specifications would be the buttons at the bottom that take you to different aspects of the app( like the search, profile, and liked function) In addition, the home page has posts made by other people and at the top are stories posted by others.
- What are four architectural approaches to information design and organization? Find one example of each. (Chapter 5: Information Architecture)
- four approaches are the Hierarchical structure, the matrix structure, organic structure, and sequential structure. Hierarchical structures are the most common and can be seen used in many design projects. The matrix structure is useful for customization of shopping such as choosing the color or size of items for online shopping. The organic structure is free flowing and is best used for idea generation and connection meaning that it is best used in the early stages of idea generation and purpose. Sequential structures are the most basic and are seen everywhere in books, articles, and video.
- What percentage of The Huffington Post index page is navigation, and what percentage is content? What about Google, Wikipedia, and Etsy? (Chapter 6)
- The huffington post is 90% content, and 10% navigation. This is done on purpose by categorizing things effectively reducing the need to navigate as much.
- How does http://landor.com guide the readers’ eyes and focus their attention on what is important? (Chapter 7: Follow the eye )
- They do this by limiting the amount of knowledge given at any point. In specific you only view an image with a small amount of text accompanying it. By doing this, you reduce the amount of things that could distract the eye resulting and ultimately focusing the audience’s attention
WEEK 6 NEW MEDIA READING QUESTIONS
What information can ethnographic tools give you to improve the interactivity of an online banking website?
- By using these tools, you can gain insight into the users daily life and how they interact with (in this case) technology. By observing how they navigate other websites and technology, you can determine what areas would be easier or harder for the user to navigate in an online banking website. In addition, by observing their daily life you can determine how important an online banking website would be and whether it would be continually used.
At what point is a design finished? What makes it a success? What is its purpose?
- The purpose of design is to arrange elements (be it visual or experiential components) to suit a need or function. This means that each design’s purpose changes based on what needs to be accomplished. The design is never finished, rather it usually ends when a purpose is met or lack thereof. This means that there’s always another level or step you can take the design, however there are time constraints, limited money, and limited staff resulting in a design stopping. Whether it is a success or not depends on what the purpose for that design is. You can have the most boring design, but if it fulfills the purpose then it is a success.
Identify a product family you use regularly (can be anything from technology to consumables except for coffee). How has its branding affected your use, relationship and experience with the product?
- A product family I use regularly is apple. Apple is branded as a cohesive creative and prestigious brand and the more I use their products the more critical I become. When you promote things as grand and important as those topics, you have to really make sure that you fulfill those promises. However, the more I use apple the more disappointed I am at its lack of relationship with things outside itself, its need to squeeze every bit of money out of you, and its once prestigious reputation.
- In a way its ingenious to prevent communication with other technology brands as it encourages users to buy and equip all apple products. However, considering I’m not rich, I have and use a combination of brands which makes certain components just not work together. Even the smallest things end up becoming a pain, such as the iphone dangle headphone adapter. These things are NOT made to last, resulting in me having to buy a 10-15 dollar new one 2 or 3 times a year (or more). Considering how much of a money powerhouse the company is, it really didn’t seem necessary. Apple used to be seen as the graphic designer’s choice, and was often praised in many ways for being levels above other companies. However as time goes on, other companies are either catching up or outright outpacing apple, providing better and more features than apple. It puts it into perspective when you can not only pay less for other products, but also gain more features, connectability with other brands, as well as many other benefits
Week 5 interaction design reading
What makes up interaction design and what are some of the industry’s challenges?
Interaction design is made up of a series of steps and processes in the hopes of understanding the audience and how the eventual product you design will affect them. . One of the challenges the industry faces is the time it takes to commit to this whole process. Explaining to a boss why you need multiple weeks to write stories and scenarios might be a hard sell, especially to someone who isn’t well versed in the field. Another challenge is the difficulty of relating to your audience and understanding their experiences, situations, perceptions, cultural norms, etc.
What is interaction design, how its evolving. What fields does it draw knowledge from?
