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Author Archives: Mushon

The Final Final Final Redesign

Next week we’re done.

The class will be broken into 3 parts:

  1. So Much Fun @ The Internet by Ed.
  2. Redesign presentations.
  3. Wrapping up the semester (prepare to give me some honest feedback).
  4. Semester closing party (that’s your part).

For the presentation part I want each group to prepare a presentation which you will rehearse as a group before class. This is a presentation to your client laying out:

  • Your study of the existing site – it’s weaknesses and strengths and the redesign strategy
  • Key elements in the new design
  • Step by step presentation of the redesigned pages
  • Summary of the process, laying out estimated outcomes of how the redesign would change the dynamics of the site and its users experience.
  • more if you decide more is relevant.

You have up to 10 minutes per presentation. I will be there with a stopper making sure you’re aware of your time frame. I will let you know when 5 minutes passed, 2 minute left, 30 seconds, and out. No one would be allowed to run more than 10 minutes. You can run for less as long as you manage to present all you need to present well. The feedback (and grade) will be based also on the level of the presentation. Every team member must take part in the presentation in some manner.

You are welcomed to upload designs to the blog for feedback this week.

Good luck and see you on Friday.

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By Mushon 16:00, May 2nd, 08 #4: Redesign briefs No Comments

Brief: Finalized Design

For next week I would want you to choose the design proposal to follow to completion and to perfect it based on the ideas from the other two proposals. Apart from that you will need to split the work between you and have advanced designs of all the pages ready for a pre-final stage next week.

In general for next week we are going to see (at least) two pages designed by each one of you. This process is both independent and collaborative – you have both the responsibility over your designs as over the designs produced by the other group member. You would need to work closely together discussing and feedbacking each other on your design solutions. Next week we’re going to look at all of your designs, then you will get another last week as a chance to get them to where they need to get (perfection).

This week’s process will be:

  • Finalize the design and graphic language for the site
  • Divide the work between you
  • Work on the pages individually
  • get each other’s feedback
  • Work some more
  • Post to the blog.

I want to schedule appointments with you to work with each groups on your projects. We can decide to do it either this week or the last week before the final presentation. I believe this week will be more useful. So let’s schedule today. Ideally we will meet and you will continue to a longer session without me.

Good luck.

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By Mushon 16:30, Apr 25th, 08 #4: Redesign briefs No Comments

Adobe Design Achievement Awards

Just got this by email:

There are just two weeks till the 2008 Adobe Design Achievement Awards
submission period closes! This is a great opportunity for your
students to show off their creativity in a wide range of media. If
they have used Adobe tools 50% or more in their course work (including
Creative Suite, Flash, Flex and AIR), they can enter their projects
online till 5:00 pm. May 2, 2008. http://www.adaaentry.com

Waiting till the last minute can be painful

But encourage them not to wait till the very last minute when the
submission site is receiving thousands of entries.

Many category options

They can enter work in up to 3 different categories of 12 possible
choices: Browser-Based Design, Non-Browser-Based Design, Designer/
Developer Collaboration, Mobile Design, Installation Design,
Animation, Live Action, Motion Graphics, Illustration, Packaging,
Photography and Print Communications.
http://www.adaaentry.com/categories.php

Prizes that can launch a career

Semifinalists will be selected and announced, along with the names of
their schools in May, so your program may receive favorable publicity
due to your students’ talents. Finalists will receive cash and
software prizes and a trip to New York city this summer for a festive
awards event, studio tours, and unique networking opportunities.

Make sure your students don’t miss out on this opportunity.

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By Mushon 00:23, Apr 22nd, 08 FYI check-this-out No Comments

Brief: [Re]design[S]

For next week you are all going to work on two main pages, each with her own direction and bring it up to class. The design proposals should be different from one another (!) and you should present together your opinion on the proposals.

I am not pacing your mid-week schedule as I know coordinating might make it complicated for you but I expect you to do yourselves per group. Here is the way you’re going to go about this step by step:

  • Post your group’s mid-week schedule as a comment to this post, keeping in mind you will need to:
  • Individually post comments to your infoarch docs, based on the feedback you got in class
  • Meet up and brainstorming, preferably in person, if not – online. (I found Skype is pretty good for these things)
  • Choose a page to start the redesign from
  • As a group – post a new information architecture document (wireframe) based on the feedbacks you got and your brainstorming
  • Individually design that same page (I expect to see a substantially different design approach from each one of you)
  • Give feedback to each other through the week (doesn’t have to be in person)
  • Post your designs to the blog by Thursday, don’t wait for the last moment.
  • See you next week, same time, same place…

Happy Passover!

