#5 Group Ideation and Prototyping
This week we focussed on the design process and came up with definitions for the word “designer”. This is an interesting one because there are so so many things in our everyday world that you would class as ‘design’, and of course, many different types of people that you would or could call, a designer.
Graphics designers, Industrial designers, architects, fashion designers, landscape architects, animators, game designers, filmographers, etc are some of the designers we have right here at QUT! Then theres sound designers, audio engineers, artists, town planners, interface designers, and so many more. My point here is that almost everything is design!! The table I’m sitting at right now while I write this was designed with the user in mind, thats why I bought it! It is at a good height for extended use, I can rest my forearms on the top while I type, and then underneath is a slide out draw where I have my keyboard and other instruments, with all their cables feeding out the back keeping everything super neat. I could keep listing things in my room that have been designed but i’m hoping I’ve got you thinking now and you’ll be able to see for yourself how everything is linked back to design.. Usually products that are shitty compared to their equivalent rivals are lacking in usability to some degree, or maybe they just don’t look as nice.. < still design. told ya ;)
“User-centered design means understanding what your users need, how they think, and how they behave – and incorporating that understanding into every aspect of your process.”
– Jesse James Garrett, User experience designer
After walking around the city for an hour or so taking pictures of designed scenarios I realised how much our city has been designed for public use, its been designed just for us! I know that sounds stupid haha, its good thing its been designed that way because we’re the people that use it, but still, the average person doesn’t take notice of these things. I definitely hadn’t.
Things like Queen Street mall (specifically the empty quadrangle at the top and Queen Street stage) have been built for our use, and to create an atmosphere and culture. You could even go as far as the landscape architects behind Queen Street mall have designed a mindset.. Think about it next time you walk down there, there’s a certain air that comes over me when I stroll down, soaking in the detail of the entire experience. It actually kind of makes me want to go buy some new things and spend money; and its SUPPOSED TOO!
Anyway so in class I collated all of my images and extracted some common themes:
- Waiting/Resting (these two go hand-in-hand because people seemed to be waiting in some way or another; for a friend, lunch-break, for the bus, for their cigarette to finish etc. but all chose a relaxed position and took advantage of their environment to aid their comfort.. leaning, sitting etc.
- Socializing; Definitely a common theme with probably half the population of people I witnessed walking in groups. The city definitely is a bit of a special outing especially for younger people or groups of young women presumably shopping
- Taking advantage of tech; It’s almost a straight cut, those people who are walking by themselves and not in a group, are entertaining themselves with their own personal soundtracks to life. I don’t blame them either, I had my beautiful ATM50X’s with me, never leave the house without them. Also people using self checkouts and atm’s presumably to save time and potentially even the social interaction of dealing with a real person and having to abide by the formalities that go with that behaviour. Of course you can choose not to abide but that usually results in insult to the other party and them basically thinking you’re a rude piece of shit. Anyone who’s worked in retail or hospitality knows what i’m talking about here.
We then we’re handed a design brief that asked us how we could improve the orientation experience for first year students. Which we then refined to a more specific question:
“How might QUT alter their distribution of information to make it less overwhelming for first-years during orientation week?”
We ended up deciding upon a forum-styled home page for a new online QUT Identity simply called QUT Online, It bundles up all the messy elements of the current online experience and displays them in a much more unified way, on one page. The forums addition will auto add you into your enrolled classes corresponding forums as well as giving you customised notifications for relevant information dates, and current QUT first year activities that may not be very well known among the students.
