Project 3
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reading 5
I found the article a little bit hard to understand, but I found it interesting how designers are designing things in order for everyone else to become designers themselves. With sites like myspace, flickr, go-daddy and others, it is giving ordinary people the ability to express themselves with there own designs. The emphasis in design is in the system and process more so now then throughout design history. This has opened up endless possibilities for everyone to be a designer. No longer is the main goal of a designer is to produce an end product that is finite in form and function, designers today are designing in ways that create opportunities for multi-functions and forms.
reading 4
The charity water website is a very well done site. They use very emotional pictures of third world people gathering water from muddy and unclean water holes. These pictures really create empathy for there cause. Along with this they utilize simple but beautiful information design to effectively communicate statistics and show what is being done in many of the countries that don’t have clean water. This web site is easy to navigate and not too text heavy. This helps keep people from becoming bored reading long paragraphs. They use graphics to communicate most of the message. There website is very professional looking and creates credibility in there cause. It gives people the feeling that there donations are going to be used wisely and that this is not a scam.
The future farmers website is very creative and fun to look through. The rollover icons are creative and navigation is fairly easy. A few icons don’t feel like links but just visual graphics. This is a minor problem for navigation. The purpose of the site is less clear than the charity site. The site has some great qualities but some of it feels unfinished.
http://www.nothingbutnets.net/
this site is much like the charity but its cause is setting up mosquito nets in regions where malaria is rampant.
reading 3
I found the article to be very interesting. It shows how a designer needs to be actively involved with the people and the problems these people have in there lives in order to be a sucesful designer and have the greatest social impact. It was an interesting comment that designers typically only design for about 10 % of the wealthiest people on the planet. I’m not sure if this is correct or even if it is possible to come up with this figure accurately. It is likely true if you consider only people who occupationally have a job title with the name designer in it. Having empathy for your client is crucial for a designer to do well. Understanding people and there needs is always the best starting spot in the design process. Prototyping is also very useful advise for problem solving. It allows for visual realization without wasting precious time and money. It also allows revisions and new ideas to be developed which can lead to a final better product. Then to sell the product to the public, having good story telling is important. Without this valuable step, empathy and prototyping can have little impact. Inspiring the public and getting them excited about a product is crucial in a world where people are bombarded by millions of products and services. Over all the article was a useful analysis for how to have the greatest social impact as a designer.
An interesting web site with examples of of design for social impact.
PD WEB
Camaro web site http://web.pdx.edu/~drysdalp
reading 2
Donna had some good advice when it comes to creating a friendly user interface. The key point she makes is that it should be as simple as possible to understand and follow. A minimal amount of thinking should be used in navigating a web site. I found this advice a key to how I would go about designing a web site. Very simple symbols such as arrows, highlighted objects, and shadowed boxes are some simple devices that can be used to say click here, scroll down, or more things are available here. Understanding how our vision works, how our eyes focus, our limitations with peripheral vision, and how our eyes react to color combinations are all things that must be considered when designing a page. There must be reasonable contrast and spacing as well so that the eye can differentiate between the separate components that make up a web page. Affordance and intuitiveness are also important to web design because it works on subtle things we take for granted in our everyday life such as the example of the round door knob which we understand is meant to be twisted to open. Being aware of such things will help me design better web sites. As for feedback and error recognition, making sure that the user knows that something is processing or that something you did is wrong are important things to consider for the users benefit. If the user doesn’t know what is going on it becomes frustrating.
reading response
I have mixed feelings about reading the manifesto, I found some comments to be useful but many of them I found odd or counter productive. Some of what I read seemed to contradict each other. I understand that thinking outside the box is helpful for growth, but repeating your mistakes was one that seemed foolish. Allowing events to change you or being too open to experience can be dangerous or counter productive. I try not to let emotion or experience dictate my life because my feelings can deceive me. If growth means going down the wrong path I’m not for it. I personally hate doing extensive process when I work. I think that having a clear idea of the type of outcome you want from the beginning is crucial and you get to where you want quicker. Also allowing failure doesn’t seem to be a quality I would personally follow. I have a fear of failure and it has kept me from giving up when I have had the odds against me. The don’t clean your desk comment doesn’t seem to be a helpful comment. I have gotten in trouble for not being organized many times. Maybe I just don’t understand the comment. There where some comments I didn’t understand in the manifesto. On the whole I would agree with about 40 percent of the list. I like organization,structure, rules, standards. I live my life upon reliable principals and some of the disorder that this manifesto promotes is uncomfortable for me.
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