Upon my return into my second year of University, semester 1, it’s safe to say that all hands were on deck and we jumped straight into our first project. Following, a quick recap on what is expected of us this year, what our aims of this year are, which is to obtain a placement for third year successfully, as well as what our projects are going to be like for the next 12 weeks.
To begin, we learned about the importance of content and its correlation to design. What I mean by this is we first looked at what exactly content is. Content is a form of information such as pictures, videos, words etc, that is placed one a device or page for a user to consume. The design aspect only works best to then make that content relatable, readable and engaging for the user to stay focused. One thing that I found to stand out the most during this class was a quote on the use of design and content.
“Content precedes design. Design in the absence of content is not design, it’s decoration” -Jeffrey Zeldman
Following the next step of the class, it was discussed how content should be designed and offered to the user. What I mean by this is a lot of content the average person seems to look at not just at their phones but as a whole is wild, out of control and a lot of it is just unesscary, so it was preferred to create any work in a way for what the user ‘Needs’ and not what the user ‘wants’. In other words, it seems that rather adding constant new different types of content, think about it more in a way that gets more across with less.
Before diving into our brief for project 1, We then had a look at how my content can come across as accessible, trust worthy, eye-catching and successful. I believe, that going based on what is being shown during my class that choice and usage of vocabulary for content, specifically for advertising.
This was broke down into ‘Push & Pull’ content. Push to me seems to come across as more ‘aggressive’ and in your face, similar to how pop up ads seem to come across. Where pull content to me seems to come across as more of a persuasive form of advertising.
Beginning the introduction to my first ever project of year 2. My task is to design and create an app/ content for a smart watch, based on ‘realistic/ futuristic’ expectations. My face shape can be either circular or square shaped. I have been asked to create at least three pages using Figma and some form of content to ‘advertise’ my app.
To help with work process and tracking, my lecture provided this almost step by step tracking board on where I should be with content and development stages. I thought It may come in handy in future so I decided to save it here just in case.
Following this, myself as well as the rest of the class broke into smaller groups to come up with mind-maps that could come In handy for any key words or relevance on what our apps could be used for. My team consisted of Nathan, David, and Paul. The four of us took different key words which were Fitness, Money, Nature, and Leisure, all under the umbrella of Health. Using these key words would become the foundation of what would later be the function of our apps.
I really liked the idea of Health and Fitness, considering I work in a gym and know people who work in care homes or are nurses, so I decided to try and mash two keywords I had come up with which were ‘Posture Correction’ and ‘Infection Control’. Upon this decision I then as well as the rest of the class had to make a small pitch to the tutor on our ideas. Mines came across as a little too much content to be added for how small the project would be but my tutor did like the idea of a posture correction based app especially in the medical field.
Knowing this already makes my life easier for developing my project, as I already know what the app is going to be used for as well as who it will be used for.