final week

This is no doubts that I learn a lot in this course. It is a very good chance to work with the others and it is also a good experience to keep writing a blog for twelve weeks. I find that it is good to keep writing a blog in English because it can improve my English and also make myself get used to express opinions in English.

I think I am not the one who is used to work with the others because of my personality, but I did try hard to get used to it and I am willing to work. In my group, we are all international students and I have already been study with some of my group mates for two years. Although I know some of them for a long time, I still find that it is difficult to express the thoughts by speech. As English is not our first languages, we have some communication problems in the beginning. I find that we can do better communication on the internet, therefore we had the meeting online in the first few weeks in order to warm up ourselves and later on we have the normal meeting every week in the studio.

In my opinion, it is difficult to finish all the readings that are given by the teachers. Probably it is mainly because of the language problem, I lost the interest in reading in sometime. As it is a continuous process to update the blog, I think self-discipline is important in this process. It is hard to keep updating the blog every week. I think I am still doing good in the blog.

As a design student, I think we put all our efforts on the assignments and we did not have a time to sit down and think why we are here and what are we going to do in the future. This blog provides a place and also an opportunity to let us to think and say.

week 11

Stephan Sagmeister

I know this designer because of a book called what is graphic design. My general impression was that he seemed a crazy man. His works made a tremendous impact on me. He is a gutsy fighter. I try to find his profile on the Internet and i find that he worked in Hong Kong before (which make me quite happy because Hong Kong is just a little city and a big famous designer did come to work in Hong Kong for some time).

http://www.sagmeister.com/index.htm
In his website, I find that there is a answer for student section about different topics. I read about being a design student which i find is quite interesting. Someone asked him did he have any doubts about what he wanted to do or about whether or not he was good at it and he mentioned that when he was in school he was doubted about the quality of his works. I usually doubt that I am a good design student or not because I do not think a good designer is equal to a good designer student. When I look at the quality of my work, there is no doubts that I put a great effort at them but also no doubts that they are not professional enough. Like the printing quality, there is no choice for me to print on a special paper which the printer center is not supported. All the student works are come from the same machine and I wonder where is the professional and high quality printer is.

Stephan also said that he had constant doubts when he worked in Hong Kong and he wanted to quit every week. Sometimes i ask myself do i really love design or i cannot find anything to work on or study at so i choose design to be my choice and stick on it forever. i find that after i get into this course, i am not willing to draw or think anything after class.

week 10

This week we talk about the usability testing and i think it is very useful to my group. As we are doing a t-shirt online shop and we have already made a mock up of it, we try to get some people to take part in it and see what result will come up.

We find 4 students from different countries to take part in it (They are from Australia, Thailand and Hong Kong respectively). We find that there are some mistakes of our website, liking there are some missing buttons and students did not know what the next step is in the designing process. They are confused with some buttons because the drawing is too simple and not clear enough (which I think it is not a problem because when we put the Paper Prototyping in computer and reproduce and those button should be clearer).

We learn a lot during the testing process and also the Paper Prototyping. Before I thought that Paper Prototyping is a kind of wasting time and I am not willing to get into it with my group mates. But finally we did and it took us nearly 3 hours to finish and it has 44 pages. I find that there are many detailed thing we have to take care (like the payment process, the shipping process and the user guide), creating a website is not that easy.

week 9

This week we are told to doing the mock up of the website. Tania sent us some wire frames last week and we are going to make our website by following the examples.

Actually one of my group mate, Gillian, found a very good website for us and we all think that website is doing the same thing that we are going to do.
http://www.jnt-8.com/

this website is very easy to use and it provides a 60sec flash and showing how to use the website. All the steps are very clear to me and I find that it is so fun that i can design a tee by myself. It likes i have take a part of it and the tee is meaningful for me and it is always unique and fresh. People might say the graphic that the website provided is limited and those graphics are designed by the committee but not the customers. In my opinion, there are not that much people can draw by themselves and the ready-to-use graphic is the perfect choice for them to design their own tee. Combination with different graphics and typography will produce different outlook and those outlooks are unique.

Before I read the website and it is talking about Paper Prototyping, paper is always the thing that we can create all the ideas on it easily. For myself, I do not like using paper to create idea because my drawing is not that good, but i like to write the keywords of the idea on the paper in order to not forget them:)

AGIdeas week

This week is AGIdeas.

