18 February 2010

Project 1: Discussion

1) Navigating the site would be similar to traveling through the setting of the film because it is playful and uses elements of the film in the layout.


2) The character I chose to work with the most is Latrine. Though she is not visually present on the site initially (besides the heart with her name carved in it) you can see a visual of her by click on the heart mentioned. The character has a haggard appearance and is often a comedic relief in this comedy film. She is over the top, more of an observer throughout with a few moments of action, and somewhat desperate in a playful way... something that hopefully is somewhat present in the layout.

3) The world has a period look to it though in incorporates some modern elements to it. The fashion in decor and personal style in the film is not completely accurate to the times but just enough so, that one is able to understand the setting and the characters being portrayed.

4) Things in the movie move at a moderate speed. The story has a beginning, middle, and end. There are moments of slowness and speed that are not without some form of mockery or jest. For my site, I would like to incorporate the feeling of moments and characters being documented and kept in a kind of virtual scrapbook.

5) The index page created is playful mixing cartoon hand-style drawings with photographic elements. It is done in a collage/scrapbook style and is mildly chaotic because there is no initial sense of direction tells you to go to 'this' object first. There is limited use of text and is very visual in appearance, hopefully, bringing a light-hearted feel to the site, much like the loose lightheartedness in the movie.

6) Most of the buttons present on the index page are character representations. These character representations when clicked play audio voice clips or target animation.

7) It is hard to tell who specifically I used as a stylistic influence. I used collage in the piece layering objects on top of one another. Hannah Hoch is one artist who worked a lot with collage work and though this is a collage piece it uses a mix of drawing and photography and by no means garner the same emotional and visual style/feeling of her work.

8) Motion on the page is present on the buttons and the actions presented once a few of the buttons are clicked.

9) I wanted this index page to relate quite a bit to the characters of the movie and some of the experiences that are presented to them throughout the film.

10 February 2010

Adv. Web For Designers: Reading Two Discussion

1) Moore's Law:
Moore's law is not so much about visual design as it is about the physical design and makeup of the electronic powerhouse that is computers and other such devices. Moore predicted that the number of transistors on integrated circuits would double every two years. Thus allowing devices to be faster, smaller, and more efficient.

vs.

And it only gets better from here.

2) Fitts' Law:
Fitts' Law states that the time it takes to get from on point to another is determined by the distance from the starting position to the target and the size of the target. It is not so different from the basic principles of design and it seems almost elementary. Things that are larger tend to garner more initial attention than something that is relatively small in size. Larger objects tend to have a much louder voice than something that is small so it is fairly easy to see how this rule applies.

3) Hick's Law:
Hick's Laws states that the amount of time it takes for someone to make a decision is based on the number of choices given to them. Hick's says that people don't consider a group of possible choices one at a time, rather, they subdivide the choices into categories, thereby eliminating half of the choices given to them with each step of their decision making process. Hick's Law claims that a person will make faster decisions from a menu containing ten items versus two menus containing five items. However, when it comes down to me, the more choices I'm presented the more overwhelmed I become but if it were out of sheer laziness, so I wouldn't have to go through the whole thing, I would probably just pick something out of a big list rather than inspect the elements one by one.

4) The Magical Number Seven:
This says that the human mind is best able to remember things in chunks of seven, give or take two. It is why, phone numbers, social security numbers, and license plates are broken up the way they are. So we can visually recognize the characters in easy to remember chunks.

5) Tesler's Law:
Tesler's Law says that there is an inherent amount of complexity in everything and that complexity can only be broken down or simplified so much. For example, to go to a website you must either click a hyperlink to get there, enter the url into the proper field of your browser or do a search for it on a search engine. But in order to do any of these you must have given elements that allow you to get to the site in question. To get to a site via a hyperlink there has to be a functional hyperlink present that points directly to the site and you must have an input device such as a mouse to click it. To get to a site via your browser you must type the url into the proper field and in order to do this, you must know the url of the site. To get to a site via a search engine you have to know things that are related to the site, such as the name or things that might apply to it so that you can find it amongst the many other different sites that are available on the web. If any of these elements are missing in whichever method you choose to get to the site, you would not be able to do it.

6) The Poka-Yoke Principle:
This principle is fairly easy to understand. It was developed to dummy proof electronic devices. For instance, you cannot plug a USB plug into the outlet for a network cable because it wouldn't fit there.

7) Direct Manipulation:
Direct manipulation is physically changing an object, such as stretching a shape in photoshop with your mouse rather than using the height and width fields to change the size that way.

8) Indirect Manipulation:
Indirect manipulation would be changing the x and y axis of a given object in the proper fields in photoshop, rather than using the mouse to move to object around the canvas.

9) Feedback:
Feedback tells you that something has happened. Background changes when clicking a button is an example of feedback.

10) Feedforward:
Feedforward warns us in advance that something is going to happen. For instance, the power button on our computer tells us that if we click it, then the computer will come on.