Study Task 6- New Media Theory

The social form of New Media

Social media is huge, now with 500 million people on Facebook and 232 million on twitter, what makes them so popular, and do they actually make us more social? The younger generation is becoming slightly obsessed with social media and the way they are perceived on social media, creating their ideal selfs. With the rise of smart phones it has made social media more popular, people constantly connecting, liking and hash tagging. One of the first things that 80% of 18-44 year olds do in the morning is check their smartphones and Facebook, creating a very digital generation. 

New media has effected us socially as it keeps us connected, making new friends and contacts around the world, doing things that wouldn't be possible without new media and the internet. New media is in everyday life and we don't necessarily notice it anymore because it is so normal to us.
It keeps family and friendship relationships together and is part of our daily routines, not just within things such as social networking but also within things such as gaming and the use of different apps. 

People are growing up nowadays with social media in their lives such as Facebook, but with this becomes some sort of peer pressure to get likes ect. People become obsessed with how many likes they get, the thumbs up symbol, which was once associated with Roger Ebert and Gene Siskel’s film rating system, is now innately associated with Mark Zuckerberg and whether or not our peers support our postings on Facebook. Between the number of thumbs on Facebook and hearts on Instagram, we have become virtually obsessed with garnering the public approval of everyone on the web. 

The hashtag is a big thing within social media as it makes others discover your tweet/posts. People love it, but only on twitter. The very first hashtag ever was #barcamp by Chris Messina. Things happen on Twitter through hashtags faster than breaking news programs are able to catch them—the result being that Twitter is now a primary resource for many news stations. The hash tag is a short form of communication developed through the social form of new media. 

Social media has both it's good and bad points but wether we like it or not it is forever going to be developing with the movement of new media. 


References:

Martin Lister, Jon Dovey, Seth Giddings, Iain Grant and Kieran Kelly (2009). New Media A Critical Introduction. 2nd ed. Oxon: MPG Books Ltd, Bodmin. 177- 243.

Visual.ly . (2013). How many people use Facebook 2013. Available: http://visual.ly/how-many-people-use-facebook-2013-update-3-october-2013. Last accessed 28th Oct 2014.

Jim Edwards. (2013). Twitters 'Dark Pool': IPO Doesn't Mention 651 Million users who abandoned twitter. Available: http://www.businessinsider.com/twitter-total-registered-users-v-monthly-active-users-2013-11. Last accessed 28th Oct 2014.

Tyler Gidlin . (2014). Generation why? Why are we so obsessed with being 'liked'? . Available: http://elitedaily.com/humor/generation-obsessed-liked/. Last accessed 28th Oct 2014.

Working with briefs- Yahoo

Todays session was for us to focus on working with briefs, initial research and idea generation 

To get us to generate some ideas we got into small groups and worked with the 2012 YCN Yahoo brief.

The target audience is 13-18 year olds and the aim is to make Yahoo there most popular search engine to use. 

The first question we asked ourselves was 'what is yahoo's biggest issue/problem?' and that is that it isn't google

We compared yahoo's home page to googles and there are some major differences, but the main one is that yahoos is so overcrowded and trying to fit everything on one page, google has all this but just has it all tucked away as it is not all needed.

Problems with yahoo

too text heavy 

too much going on

too many links

not suitable for the younger audience 

use icons rather than text

each yahoo link you click on the overall page colour changes, no consistancy 

as there is too much going on the homepage we decided to catorgriese it all into 6 catorgries these being

-news, the news would include celebrity news, world news, sport and strange news. 

-social, this would include all yahoos social pages such as flickr

-fun, including interesting things maybe buzz feeds ect

-videos, likes to entertaining videos

-shopping, shopping links to amazon and ebay, this page would also include student promotions and offers on each week 

-answers, yahoo answers 

Also on the homepage would include a main search bar 

Here are a few sketches of some ideas we had, for the catorgries we would use icons to keep less text on the page and to have a clean, simple minimalist design. 

