App Process Update #1

I've been brainstorming, sketching, and begining the wireframes and design for my app. I am still flushing out the complete functionality of the app as I design, but the general idea is very simple - help users get up and go to sleep at their desired time each night and morning.

Screen designs will be simple, and use gradiants that reflect both Nighttime and Sunrise. Using the app will be simple, as its purpose is to keep students from NOT wasting time using their phones and get to bed/wake up on time.

Sketches/brainstorming:

First Wireframe:

First logo/design/symbols explorations: 

Habit Research

Research on Habits from The Power of Habit by Charles Duhigg:

There isn’t one formula for changing habits, there are thousands.

Each person’s habits are driven by different cravings. 

Habits are made up of a loop of three parts; a cue, a routine, and a reward. This loop must be identified and understood to address a habit.

The routine is the behavior you want to change (in a bad habit scenario). 

Force a moment of attention. - sometimes this is done by writing something down.

Isolate the routine first, then the reward, then find the cue.

Once you have those things figured out, you can start to shift your behavior… but you need a plan.

Sometimes your plan will fail and it will take repeated experiments and failures to figure out something that works for you.

Designing for Social Interactions: Facilitate Play - Process

START : Human Centered Design

Class Notes --->












PHASE 1 : Game Brainstorming

From the start my group knew we wanted to focus on creating a game that was...

Fun (humorous, interactive, quick)
Simple (could be easily explained and played in about fifteen minutes)
Relatable (design students would specifically like it and understand it)

Notes & Sketches --->

PHASE 2 : Further Game Brainstorming & Initial Interface Design

After deciding on our "Design Life" game, we wanted to keep the actual design of it simple. We decided to use a CMYK only color scheme and use the classic Helvetic as our typeface.

Notes & Sketches --->

Group Homework ---> By the next class, we should each have...

1. 20 good cards, 20 bad cards, and 10 attack cards
2. Game title ideas
3. Two card designs
4. One "If - When - Then" statement
5. One board design


PHASE 3 : Review of "Group Homework" and Make Some Decisions 

During class we reviewed all the 'homework' we had done since last class and each person picked a task to focus on in order to see the game through to the end (Amy = cards & logo, Roxy = board design, Gracie = board making, Kaitlin = game rules, Megan = all card text). We also made final decisions on what the cards, board, logo, and rules should look like and contain. For example, we decided to model the game board after the architectural shape of Marvin/Chalmers Hall buildings.

Card and Logo Proofs --->

Group Homework ---> Finish the game! (I had to finish designing the cards and logo, then print, trim and cut the corners of the cards.)


PHASE 4 : Done! 

Final Cards:

Final Logo:

Designing for Social Interactions: Infographic Recap

This infographic concerning racially motivated crimes by Austin Barto was very interesting to me. I found the unique composition of a floating, 3D town very cool, and felt that stark color scheme and simple presentation of the data was very successful. 

From his infographic I learned that most incidents of racially motivated crimes happen near the resident's home and that the least amount happen in parks and playgrounds. It would be interesting to know the nature of these crimes as well, and if there is a correlation between the nature of the crime and where it happens. The design of this infographic inspired me to look at design problems in new ways, and make solutions that aren't the most obvious or the easiest. 

*Infographic by Austin Barto

Designing for Social Interactions: Infographic Update

I am creating an infographic about how working American mothers and fathers split up household responsibilities and how they spend their time, respectively.

My thesis is:

Dispite improvements in the balance between who does more in working households, mothers still spend more time on household chores and childcare than fathers.


These are some drafts of ideas I have for the compostition and layout of my infographic.

Sources:

I collected all my research from a great study done by the Pew Research Center over Social Trends.
See the following link for more info:

http://www.pewsocialtrends.org/2015/11/04/raising-kids-and-running-a-household-how-working-parents-share-the-load/

Paul Harvey's "So God Made a Farmer" Speech

_ Who is speaking? 

Radio Broadcaster Paul Harvey



_ Why was/is the speech important to society? 

Made at the Future Farmers of America Convention in 1978, and was used in a Dodge trucks commerical during the XLVII Super Bowl. Dodge agreed to donate $1,000,000 made from its Youtube views.



_ Why do you feel it is important or interesting? 

Its a very heartfelt speech about some of the hardest working men and women in the United States. Farmers are an integreral part of our society, and they really do so much and are expected to be morally upright people who put in a hard day's work everyday with no compliant. 



_ What is the emotion, mood, tone, personality, feeling of the speech?

Heartfelt, rugged, honest, straight to the point, intense, serious.



_ What is intonation, emphasis, what is loud, stressed, or soft. Where are there pauses... 

