Vinvin1605's Blog

week 12

vinvin1605 — Fri, 05 Jun 2009 07:22:56 +0000

Finally, final journal! I would like to talk the key moment when I had started to realise that our group need a lot of modification and change in terms of doing our project. It was really useful to conduct a consultation with Mr. Blair and get a brilliant feedback from him. From those consultations, we could give a lot room for improvement towards our project. At the first time we just independently tried to do our work by depending on research. We had done so many research for finding the best information for cosmetic’s products which is generally speaking we did not consider the age of our target audience. Mr. Blair’s feedback was really useful for us, he urged us to learn how to create interactive design by pretending and putting our self as a customer and try to figure out what is the most important aspect that our customer requires from our design. From that point we started to consider many aspects such as different way to make up base on the age differences.
From this project I have learned how to think logically in terms of how to create a simple video movie that able to give enough information and easily understand by the viewer. Final words, I would like to be assessed base upon my cooperative performance as a member of a team. I have to admit that being a team member is not an easy task, so many aspects needs to be done in order to accomplish a big task as a team.

Week 11

vinvin1605 — Thu, 04 Jun 2009 12:48:57 +0000

So many things in terms of the new aspects that I have learned so far in regards of this group project work. I have learned so many new things, for example I learned how to use iMovie software, which is really interesting to learn and play with! I am assuming that by learning iMovie software it will give me advantage for my future prospect in terms of my design career. I could think more how to create and design more valuable design that useful towards my audience. Freedom also the most enjoyable moment during working on this project, I have a lot of freedom to express my creativity, thought, and also skills. It was so fun that I could choose any topic that I like, it surely gave me personal motivation and impact on how I performed many task regarding this project. On the other side I also experienced the most difficult time, for example is hard to manage the time to held a meeting with my group’s member, each of us for sure do not have same convenient time to meet with, therefore our time management sometimes was not on schedule. Furthermore, it is definitely really hard to achieve the best decision upon so many opinions from each of group’s member, we need to carefully analysing what is the best decision, how is going to impact our task, what is the implication that might happen and so forth. Conclusion for this week’s journal is I wish that I could have done some modification towards the final movie design. From my perspective, we choose difficult way to design the graphic; we had spent too much time concentrating on it. It would be better if we use hand drawing and manually take photo for the final video because it will save so much time upon our project.

Week 9 Gruen Transfer question

vinvin1605 — Thu, 04 Jun 2009 12:44:30 +0000

This is my first time watching Gruen Transfer show, and it was so funny and interesting talk show. I am going to write the 20th May episode in this journal.
The first advertising was talking the “Oslo Gay Festival” campaign. The advertisement was so funny and made people required to think what is the flying ‘sperm looks like’ appeared on the screen?? That flying thing was the part of the advertisement that freaks people out. I do like this advertisement because its simplicity of the concept and it was beautifully animated and scored with a surprising and funny ending. It will let the viewer remember.
The second one is talking no other than McDonald burger meal!!! McDonald’s advertisement this time was using a sexy model that eats the burger. The advertisement was quiet attractive seeing how sexy when she eating the burger, and it was so funny that there were a shot at the end showing the burger got orgasm!!!
The last advertisement for this episode was Hungry Jacks, one of the strong competitors for McDonald in fast food industry market. Hungry Jacks made cooperation with Disney in order to promote and raise both of their revenue by providing Aliens vs Monster’s toys for every burger kids meal.
By further investigating those advertisements, I could pull out an interesting conclusion here. Many company or organisation use an advertisement as one of their significant ways to market their product into consumer or public however there are some issues that needs to be concerned and review here. Most of the advertisement now using a human nature things to attract the viewer, for example are the Oslo gay festival and McDonald advertisement. They both using sex terms because they know that sex is one of the human’s need that keep exist forever, clever, intriguing and raise controversy as well isn’t it? More over, Hungry Jacks is a bit different here; they are using kid, which is likely to be not really understood the meaning of obesity and negative impact of junk food. The kids just want the toys, and their parents can’t do much about it when the kids really want to have those toys.
From my point of view, I don’t thing it is a really big issue for those organisations to use their own way in order to market their product; it is all depends on how the society looks it from different perception. For example, even though I become one of the parents, I would not prohibit 100% to my kids to touch fast food, as long as it’s not become their habit. Just try to be positive and respect the way of each organisation advertise their product.

