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WEEK9:
TREAD ON
29/09/2024
REPORT
This week, I focussed on further 'Rapid Prototyping' from 'The Field Guide to Human-Centred Design' to ensure that I am well on my way to having mockups for my poster for next week; this poster will be displayed at the exhibition. (IDEO.org, 2015; IDEO.org, 2024). From my rapid prototyping process, I completed IMPA's landing page, sign-in process, community, jobs, and news page.
To ensure that IMPA's user interface looked realistic, I found many references from 'Pinterest', 'Behance', and genuine websites. However, I tried to add a twist to these pages by incorporating the triangular shape of my logo as a thematic characteristic. For my community page, I took heavy inspiration from existing successful social platforms such as 'LinkedIn' and 'Glassdoor'. I have been iterating through the triangular boxes that can be seen on my community page by experimenting with colours and spacing. For my news page, there was a focus on having a consistent brand whilst incorporating images, as there would be fewer graphics in this section to avoid cluttering the visual aesthetic. To ensure consistency, buttons and labels have been made red, and boxes and images have rounded corners to create the soft look of IMPA's logo. The jobs page incorporates the same branding elements I had previously mentioned. However, I am currently struggling between making certain boxes red or black when wanting emphasis; red can be overwhelming due to the sheer volume of it throughout the platform, yet black can come across as quite dull.
Lastly, I gathered feedback on all my pages from my design peers and found valuable insights, such as "Your website looks like what would happen if a business owner made their website without hiring a designer to do it for them."
Figure 1
Landing Page Sign-In Process
Note. This figure showcases the utilization of my graphics whilst the user signs into IMPA's platform.
Figure 2
Community Page - Dashboard
Note. This figure shows how I iterated with the spacing and colours of the triangle theme I brought on from IMPA's logo.
Figure 3
Resources Page - News
Note. This figure indicates the layout of the news page of IMPA's platform.
Figure 4
Jobs Page - Opportunity
Note. This figure displays the jobs page of IMPA's platform.
RESPONDING
It was delightful to progress further with my prototyping, as my Figma prototype is slowly coming to life. However, I encountered a problem with creating the graphics for my platform; it was heavily time-consuming. This process consists of sketching my characters on paper, refining them in Adobe Illustrator, and finally placing them on my prototype pages. The method that takes the most time is utilizing Illustrator; I am using a mouse and keyboard to draw these characters. Personally, I found that the references I had chosen look quite lovely, yet I am getting negative feedback on them, each with its reasons.
I am also getting constructive criticism on the layouts I have used for my pages, as I need more grids and realistic proportions. This is making me look towards finding new references and has a stronger focus on replicating real-world website proportions so I can output a higher-fidelity prototype. Moreover, there is doubt about my font size and the size of the buttons and boxes used for each page I have created this week. I need to ensure further consistency with which font sizes to use, for example, a standard size for headings; currently, the news and jobs pages have different heading sizes.
RELATING
My struggles with choosing suitable references and creating high-fidelity prototypes are familiar. I faced this issue in DES200, ‘Design Methods and Processes 2’. The paper had a final assignment focused on delivering a Figma prototype. Although I was the project manager, I wanted to be involved in all aspects of the team’s project and thus provided support to my creative and technical directors. I quickly learned through feedback from our tutor that my prototyping skills were relatively weak because they did not look realistic; the scale of every element used was off. Initially, I took this constructive criticism quite harshly because I spent a prolonged time creating the prototype pages. This was where I learnt that time does not equate to quality when you are an aspiring design student. To bring this experience to the context of today, I managed to ensure that I had an open perspective on the feedback I received.
Additionally, I will emphasize that just because you learnt something from the past does not mean you won’t repeat the same mistake; we are only human. A final note to this experience would also be remembering that not every feedback piece is correct. Although this week’s feedback from my peers consisted of many opinions that I believe are true, there were also quite a few that I felt weren’t, and knowing when feedback is valuable is crucial for all parts of life.
REASONING
The most significant thing that occurred this week was repeating a mistake that I have made in design before, and most likely far too often. According to Kalia (2022), studies have linked the repetition of the same mistakes and the chemistry of the brain; neural pathways have been programmed so that every time one recalls a past mistake, the brain heads down the previous pathway, causing it to slow down and dwell longer and harder. Thus, the brain becomes so preoccupied with undoing mistakes that it ultimately never reaches a real solution. The author mentions an additional similar concept called “target fixation”, which revolves around how focusing on avoiding collision with an object ultimately increases the chances of detriment. I found Kalia’s writing very relatable because I actively tried to avoid making weak prototypes by searching for references from the websites mentioned above; the feedback I had received from DES200 kept repeating repeatedly in my head. Kalia ends her piece with a silver lining by suggesting that if it is human to repeat mistakes, it can also be human to adapt and correct them.
RECONSTRUCTING
Based on the previous reflection stages, I have learned that I need to focus more on the consistency of design elements, such as font sizes, button styles, and realistic proportions, to create a more polished, high-fidelity prototype for IMPA. I realize that even though I have improved from past projects, such as DES200, I still face recurring issues with prototyping that need further refinement. As a next step, I will prioritize incorporating a grid system in Figma and selecting more cohesive references that reflect the real-world designs. To address the time-consuming process of graphics creation, I will explore the idea of dropping the graphics theme as a whole, which will give me more time to focus on refining other elements of the prototype.
REFERENCES
IDEO.org. (2015). THE FIELD GUIDE TO HUMAN-CENTRED DESIGN.
https://www.designkit.org/resources/1.html
IDEO.org. (2024). Get Visual. Design Kit. https://www.designkit.org/methods/get-visual.html
Kalia, S. (2022). Why We Repeat Mistakes After We’ve Made Them. The Swaddle. https://www.theswaddle.com/why-we- repeat-mistakes-after-weve-made-them
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