Creativity and Aesthetics
Similar to in my first year, creativity and aesthetics played pivotal roles within most if not all my projects. This is because the designs which I take part in need to be presentable and understandable so that I can communicate my ideas clearly, alongside showing a level of professionalism in preparation for the coming years.
Dreamkeepr
The design cycle is one that pushes the narrative on innovation, when it is full of creative and novel explorations. Generally when I think of this expertise area, I tend to focus on the final outcome, and highlight the quality of the final result. In this example I want to specifically bring to light the process of the project for Aesthetics of Interaction which is composed of three iterations that test the boundaries of the design brief of ‘creating a wake up experience’, which as a result developed a coherent aesthetic for the final prototype.
The cycle began with an approach aimed to physically wake the user with a feeling of nostalgia. This was done through a memory book, Dreamkeeper, which would gradually brighten up the room as the book slowly opened, prompting the user to interact with the product. The interaction involved the user writing out what they saw in the revealed picture, one from a past experience, to essentially give them a prompt to reflect upon in the morning. The drawback with this design, is that it failed to correctly nudge the user sufficiently to intuitively take part in the experience.
Dreamkeepr prototype and interaction exemplar.
Magic Glove prototype and interaction exemplar.
Magic Glove
The following iteration improves upon this by having a more blunt manner of informing the user, while adding complexion to the definition of waking up. Magic Glove would be located in an office/work environment and ease the transition between productivity and breaks. At its core, it uses the same task of taking pictures of an individual's past as a prompt for them to reflect upon, the difference is how they obtain and submit it. Magic Glove communicates purely through motion, which varies in speed and directness, to convey certain emotions as it hands the user the tools necessary to complete the task. Even though this was a more effective approach to pushing individuals through the experience, there was a lack of intuition that needed to be used which made the whole experience very one sided.
Nostalgia Finder
The last iteration holds a similar context to the previous one, being a product which eases the transition between break and work, but adds more user input then before. With the same emotion of nostalgia, users are now handed a device reminiscent of a hand held camera, with a collection of seemingly random composure lines traced on the wayfinder. Once these are lined up to a physical space in the users surrounding, a picture can be taken. This then prints the picture taken, next to a picture of the past where the composer lines were taken from, to show a correlation between the two. This iteration was then further developed for the final design.
Nostalgia Finder prototype and interaction exemplar.