Week 8

vinvin1605 — Thu, 21 May 2009 12:26:39 +0000

I think this week will be a week that important for us both in terms of its activity and its journal’s question that might be useful to think and reflect about. The problem occurs in most student’s design is they just majority too much concentrating into create something that looks nice and pretty without further consideration particularly on commenced the most efficient way to communicate the information required with the audience. If the audience does not understand what is the video about, the whole thing is going to be useless and all of effort turns to nothing but a memory!
Therefore, a chosen keyword that have been become a principles for me are do it simple, have fun with it, and always see something from different point of perception. I think those keywords are the most efficient way in order to accomplish the final presentation of our design. We had implemented our idea into the planned interface design with firstly connecting the scenario given and its processes (how it’s going to work? what are the implications?), afterwards we started to reconcile those on going processes into the design system (iBeauty Booth).
We are trying to make everything straight to the point because we want to be able to achieve one of our intentions, which are giving simple and accurate information towards our audience. Nevertheless, I also would like to investigate another’s team project that might be useful and we could take it into our consideration as a reference.

week 7 Testing Prototype

vinvin1605 — Mon, 04 May 2009 06:38:51 +0000

The testing prototype for this week was surprisingly going so well, not as bad as I expected before. Here I go tell the story!
On the testing day, there were two males come to testes our project, I feel bad and quiet worry because I thought they won’t understand and interesting towards our project, which is all about girl’s word (make-up stuff).
Surprisingly, they totally understand with our ideas and gave us a lot of advice and useful feedback. It was great that our project is user friendly, fun and easy to understand by user or target. More over, the positive feedback and advices from them was clear the things (our make-up project can only be understand by female) up and also give us a good thought that our project is easy to be use for every target or audience.
We still need a lot of improvement towards our project, it is not a time to sit back, relax and happy enough with this achievement, we still have to improve! There are still so many rooms that need improvement, such as provide more information detail to the user and more interaction ability.
I was thinking the testing day will be horrible, however I am happy with what I get from those useful feedbacks, I could learn more and most importantly I could do more effort towards what is actually the user thought about our project

week 6 Prototype

vinvin1605 — Sun, 26 Apr 2009 11:49:19 +0000

This week we sort of get through the point of understanding the actual definition of prototype and its benefit towards our project. We also did a written scenario and persona in order to improve the structure of our prototype design. It was easier for us to develop the design requirement after we made the case scenario that relevant to the idea and our plan.
Firstly, we had done some research in regards to “what is happening today in the make-up world?” in order to understand user’s opinion about it. We believe that do a lot of research will help and bring us one step further to design a prototype. Afterwards, we combined and compile the case scenario with our research with hope that we will be able to get the big picture about what are we going to design.
However, the reality doesn’t say that easily, we still could not get a bright solution for our design, which is I think is mainly because we were not really trying to observe the actual behaviour and feeling of the user. What we done is just do some research, note down the significant point, and then try to put the whole document together, hence it was not yet enough.
After realising this missing part, we were trying to do deeper observation towards user behaviour, and the result was amazing! We able to connect the main point of user’s behaviour with our research resulting improvement in our prototype design!!!
Finally, now is the time to plan for next week steps. We planned to draw a draft diagram based on the conducted research, hopefully we could get significant development even though in its slightest!

week 5

vinvin1605 — Tue, 21 Apr 2009 13:17:48 +0000

First point that I wanted to focus on in this week journal is to understand the target or audience of my make-up interaction design project. Few weeks ago before I do deeper research towards my audience, I had opinion that all woman would be interested on similar product if I can say so, “every woman supposed to have same thought in regards to make-up stuff”, honestly that was my personal opinion though.
Nevertheless, I finally realized that actually not all woman from different age would likely have the same taste towards make-up stuff after I done some research regarding females behavior through Internet world such as make-up forum, relevant websites and also from direct interview with few ladies. It was quite surprising for myself after I find out this truth! I thought that all females group from different age would show similar behavior and could be my target/audience.
The main point that I would like to emphasize here is I finally able to set up my target for my project, not like before where my target were too broad to define. From the observations I conclude to set the female age between 16-25 to be my audience.