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By Mushon 16:00, Apr 18th, 08 #4: Redesign briefs No Comments

Brief: The Great Redesign – InfoArchs

That’s it, the semester is nearing its end and we now embark on our final assignment. Here’s a proper brief post to introduce it:

What’s different about this assignment?

  • It’s a redesign, meaning it is based on existing sites.
  • It’s our final, meaning we now have higher standards.
  • It’s a group project, so you’re working in groups.

In the coming few weeks you will:

  • Choose an existing (average-big) website (which you all already did)
  • Define its weaknesses and strengths (this week)
  • Propose information-architectural improvements (this week)
  • Propose several design directions (the week after)
  • Choose an approach (the next week after)
  • Split the work between you, designing several screens out of the overall website (the next week after)
  • Finish this course and become kick-ass interface designers (final class)

*This schedule is based on the idea that we are going to have another make-up class (which might be the final class).

In the meanwhile in the coming week you will have several assignments and deadlines:

By Tuesday Apr 15th – Post to the site your assessments about the site’s weaknesses and strengths and try to lay out (in words) what treatment will you do to advance the design of 6 main features in the site. (it does not have to be 6 pages, it might be just features that are parts of pages). I want you to write user scenarios – how does a user go about trying to achieve this goal in the current site (make a list of steps), and how do you think this should be different. Split it between you guys so each of you posts about two features.

By Thursday Apr 17th – Post as a group (one post per group) a joint strategy statement for the redesign of the site, referring to InfoArch, user experience and general look and feel guidelines (you can post the infoarch as PDF or images, your call).

By Friday Apr 18th (next class) – Each student comment on each of the four groups strategy statements, try to be critical and constructive.

F.A.Q:

Can we redesign any site?
No. The site has to be interactive and dynamic – meaning it is based on information that changes regularly, on a daily basis or heavily based on user contribution.

Do we need to redesign the whole site?
No, just a couple of pages, we will decide on that through the assignment, and dependent on the subject of your redesign.

Do we get grades as a team?
Yes and No. You get both a grade as a team but each week will have individual assignments, so slacking will be impossible.

Can you offer some inspiration?
Sure, I’ll give you some non real ones. 37 Signal’s 37Better Project, lays out several redesign ideas with a usability focus. Here’s some imaginary conceptual redesigns of Google search, another one for Craig’s List (which one group already mentioned), and we all remember the Yahoo grid based redesign. Here are some behind the scenes of The NYTimes redesign and the redesign of the Expression Engine site. Some reading about Redesign vs. Realign. Please post some more to del.icio.us.

*I will answer more questions you might have in the comments for this post.

Good luck

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By Mushon 09:01, Apr 13th, 08 #4: Redesign briefs 1 Comment

The blog upload bug

is gone. (at least for me)

If you do not want the gallery feature to happen, simply “insert into post” your image directly from your media library rather than from the Gallery tab. You can choose to insert a medium sized image and have it link to the full size image file url. That would keep the type of interaction we had before with the lightbox.

let me know if it works for you.

No tag for this post.
By Mushon 19:02, Apr 4th, 08 how-to-blog No Comments

Brief: Final Widget! (+ getting ready for our final)

Deadline – April 11th

Our short widgets project comes to an end. As you know by now, designing widgets is way more complicated than it looks. For next week a complete design in context (dashbord, facebook, whatever…) built as a user scenario using as much stages as you may need. Post these as images describing in details how the interaction might work. for example:

  1. an image showing the dashboard with your widget right after installation [+image]
  2. user sets-up the widget [+image]
  3. user flips the widget to its basic mode [+image]
  4. user interacts with the widget [+image]
  5. widget displays content based on interaction [+image]
  6. user goes to setup mode and changes preferences [+image]
  7. widget presented differently based on new preferences [+image]

Be ready to present this to the class next week – 5 minutes per presentation.

I want you to submit sketches through the week and comment on work submitted by Sunday. Please try to give guidance especially to those of you who are slightly behind. Next week we will conclude the widget assignment and dive directly into the redesign group project.

A group redesign project??? Yes!

Another thing you will do for next week would be to meet with your groups and choose an idea for a site or a web service you would like to redesign together. A bit about this redesign assignment – unlike the first assignment, with this one you will focus on average/big websites that handle a lot of users and pose a substantial user interface challenge. You will not redesign the whole site but just a selection of pages. It should be fun!