Interaction design consists of not only a process to design a product, but that process is interwoven into how the user of the product will use and interact with it on a daily basis. As interaction design absorbs techniques and ideas from other fields, it continues to evolve in its process of understanding the user and how they interact with life. As time progresses, certain types of products and design systems are becoming more refined thanks to interaction designers, allowing for more efficient systems and ways of interaction.
Due to the nature of interaction design and its need for knowledge of its user, interaction design can draw knowledge from marketing, graphic design, industrial design, even UI and UX designers. Interaction design takes the steps these fields use and upgrades them, taking them to the next level to be more intricate, detailed, and suited for conceptual ways of thinking. Often these fields focus too much on the visual aspect of design, whereas interaction design focuses strictly on the conceptual navigation of users.
What makes a good game?
A “good” game changes in certain aspects depending on the type of person playing, however there are usually consistent aspects that make a game objectively good. Personally I find games that are more chance based to be more fun, and therefore “good”, mainly because I suck at strategy games. However, someone whos strategic probably hates chance based games and dont think they are good at all.
For the vast majority of games, an enticing metaphor usually leads to a good game. Having a story, reason, and world that is created out of the game is one of the primary components that I think about when judging a game. A good game also has easy to understand rules. This means that no matter how simple or complex the game is, the rules are easy to follow, making the transition from learning to playing smooth. Overall there are subjective and objective guidelines on what makes a good game, but I’m sure as I continue to play more these might even change.
5 game ideas about collection
- a board game where each player is an adventurer seeking out treasure for a museum. The game starts with a card showing what artifacts the museum requires, and players will travel across the globe to roll for and acquire different artifacts.
- a board game where each player controls a pirate ship attempting to reach islands to acquire gold. Tor travel across the board, players will play different movement tiles that will take them in different directions. The game will be similar to tsuro, however there will be obstacles around the board, and the ultimate goal is to reach the islands to acquire the most gold.
- A physics based game where players collect and place figurines without toppling the different layers of a shelf. Players will have a stockpile of different size figurines and each turn they will place the figurines on the shelf trying not to topple the shelf. The player who topples the shelf first will be the loser.
- a 1 vs everyone else card game where 1 player is the collector who has a immense collection of knick knacks. Each turn all the other players will steal one of the knick knacks and its up to the collector to realize what is missing and who stole it.
- A dungeon crawler board game where players traverse the dungeon facing and slaying monsters. The goal of this game is to slay different monsters and collect their body parts and organs to ultimately Frankenstein them together at the end of the dungeon. Each player will then have to battle the monsters that each other player created.
2/18 game reviews
Tsuro is a tile based board game where players attempt to create the longest path possible to avoid the outer edge of the board, while messing up other players so that they can be the final one on the board.
Munchkin gloom is a card game that challenges player to have the most depressed team of adventurers, while also making other teams happier to ensure that their team is the most miserable.
5 ideas centered around loss/lost
-board game where players travel across many spaces on the board. Each space they land on, the player draws a card, but that card is kept secret until the player reaches the end of the board. At this point, the player turns over each of the cards that they picked up and plays them in the order that they had originally picked up
– a card game where each player starts with and is supposed to remember a card. All of these cards are shuffled back into the original deck and the original deck is split into 5 different decks. Each players goal is to try to draw the initial card they had at the beginning.
-card game based around having a ludicrous amount of cards in each players hand. The hand that each person has must stay in the order it is (no rearranging the cards). Each round each player must play a card with is strict time limit that resembles the card in the middle. In addition there will be cards that shuffle other players hands.
– card game that revolves around ridding your hand of all your cards (similar to the premise of uno). However, there is a switch in the middle that players can activate with certain cards. The switch changes the rules between two modes: 1. whoever gets rid of all the cards in their hand wins. 2. whoever reaches 15 cards in their hand wins.
– Social deduction game that revolves around confusing one player. a word prompt is made known to all players except one. Half of the players who know what the word is must say out loud something similar to the prompt. The other half of the players must say something that is the opposite of the prompt. For example if there are 4 people who know what the prompt is and the prompt is banana two might say, monkey, healthy, while the other two might say unhealthy, purple (because yellow is the opposite of purple). 5 rounds go by and if the one person can’t guess the prompt the 4 people win. If the one player manages to guess the prompt then they win.