week 4

vinvin1605 — Tue, 14 Apr 2009 03:39:34 +0000

I could say that week four was quite a big blast of disappointment for my group and me. We have to back to the start point again especially after Mr. Blair gave us the feedback toward our project proposal.
I am going to describe our bad proposal therefore I could understand a bit more where does actually our biggest mistake?! First point was about the proposal content which is too broad to define. We planned to create a website with provide online shopping on woman’s make up products and service, however we did not carefully thing and consider about who is going to be the real user of this service, who will need its service, and also who is actually our target audience? We only proposed the last major point that we have to create something attractive that could make human’s life much more easier and better to get the latest make up stuff.
The second point is we did not consider whether our plan would likely work out and get a good result or not. We just simplified the things up and ended up could not make a good proposal! I had to admit that after I heard Blair’s feedbacks my heart was full of pain and sorrow, I felt like all of my efforts and work has to be buried. But on the other hand, I also agreed with his feedback that is actually really help us to get a better point toward this project.
I have to go back on the first two weeks where I heard the definition of interaction design for the first time. In all of a sudden, I realized that interaction design is a broad topic that cover everything, it is not only about how good of the design and its final outcome, in this case I will give the example of iPhone again. I am pretty sure that before the inventor of iPhone release its product globally, it will undergo so many requirement that has to be fulfilled, for example its safety, lifetime or also its target audience.
From all of his feedback I could made one simple conclusion, we have to start again back from the start line and do more research especially on the process specifications. I remembered a word from my friend, everything in this world has a process before we it comes to the final product or services, and it is true! We can’t just jump off to the last stage, without step in on the earlier stage unless we do not care about this project ..LOL
Ok, thing more on the PROCESS ivy!!!!!!!!

week 3

vinvin1605 — Tue, 14 Apr 2009 03:37:54 +0000

This week was tougher compared to last week, it is mainly because we had to find out the best possible topic and try to finish the proposal! Started with brainstorming, try to think what kind of product or service that capable enough to interact with human’s life.
It might be harder and give us few obstacles to invent a new product rather than service, it is because we lack of material resource, hardware component and also fund!! Hehe, that’s why we finally decided to create and make up usable services.
There are many possible ways for us human to communicate with each other in terms of service of technology, for instances, we could use video call (3G), internet (Messenger or webcam chatting), or even a website. I was trying to dig each of those service’s strength and weaknesses in order to find the most suitable one or the project’s topic.
Firstly is video phone call, this technology known as a 3G that allow users to interact each other on a video call services provided by a telecommunications company such as Telstra, Optus or Vodafone. One of the biggest weakness of this technology is its service merely depends only on the signal strength and the region of the user, therefore it is quite hard to use a video call from Melbourne onto Paris unless you really pay for the superb phone plan or cap services!
Secondly is Internet or website, everybody knows what is this stuff and most of the people around the world would likely access this services for many different reasons. There are heaps of possibilities to achieve a better interaction with others by using this technology service, for instance the famous internet messenger, webcam chatting, e-mail service, or even a blog like facebook!! (PS: Facebook has been proven and widely used from people around the world to get in touch with each other!) Website or internet service might have few weaknesses such as a spam issue and broadband speed’s problem, however this issue doesn’t prevent people to use it.
Therefore, we finally decided to create a website that provide usable service for its user. Ahhhh, it is time to relax after we could get a good start point before continue to next point which is finish the proposal!

Week 2 Journal Questions

vinvin1605 — Mon, 23 Mar 2009 14:07:21 +0000

After reading the journal entries of Sagmeisters’ ambitious year off from designing jobs, you have to think how the value of his endeavor could be weighed.

He probably did more to designing in that year than he did in five years in his studio. When someone is alone in their own thoughts for a year, do you become self-fulfilled? The September 11 events certainly helped him put things in some perspective, but whether the way they affected him made him feel relatively insignificant in terms of him as a mere designer, or made him feel like his skills could be used for a different form rather than just making things look amazing.