Influction on "8th" day... "Eighth" is drawn out. 
Paused after "planned paradise." 
"School board" has a finailty to it. It seems like emphasis is slightly placed upon it. 
"Wake up before dawn > milk cows > ... > ... > milk cows again" sounds and feels like a cycle. (Repetition)
"Plow deep and straight" emphasis on "deep" and "straight". 
"Not. Cut. Corners." choppy
"Seed, weed, breed, rake, disc, plow, plant, tie-the-fleece, strain-the-milk, replenish-the-self feeder" is very intensly and quickly listed. Great part of the speech! 
Pauses and catches breath after the word "self feeder"
"Five mile drive to church" slows speech speed way down from previous listing 
Almost all three of the "So God made a farmer"'s that i'm going to use (and throughout the whole speech) are said at the same speed and with the same influction - which I think is cool. 



_ What do you FEEL should be loud or soft, long pause or rushed?

"8th" should be loud
"So God made a farmer" should be soft the first time, medium the second time, and loud the final time. OR soft every time. OR loud everytime. Its the major line in the speech, its the whole point of the speech, and its said very strongly but his voice is softer and more controlled every time he says it than during other parts of the speech... so it might always make a bigger impact if it is soft every time. 

_ Is there a call to action? When listening to it what are key/emphasized words? 

"So God Made a Farmer" is repeated a lot. 



_ How does it make you feel? 

Inspired by and thankful for farmers. Thankful to have been brought up in a small town where farming was a real way of life for many people. 



_ How do imagine that the audience felt? 

Emotionally moved. Appreciated. Honored. Thankful. I remember when it came on during the Super Bowl commerical, Paul Harvey's voice is so strong and unique and captivating that the whole room got quick and serious and everyone watched the entire commercial without saying anything and it even felt like people take a deep breath at the end, like they had sort of been holding their breath through the whole thing - that's how clearly I remember it. 



_ Could there be another interpretation of the speech?

Farmers deserve more thanks than they are given - rather than the idea that farmers are incredible people that don't care whether or not they get any thanks.



_ Write/find a short bio, of the person giving the speech. 

"American radio commentator Paul Harvey delivered conservative broadcasts on current events, reaching, at his peak, 24 million people daily. His career started at the Chicago radio station WENR with Paul Harvey News and Comment quickly gained national syndication. Although he was friendly with many prominent figures of the American right, he was adamant about retaining his own ideological core."

"Harvey's "So God Made a Farmer" speech was characterized, according to The Atlantic, by its "folksy timbre".^[3] The New York Times spoke further on elements of his speaking style in its 2009 obituary: "his style was stop-and-go, with superb pacing and silences that rivaled Jack Benny’s. He spoke directly to the listener, with punchy sentences, occasional exclamations of “Good heavens!” or “Oh, my goodness!” and pauses that squeezed out the last drop of suspense: the radio broadcaster’s equivalent of the raised eyebrow or the knowing grin."^[4] Bob Greene described the opening phrase of the speech as "seemingly simple, and devastatingly direct".^[5]" 

I will be using the following part of the speech: 

"And on the 8th day, God looked down on his planned paradise and said, “I need a caretaker”

-- so God made a Farmer.

God said, “I need somebody willing to get up before dawn, milk cows, work all day in the fields, milk cows again, eat supper, then go to town and stay past midnight at a meeting of the school board”

-- so God made a Farmer.

It had to be somebody who’d plow deep and straight and not cut corners; somebody to seed, weed, feed, breed and rake and disc and plow and plant and tie the fleece and strain the milk and replenish the self-feeder and finish a hard week’s work with a five-mile drive to church

-- so God made a Farmer."

Famous Poster Designers

Armin Hofmann
- one of my favorite designers EVER - 
Armin Hofmann is a very famous Swiss poster designer. He loved to use black and white, sometimes with limited use of red or light blue, and lots of geometric forms.  His posters for theatrical productions, such as the one for the ballet, Giselle, are very well known as well.  When using images, he liked to use raw, unfiltered, often grainy images that reflected the interactiion of light and design.  He wasn't just a famous designer, he was also an extraordinary teacher, inspiring and coaching generations of designers. 

Paula Scher

Described as "iconic, smart, and unabasedly populist" Scher is a well known designer specalizing in identity, enviornmental design, packaging desing, etc.  She works at legendary design firm, Pentagram, in New York City, and has designed for top-knotch clients such as Tiffany & Co. and The New York Times Magazine.  Her recent work has introduced a whole new level of "dimensional graphic design" by fusing architecture, graphics, environmental design, and wayfinding into a complete expierence.

Josef Muller-Brockman

Muller-Brockman is a very well known Swiss designer, who was also influenced by the ideas of several different design and art movements including Constructivism, De Stijl, Suprematism and the Bauhaus.  Like his counterpart, Hofman, he enjoyed working with more serious tonalities of black, white, red, etc. and always stuck to the grid.  He wrote two famous books about the Grid system, and is part of the reason it is so essential to designers today.

Herbert Matter

Matter was a Swiss designer, and was known for his poster designs that both successfully communicated their immediate messages, used photomontage, and had a strong personal expression.  His contribution to the partnership of design and photography lives on in importance today.  He also worked alongside Alexey Brodovitch at Harper's Bazaar, among many other travels and jobs!