Simulated Client project - Wireframe design

When I first saw the brief and it was said that our propsals were to include our wireframe designs I immediately thought 'wireframes are not that useful'.... I was very wrong. I initailly started designing straight away however I found it difficult to grasp a layout idea so, I went back to the beginning and gave wireframing a chance.

After looking at a number of different sites I managed to grasp the idea that wireframes were not just the starting point of a design but there were more reasons as to why we should use them before our design proces:
- With a wireframe you can provide the client with mock-ups from the word go, saving you time on working out designs, plus it will give your client an insight on your ideas.
- More collaboration - by getting your wireframes ready you can discuss with the client whats important for the site. Clients have also employed you to do the designing, the creative aspect of the process maybe a bit daughting for them so having wireframes, a clear and simple layout will provide the client with an easier outlook on their potential site.
- Creating simple wireframes gives you time to focus on different aspects of the site rather then the desiging i.e. what you want from the site, how visitor will react etc.
- Will make the designer think more about the composition rather than the colours and imagery hence, improving your design skills.

I found some useful information on the Grace Smith website so take a look it may give you some inspiration.
Below are my wirframes for the client project, as the designer I will pass these onto my supervisor (client) and get their opinion on what they like.

Simulated Client project - Pirate Bay

The Pirate Bay has been on the BBC technology news since February. Having been established as one of the worlds most 'high-profile' file-sharing sites The Pirate Bay now faces yet another new order to remove links to copyright material.

However this is proving harder then it sounds as the founders of The Pirate Bay sold the website back in 2006, meaning they have no control over what now goes on on the site. The articles that I have provided a link to above carries on to explain that the new order is not against The Pirate Bay site but the former owners, a quote from the article by Peter Sunde:

"It's against the former owners of TPB, plus me. Which puts us in a weird position, since none of us have the control they tell us to get. Does the court require us to hack someone else's system?"

Having read the article has just shown me how serious file-sharing is starting to become yet so many of us do it. In my opinion I think that the creators of The Pirate Bay have created an illegal yet a clever site. The site itself does not actually contain the copyrighted material, but provides links so that it can be found elsewhere. Could this be the reason why the trials have gone on so long?

It is clear that this is not going to be the last of a BitTorrent site but I feel that its just going to push downloaders to find other sites like these because are the users actually breaking the law? if its for personal use and not for profit making then....no, so why should users stop. It is points like this that I feel makes the purpose of our site harder, we are trying to give out this message not to use these download sites but will they actually take notice.

Taking this into consideration just pushes me forward about the design, I need the site to be appealing to students so I best get to work.

PRP - Question finalised

Having talked to Simon over the past week I finally managed to get my personal research project question finalised:

How can online gaming be used to support individualised learning within a group-learning environment?
"It is clear to people that children are continuously learning new things however as they approach the start of their education each child’s learning ability differs. Problems start to occur with the learning and teaching curriculum because of the constraints of teaching in a group format while also having to consider how to support children with their individual needs. "

This was a small part taken from my submission form. As you can see after a few talks I was able to create a question that I feel will be beneficial to myself when I graduate. I have an interest in online gaming but also after my work experience with BBC I wanted to work in environment where children interaction was the main subject.
I have been used a number of different books and journals that I feel can back my question. I also intend to get my own primary research and to teachers themselves to get there opinions on my subject matter.
So I guess there's nothing left to do but start writing (also still research)

Simulated Client project - Image idea

The copyright protection society is not a real company however we are to treat this as a real client. But what is a company without its own image? So I decided to start designing a logo for the company the main reason for this is because I want to give my work an image, make it stand out and for my final piece to look like a companies image.

Below is my first attempt of a logo and if any lecturers are readers I did not spend hours thinking up ideas because I know that this is not the main aspect of the project.

As you can see I made a very simple straight forward logo. I chose the colours yellow and black because they give out the image of hazard/dangerous/wrong. They are also two very bold and eye catching colours. As you can also see I have incorporated the 'copyright' sign as an eye, I was trying to reflect the idea of your eyes slowly getting more damaged (when staying on the computer for a long period of time).
I wanted to keep the logo quite simple but also quirky because of my chosen target audience, another reason why I kept this simple was because I took into consideration the production cost. If the company decided to create leaflets or my idea USB's then having a simple logo with minimal design and colour will be more cost effective. However I want my logo to relate to users that its about music and when looking through some of the other blogs I came across Kirsty's logo designs which gave me this new idea:

As you can see I have not change the initial logo just added some headphones and straight away I feel that I can relate this to a logo. I added the name under the image but this can change. I will show my ideas in the next tutorial but I feel that I may take a different approach to this project, rather then warning the users about the illegal user of file sharing I may try and guide them in the right direction i.e. links to legal sites, questions that they want to know, what copyright actually is etc.