Game metaphors
Tokaido is a point based resource game where tourists are traveling across japan stopping at different sights and people in order to acquire points which will be tallied up by the time all of the tourists reach the end of their journey.
week 3 card game ideas
alright so most of my ideas are kind of rough, but here we go
- a wizard game where each player focuses on getting cards with spells and building their own custom combination of spells on their wand. Certain spells will counter others, with the goal being to attack other players and be the last wizard standing. There would also be specific defensive spells that can fend off certain spell attacks.
- a hoarding type card game, where the goal is to have the own the most junk over other players. Each round players will steal different types of junk from a vault in the center, and having different combinations of junk from the vault will affect other players (such as stealing other players items or destroying them etc). Maybe also have a shop called gorbos junkyard, where players can turn in certain types of junk for better junk
- a kingdom resource game, where depending on the kingdom you choose, the rules of the game differ. This could be that each kingdom can only play certain cards, or maybe each kingdom plays fundamentally different
- a game that revolves around a magical totem that passes around to each player during their turn. This totem will give you gold the longer it is in your possession, so the goal of the game is to acquire the most gold. In addition there will be cards that enable you to hold onto the totem longer, or prevent others from acquiring the totem
- a card game that similar to the price is right, except the item that you win will affect how you play in the upcoming rounds.
The story of Bang!
Bang! is a social deduction game mixed with elements of resource management (your health) as well as other abilities and weapons you have to keep track of. Bang! immerses the players into its world of a spaghetti western, by the theming of all the actions and cards that you partake in, as well as the characters that you become. All of the actions from the primary means of damage; the bang! card, to other utility cards such as the beer card add to the western world that you become a part of. The greatest element I believe however is the addition of characters and their unique abilities. Not only are there a lot of different characters you can play (adding replayablility to the game), but combined with their abilities the immersion these characters add greatly enhance the game. For example in the one game we played, one of the players was El Gringo. This character conjured a western world in my mind as I inserted each character into my imaginative story. In addition, El Gringo dying at the beginning conveniently played into my expectation of who El Gringo is, and overall it became hard not to become immersed in the world of the game.
The acts of the game were pretty straight forward, however act 2 of the game tended to last the longest with act 3 either lasting equally as long or very short. To start, act 1 would be the beginning of the game as each player grows accustomed to their individual roles and characters they were assigned. Then begins act 2 which would progress until one of the characters, or the sheriff in particular was brought to 1 health. This meant that act 3 could last a long time if the players couldnt finish off the player with one health, or it could last a couple minutes as all it takes is a bang! card to finish someone off. Add in beer which can save you at the last second, as well as miss cards that can save you from dying, act 2 and act 3 are in constant flux and can constantly shift back and forth.
Jackbox review Zeeple Dome
I have played many jackbox games over the years, and for the most part I enjoyed the majority of the games and think that they are well made, both from a artistic and technical standpoint. Sadly, Zeeple Dome is not as polished as the other games Jackbox has made. This is both due to the game itself, as well as the technical issues surrounding it. For starters zeeple Dome requires you to essentially aim your character in the right direction. While this would feasibly be a good mechanic when you are physically in front of the screen, when online the input delay is large enough that aiming resorts to aiming in the general direction and just hoping that your character will hit the enemy. Another aspect of the game that isnt really well explained are the enemies. Usually with jackbox tutorials they give you a good understanding of how the game works, while still keeping it simple and easy to understand. Zeeple Dome doesnt even explain the mechanics of the game, ESPECIALLY how the enemies work. In fact I didnt even know we had to hit the enemies specifically when they light up with our characters colors, until Tasia said so in the chat around 15 minutes in. Normally I think that the player could figure these things out on their own, but there are so many characters and particles bouncing around everywhere that analyzing what happens when you hit an enemy is unlikely. Overall, Zeeple Dome has fun mechanics that theoretically would result in a fun game, but the lack of explanation of how the game works, as well as the frustrating delay in the controls results in a unfun experience.