Study task 7- User Experience Design

Experience NOT usability 
the role in which plays in a users life 

Dyson air blade 
air blade feels like a better product. more/ less hygienic

Yahoo/google
yahoo tries to be more with news, videos ect.
google have all of their stuff tucked away 

Discussion
what products or services can you thin have significant user experience?

Waitrose- each person that works there is a partner, at the end of your shop they give you a chip for you to donate to once of their charities

Asda Online- saves your shopping list 

Amazon and Ebay- different images, ebay has bidding and amazon you buy straight off. Depending on the product to which one you will go for for cheap. Developing the task of making it appeal for everyone, very wide audience

Itunes and Windows Media Player 

Coca Cola and Pepsi- Coco Cola has your name written on the side, user experience people want to be able to find their name

Different web browsers- google crome you can sign in and still get all of your book marks ect. google crome you can use apps such as add blocker

Pintrest and Tumblr and Wordpress- All made for different users 

Youtube and Vimeo- Vimeo has better quaility videos

What is user experience deisgn?
The creation and syronisation of the elements that affect 

The application of user research in the development and production of the user interface


Garrets model of user experience design 

User needs

inspiration for type and one place to admire all sign writing 

Product Objectives

To not let sign writing to go out of date for it still to be relivant and expiring 

Content Requirement

images, videos and articles all collected in one place to do with sign writing 

Functional Specifications 

high quality images

Information Architecture

Using grids for design

Interaction Design

Using links, videos and images 

Information Design

Using information that is relevant to sign writing  

Navigation design 

Click through to the different pages with the use of links 

Interface design

Making it simple and user friendly with a clear navigation system 

Sensory Design 

Only senses we can use are visual and hearing for web design, visual will include good use of colour and type, and hearing is things such as video clips. 

UXD Methods

-user research

-personas

-content stratergy

-site maps/ task flows 

- wireframes 

-a/b testing 

User research 

Real life user research- goals of a particalar user groups, attitudes and behaviours while completing goals. 

Pasonas

The key goals within the website, why are they there in the first place? what are their feelings when using it? 

Content Strategy 

Based on research, persona documents as well as the overal brand/ product strategies. What is the nessacerry content? Hierarchy? What content reflects brand identity? Use data?

Task flows

A task flow diagram shows how users travel through the system templates while performing a specific task.

Wire frames

The content, structure and the architecture of the design. Similar to the scamps with actual measurements 

A/B Testing 

My Website- Sign Writing 

Persona for me as a young creative and my website 

Someone who is there for inspiration, created for young creatives. While being there I want them to feel inspired by traditional sign writing, I want them to feel creative. 

Key goals

To browse through inspiration, art and type

I want to watch videos about sign writing

I want to read articales and be inspired about existing sign writingers/ artists and typographers that I didn't previously know about

Scim through things with images

Content Strategy 

The nessacerry content would be a collection of research all compiled into one website about sign writing, as at it stands at the moment there isnt a place on the internet that has all of the sign writing in one place, there is just smaller bad website with random digital photos on. 

Task flow- the journey the user will take when using your website 

Brief 3- After Crit

After todays crit I was left feeling a bit confused about my own idea, the crit has been really useful  defining my target audience and the purpose of the website. 

Originally I was going to make a website targeted purely at sign writers, but after the crit I have decided to aim it at young creatives as I don't want sign writing to go out of date. As shown in my research there isn't a good defined website for sign writing, so I would like to make this. I would like to make young creatives more aware of sign writing and its beauty, as it links very closely to hand drawn type. 

the main aim of this website: 
to keep sign writing alive

target audience:
young creatives

the website will include:
history
articles 
videos
interviews
contacts 

I would like to have a single page website with high quality images with a fixed header at the top. 

Above is a quick sketch of how the single page format would work with my website, I think I would have a fixed header at the top, with the title and main links, once you click on the main links the page then jumps down to the part of the page that is relevant. Having the header bar fixed makes each bit of the page easily accessible, however if I don't have a fixed header I think the page might flow better. 