Simulated Client project - What is copyright?

Having looked at a few campaign sites I've noticed that they have all been straight to the point and shown the main message so I thought that I should maybe know the basic of the copyright laws especially copyright laws that effects music. I had a browse around some of the sites when I came across http://www.copyrightservice.co.uk/protect/p07_music_copyright it explained to me the process of how to copyright music, how to get permission to use others music etc

What is the copyright law?
"The law gives the creators of literary, dramatic, musical, artistic works, sound recordings, broadcasts, films and typographical arrangement of published editions, rights to control the ways in which their material may be used." (quote is from copyrightservice)

All of the types of work that are stated above can be covered in the copyright law. The rights occur as soon as the piece of work has been created though proof of skill/labour is to be shown that its the orignal piece of work to gain the rights. Basically you cannot claim the rights of an ideas but work that can show the idea can claim the rights.
The rights are normally to the creator/designer/artist etc who made the work, however if the work is created by an employer of a design company then the company owns the rights and not the individual.

Duration of the act?
For the subject that I am working around (music) the rights on work differs, for musical it is 70 years and for sound recording 50 years

It is an offense to perform any of the acts stated below:

- Copy the work.

- Rent, lend or issue copies of the work to the public.

- Perform, broadcast or show the work in public.

- Adapt the work.

However if the user is using the work for study research, educational purposes, news reporting, incidental inclusion, copies and lending by librians, timeshifting, backup for personal use, playing for not profit and for purposes for the royal commission; then they are exempt from the rights.

Currently the law is pressing down on the 'uploaders' however companies who use their download maybe convicted too. When researching I came across a list of archives that has news about piracy so hope this helps everyone.

Sites to help gain an idea on copyright laws:

http://www.music-law.com/democopyright.html

http://www.copyrightservice.co.uk/copyright/p01_uk_copyright_law

http://www.copyrightaware.co.uk/

Simulated Client project - Talk to FRANK campaign

I am going to acknowledge Ashley for this research because it he who this site before me but I feel that this would be the ideal example of yet another young adult/student base website. You have all no doubt heard about the 'talk to frank' campaign. The campaign is based around drugs and if you haven't heard of it then maybe this advert will give you a brief idea on what its about:



Like the previous website that I analysed the designers have kept to the same theme as the TV advert. On first impressions of the site I did not realise that they have kept the interactivity and static information separate. The designers have created a interactive basement (like the advert) and users can select a category where showing different parts of 'How cocaine can affect you?' Each chosen section has a separate interactive part that the user can participate in whether it being seeing the effects of cocaine with your heart or how your image could change the more addicted you get. I did find some of the interactive parts used overpowering and quite extreme but this just proves that it attracts my target audience (me being that age)

Overall I like the interact basement mainly it hits the main issue of the website, how cocaine can affect your life. This is something that I am taking into consideration for my site as initially I was going to go for the 'humorous' approach but having looked a few sites maybe I could combine the two, like the 'NHS make a video' interactive piece; that way I will be getting the main message across but with some humorous interactive parts added it will keep the users interested.

The Layout

The general navigation of the site is quite simple and user friendly however some of the flash buttons were not very clear and it took me a while to realise that the static content was behind the basement application. Every piece has been clearly labelled for the user to easily navigate round. The buttons are clearly the black and white icons. I feel having done this was quite a conscious choice because the designers have used a mixture of pastel and bright colours for the background and so having chosen the buttons to be black and white makes them stand out but also stick to the colour theme of the logo; this is something that I did not notice at first but the more I looked at the site and the more I looked at the buttons it began to remind me of the logo.

This site is clearly aim for people who need help and what I like about the pages throughout the site is that they continuously provide help sources i.e. text, phone, email etc even the buttons represent help in some form. Having done this shows that this campaign wants to help, not to just provide information.

Something that I found very interesting was that they tried to get users to contribute to the site i.e. people who have had experience with cocaine, giving readers a 'real' life story rather then just an interactive room (something to consider for my project)

Overall the FRANK website gives out a very strong message with the use of strong and in some cases overpowering interactive pieces but, also incorporating real life stories giving the site a more realistic/serious image. Having looked at these two site it now shows me that perhaps powerful and straight to the point imagery is the more effective way to pursue my website design.