The 4 groups are:

Group1:

  • Khurram Bajwa
  • Alexandra Zsigmond
  • Justin Jones

Group2:

  • Ariel Lapidus
  • Liam Thidemann
  • Anuranjan Pegu

Group 3:

  • Ed Nacional
  • Alec Timerman
  • Lan

Group 4:

  • Leonie
  • Lady Tanmantiong
  • Yoko Ishibashi

Try to meet this week or at least email to come together with an idea, if you have a couple of them and you want us to help you choose, post about it and we’ll help you in next week’s class. (anyway prepare a post with your decision/options for next class)
Enjoy!

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By Mushon #3: Widget #4: Redesign briefs No Comments

Blogging on WordPress 2.5 (-5 teeth)

Things are looking slicker (but probably less familiar) in the backend. WordPress came up with a new version (which I LOVE!) (I hope you do to). Here’s a screencast that might help you adjust:

*Please don’t use the gallery feature in your posts, what we have (with the lightbox effect) is better.

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By Mushon 21:28, Mar 31st, 08 how-to-blog 2 Comments

Brief: Widget Design Bonanza!

For next week design your widget to the last bit, we will be concluding this assignment the week after and already start our final, so I would like you to get your widget as close to final stage as possible. To do that, you are going to have a two tier assignment next week (claps):

By Tomorrow, March 29th, noon:

  • Write comments on your wireframe and first designs posts summing the feedback you got in class. (please write comments, not individual posts so we keep things in context)
  • Post at least three more comments to two of your fellow students.

By Tuesday, April 1st, noon:

  • Submit a fixed wireframe for your widget based on the feedback you got in class.
  • Submit the fixed design for the default state of your widget – i.e. before any user interaction. Again, the design should have a specific size (pixel ration, like 300x250px for ex.) based on the environment it’s in (mobile phone, dashboard, Facebook…). Present the design in context – meaning on a screenshot or an image of the environment it’s designed for.

By Wednesday, April 2nd, noon:

By Thursday, April 3rd, 8pm:

  • Post a fixed default state + the rest of the design interaction for your widget. (by Friday next week your widget should be ready for pre-final critique).

Enjoy.

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By Mushon 16:00, Mar 28th, 08 #3: Widget briefs No Comments

Brief: Widgets!

What Are widgets? If you are on OS X, press F12 you’ll see a bunch of them… or check netvibes again, it’s all widgets… or go to Facebook, all these “applications” they are sorts of widgets themselves, Google maps can appear as an ‘embedable widget’ like we used it in our blog, so is the case with embeded video from YouTube and the likes…As far as we are concerned the type of widgets we will be interested in are little self contained applications that provide specific sort of data, interface or functionality. They are built as add-ons to existing environments, whether it is a webpage, a desktop or sometimes a mobile phone.

Your assignment to be uploaded by next week (March 21st) is:

  • Come up with an idea for a widget and answer the following questions about it:
    1. Define your widget in one sentence.
    2. What is the problem the widget is trying to solve?
    3. What is the context this widget is built for? (a certain site, iPhone, whatever…)
  • Post to the blog screenshot(s) (MAC:command+shift+3, PC:alt+print screen) of the environment(s) you are designing your widget for. If it is intended to fit in more than one type of environment, present multiple screenshots.
  • If existing, present up to three examples (screenshots) of other widgets designed for the same environment.

The second part of the assignment is due for our next class, in two weeks (March 28th):

  • (late addition:) Choose one of the contexts you would want to work with.
  • Along the lines of the previous project build a wireframe (InfoArch) for your widget in its multiple states. Upload the wireframe as a PDF.
  • Present a draft for the design of your widget’s default state (the way it would normally look before being interacted with or it’s ‘main page’)
  • The draft should appear in context – meaning if it’s an iPhone we want to see the iPhone and we want you to work in the exact pixels dimension of the iPhone screen (google it).

This is a short assignment (3 presentations only).

Tip: It is your opportunity to be very very creative. Surprise us, or even yourselves… ;)

Here’s some more inspiration for you…

I encourage you to post some of your findings and references to del.icio.us with our class tag ‘catmode’ and maybe also with the tag ‘widget’

See you in class in two weeks and online constantly…

cheers,

Mushon

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By Mushon 16:00, Mar 14th, 08 #3: Widget briefs No Comments