Brief 3- ideas, scamps and site map

Before I start designing on screen I need to to some sketches of my ideas and make a scamp that I want to work from and transfer on to screen. Above are some thumbnail layouts I sketched out, while doing these I was thinking about grids. 

This scamp has quite a simple consept, it is a bit like a blog. In the top right you have the search bar to serach for something on the blog, at the bottom there are social networking icons for links to social networks. Top left would be where the logo would go, below that links to other pages on the website like the history that will include a timeline of sign writing. 

This design would include a full bleed image of some sign writing in the background with the logo at the top in white for it to stand out. At the top there would be the links to other pages these links would stay at the top of the page on each page. At the bottom there would also be a search bar that enables you to search for anything on the website. With this website also as you click the link the page just jumps/moves down, this would be a single page format with links that take you down the page. 

This one would be in a grid of circles or just three icons in the middle of the home page. The icons would be very simple, the first one means inspiration, the second is history and the last one near you so people can find a sign writer near them. I like the idea of having icons as links rather than words I think it will make the website more interactive. 

This one has quite a simple layout, the middle bit would change weekly, it would be an image of some hand drawn type that would change depending on the article. Below that there would be two more images of type that are also clickable with links to articles. 

I like the idea of this one but it might look too much as it will involve a lot of imagery. The header would be at the bottom and this would stay there through every page. 

Here are my ideas for the contact page, the top left one will have photos of sign writers when you click on them it brings up their profile some of heir work ect. The icons will be ordered in the sign writers closest to your post code. The top left would be a page with google maps on it where the ones closest to you would be highlighted, when you hover over the points a photo of their most recent work would pop up. The bottom sketch would be a full bleed google maps, you hover over the places and the signwriters profile would pop up. 

Some sketches for the inspiration and 'your inspiration' page, both pages would be a simple format page and include quite a bit of imagery with photographs. 

The history page will have a simple concept of a timeline with facts coming off it, I'm unsure whether  to have the timeline go horizontally or vertically, I think i will decide this based on how I have designed my other pages to work. 

This is a sketch of the site map, the main page is the home page, then the links off that page would be the history, near you, inspo and your inspo pages, off some of those pages would also be smaller pages with less information on. I would like the whole overall website not to be too complex, simple and user friendly. 

Brief 3- Web Research

At the moment I am very unsure of how I want my webpage to look so I have decided to do some further research into general websites I like and existing sign writers blogs and websites. 

a quick google search for sign writers websites and it generally comes up with pages with contacts 

This is a graphic design studio in LA called Ludlow and Kingsley, I really like the clean and simple web design the neutral colours make it easy on the eye. 

this is a website called the pattern library, it is a single page web design and a very simple yet effective design that suits the purpose, as you scroll the pattern changes you can stop at any pattern and download

names that change has a great colour scheme and grid layout to there website, as you hover over the images you get some information about the product 

once you click on an item it splits the screen in half, half image and half info with complementary colours, i am noticing that simple design often works and is more appealing. 

This is a project I found on Behance that I found particularly interesting, a web design for a new app called hand-written, the new app focus' on the fact it is better to receive a letter or to have anything hand written as it makes it feel more personal, it is for business's that don't have time to hand write letters but want to stand out from the crowd. I partically like the colour scheme they have chosen and how they have gone with a character robot to keep the design fun. 

Above is an example of a classic sign writers website, very basic, bad colours and some digital photos of their work. 

Here is another example, simple design, bad photos, type and lack of colour. I think there is a lot of room for improvement with sign writers websites as every one I have been on is the same dull website.

http://londonsignwriter.wordpress.com

This is an example of a sign writers blog that wants to keep sign writing in a younger generation, it is really badly designed and I think it would make a better website rather than a blog. 

Here is another bad example of a sign writers website, they all seem so dull and boring, I don't think they showcase how good sign writing is.