NHS

In case people weren't sure about this campaign maybe you will recognise this TV advert (where I got the idea from)



If you read my previous post before this you can see that the site relates to the same theme used for the TV advert.

Examples of Campaigns - NHS

After looking through a few of my peers work I began to see a few of the same campaigns being brought up (sorry but I will be writing about some of these) however one that I have not noticed was the NHS 'Condom essential wear' campaign. The main reason why I have chosen this campaign was mainly because even though the campaign states 'adults' it is clearly aiming at young adults aka 'students'.

It seems though that the NHS has broken its boundaries and rather then sticking to its normal set site design its has created a site which I feel is appealing to a young audience eye. Using deep/dark colours that give out the impression of seduction and combining it with (also seductive) photography the general design clearly shows the audience what the site is about.


When browsing the site I can see that the NHS is strongly trying to get the 'safe sex' message across. I found that for a site that looked simple it had alot of information, every page I clicked on I would be greeted with another few pages, I feel that this could in some cases distract the user and they could possibly lose interest due to being overcrowded with pages and pages of information. On the other hand even though there is a vast amount of information the designers of the site have laid it out well, the main icon buttons are general questions that I think are the main questions that people want to know. When selected the user is given many different options on the chosen subject. The information is simple and to the point, what a student wants.

The Interactivity

Initially I thought that there was no interactivity but I was wrong. Rather then keeping to the facts NHS are trying to get the audience involved with simple applications like 'digg this' if the user signs up to this they get involved with another site (digg.com) providing them with different articles that other 'digg' users find interesting (a good way to spread info). The designers have also tried to get the users to send the website link to friends, keeping it simple all the user has to do is send fill in four boxes and the infor has been sent.

The main two pieces of interactivity however was a quiz and 'spread the word' movie.

The quiz was very simple having only three questions testing on your knowledge about 'safe sex' but when the user answers the questions it shows them stats on what others have answered when answering the questions. This could maybe give the user an idea on how much people really do know. I did not however manage to finish the quiz because it was very slow and I did not know what was going on, I ended up moving on so could this be a problem that some users have?

I found the 'spread the word' movie campaign very amusing and was not expecting this at all. Spread the word or as its called 'Private Dick Movie' is an application that the designers have created for the users to basically created a 70s porn film but with the use of protection. Some people will find this highly amusing and in my opinion this application could draw the users to the site because it is something different.

Overall I feel that this site for the NHS campaign is a successful one by breaking the boundaries it gives out a clear message to the audience, provides the information needed but also giving some comedy value with the interactivity pieces.

Simulated Client Project

The Brief

The Copyright Protection Society is starting a public information campaign that
illustrates and explains what file sharing is, when and why it is illegal and also the
consequences of being involved with this illegal activity. They want you to
produce a piece of multimedia that will address the points above. You have six
weeks to complete the task and you are required to produce a short proposal of
your designs and ideas then you will produce the multimedia product.

Interactive Environment
Produce a micro-website that consists of five distinct pages and includes well-
formed accessible WC3 validating css/xhtml and includes at least one interactive
element.

Ideas

When we were first set the brief I was quite unsure on what to do however having our first tutorial with David helped me gain a lot of ideas. What didn't occur to me was who my target audience was, what scenario would I have, what identity should I do etc

Until my first tutorial it hadn't occurred to me that I was in control of ALL aspects of this project (like I stated above) but I already have a rough idea on who I like to target and that is....us, students, freshers!! main reason is because they like freebies and I have a few ideas up my sleeve that I think will appeal the students yet will also get the message across.

My next aim is to start researching into different types of campaigns mainly that aim at students (or people around the student age) so I'll have a little bit of a brain storm.

Review backs later formal lessons

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/education/8309153.stm

"Children should not start formal learning until they are six, a review of primary education in England says."

In this BBC article that I came across the reporter explains a cambridge review suggests that children should not be starting education until the age of six. It goes on explaining how at such an early age children between the ages of three and six should not have a structured learning plan but should be use for the children to have more 'play time'

The age change is already in place in other countries (Spain, France, Germany etc) and it has shown improvements for when the children actually start their education curriculum. The report also points out that this could be an advantage to those who have learning difficulties and disadvantage backgrounds however, it could also hold back the brighter children who are ready to start learning.

It has had some positive and negative reactions from the public the main issue being parents having to change work arrangements and will it change how children act socially?

In my opinion I agree with both sides of the arguement. I feel that at such a young age children should not be stuck to a curriculum; they need to first build skills that could help them, for example social schools. Going into a playschool/reception must be quite a daunting experience for children as making friends is a new thing in their lives.

However a point clearly made in the report was that it could potentially hold back children that are ready to start learning. I feel that looking at this report has given me the idea that I could maybe look into ways to combine boths sides of these arguements into a sucessful solution that works for both. Maybe look into simple gaming that could be used within the preschool/reception classes but also be available from the home.

The more I research into my chosen subject the closer I get to my final title question.

Digital games in education: The design of games-based learning environment

Searching through google scholar I came across this pdf article written by Begona Gros, a professor at the university of Barcelona and being that her main area of interests includes 'instructional design, computer supported collaborative learning and e-learning' I thought that this article would be interesting for my research.

In this paper I feel that Begona Gros is trying to bring across both sides an arguement that in my opinion is quite a big subject. The paper provides a fair arguement about the use for video game technology used in a learning environment. Gros points out that it is clear that today's younger target audience is involved in technology be it social or gaming, Gros also clearly points out that the different types of genre of gaming also provides a different source of learning ...

"1. Action games (also called platform games)—These games are reaction-
based; most of the games of the first generation are action games.
2. Adventure games—The player solves a number of tests in order to prog-
ress through a virtual world.
3. Fighting games—These games involve fighting against computer-con-
trolled characters or those controlled by other players.
4. Role-playing games—Human players assume the characteristics of some
person or creature.
5. Simulations—The player has to succeed within some simplified recre-
ation of a place or situation to achieve a particular goal.
6. Sports games—These games are based on sports.
7. Strategy games—These games that recreate a historical or fictional situa-
tion to allow a player to devise an appropriate strategy to achieve a goal."

Another point which Gros points out from her studies is that (Gros, 2005) 'gender differences do not influence interest in the games, but do influence different lines of play or preferences.'From my opinions I always believed that gender did influence the interests in games (this is useful for my research)

Even though Gros shows a good source of evidence that edutainment would be beneficial she brings across a fair arguement about the teachers. Even though there was a positive reaction to the gaming it was shown that teachers in higher education (secondary) struggled using games for learning mainly because of time and the need to cover the whole of the curriculum outline. From reading the paper timing seemed the drawback for video games as even though students were learning playing a computer games proved very time consuming.

Having read through the paper it has now given me the encouragement that I am pursing my research project in the right direction because even though education has researched into gaming, gaming has not greatly researched into education.

Could this maybe be opening for my research?

And so it begins

Yes it has been about four months now since I have last posted something and in future posts I will write about what I got up to in the summer but now I need to focus on the final year.

We have currently been give two briefs; client and personal research project but for now I am going to talk about the personal research project.

The Brief

During this module you will develop a body of work, which reflects individual
interests and demonstrates professional potential. You will research into the
content and background of self initiated topics, including technologies theory,
practice and contexts as appropriate.

Below is the part that I am focusing on:

Research Document (Term 1)
A written research document of between 3000 and 4000 words to be handed
in before Christmas. The form of the document follows a generalised thesis
structure, where the document aims to communicate keys aspects of your
research enquiry. The document should be an elaboration of your proposal i.e.
an elaboration on your topic described in your 'PRP_Topic_Submission_Form'.

Ideas

Since I have been thinking about this subject I have always had in my head that I want to write about something that involves children and technology. Having also done some work experience over the summer working on the Blur Peter website I gained a greater interest.




We had our first PRP meeting on Thursday with Simon. Hoping to gain so more information however I am still stuck on what final question will be. Ashley gave me the idea (and proper name) 'Edutainment':

1. The act of learning through a medium that both educates and entertains.
2. Any of various media, such as computer software, that educate and entertain.

Ideas that I thought that I could write about were; is edutainment the way for for students? How could edutainment increase learning abilities? how has edutatainment improved?
All of these ideas have been based around the idea of computer games being based more around learning and I personally find this interesting but I am going to research further into this. Having thought about this also brought flash gaming into my mind, what makes flash games popular/successful? what genre of gaming attracts the younger target audience?
I basically have a whole bunch of ideas and I have to pick just one because when I had a conversation with Deborah Tuck she bought to my attention that the subject I have chosen (children and technology) is a broad subject.

I am going to continue looking at books, articles, journals etc until I get the idea that I am happy with.