I do not have to go to class but I and my group mates have already held a online meeting on Monday to discuss about our project. As the final report will be started at week 10, so we can take some rest during week 8 and 9. Before we start to writing the report, we have to make sure we have enough information for the final report and also the requirement of the final report. We prepared some questions to ask Tania in order to make our aim clearer. The first thing is to make sure there are two hundred people who are take the survey that we designed.

In AGIdeas, there are 44 designers share the experience with us in 3 days and each designer has around 20 minutes to speak to us. I felt tired after the AGIdeas but i am happy that i have been there. Those designers are intelligent but some of them are not good at talking. Although i am a Chinese, I have to say i am really disappointed about the designer from China because he is not sharing his experience or giving advise to us. He comes because he want to introduce the Olympic games of 2008 and I think AGIdeas is not a place for his advertising. There maybe some Chinese still think that China becomes stronger and stronger but i do not think in the same way with them. When you really love your country and you might become blind.

week 7

This week is Video presentation and my group is doing an video about t-shirt online shop. The audience felt the video is interesting and I am happy with the result.

I admit that my group video is simple and honestly it is not professional enough (The drawings are rough and the volume of the voice is not even). People like it maybe is because we try a funny way to present our topic. We have around 2 weeks time to prepare the video and we started to work on the video in the first week although we did not make the whole idea of the video and we did not know what is the next. The reason we did it in that way is because we all know that we do not have enough time to finish it if we think too much and keep making different ideas. We designed to draw pictures and make them up to be an video instead of record a real video with a video camera because we are not familiar with it. I do not think it is possible that we can handle a video camera and also the i-Movie in 2 weeks (actually we can but everyone will be exhausted because it is not the only project we have to do). It is the reality. You have to find a faster way to reach the goal when compete with the others.

I am stratified because I think we spent less time to reach the goal then the others and I appreciate some groups make their every effort to make an video.

week 6

Understanding Design – Kees Dors
Learning by doing, Reflection, The tutoring dilemma, Naive design.

After i read the first four parts of understanding design, i begin to understand that why the lecturer do not give me a straight answer for the problems that i have. Although i understood design curricula are based upon learning by doing, sometimes i feel the lecturer are not willing to help and bring me down. I think the lecturer should try to understand the feeling of students who are facing difficulty (lecturer thought they understand but i think they forgot those feelings already). I agree that there are some mediocre students cannot get enough support from their lecturer and they become revolt against lecturer’s discipline (I found them in the class). After those mediocre students felt depressed and less from their lecturer, they use their own ways to solve the problems and those methods that they used are wrong.

I find that the lecturer did not spend too much time for the second year students. They cannot consult with every student in the class time and they cannot give us time to consult with them after class. I did have an experiment that I cannot have a consultation with my lecturer face to face and the only thing i can do is sending him an email and waiting for a comment of my work. There is no reason to understand the difficulties of the lecturer because i have already paid the fee (as a international student, i have a strong feeling that I paid a lot for nothing).

week 5

Personas and scenarios: How might these methods be useful in your other design subjects? Is there a project you think might benefit or not benefit?

This week we learn about persona and scenarios. They are new for me and i am feeling hard to get used to them. I think persona and scenarios are work for interaction design which has a connection between the product and the users. Like the product design and package design, because they are designed for the user and the user experience becomes an important part for the designer. The scenario helps the user or the buyer understand the function of the design in a easy way.

Moreover, the persona and scenarios are doing a job that make designer has a more clear concept about their design. But i think some designers will think the persona and scenarios are barriers in their design process because the work load is increased and that will disturb  their thinking.

I think persona and scenarios are not work for poster or advertisement. The poster and advertisement usually do not need any physical connection with the user. There is no user experience in them.

I do think persona and scenarios are benefit for the web designer because the user experience is an essential part of it.

week 4

Last week we discussed about the solution. We find that clothes rental, clothes exchange and second hand clothes are the good way to save money and we still have to find more information of them. Nysia found another article that is really good in this week. It is about buying a T-shirt and the profit will be donated to the poor country to help the people who is living in poverty. Also the message on the t-shirt can attract people attention.It is a new idea that we can sell t-shirt online and the things we added to the t-shirt can be some slogans that about the world’s problems(or social problem?). And i am thinking the slogans can be about the tips to save money or the reasons of why teen spend too much money on their clothing. I did some research about the net shopping between teen and adult. And i find that teen are more will to buy things on the web while adult prefer to buy things in the shop. The reason behind is the teen grow will the computer and they get used to live in a high technical world while the adult is not.So i think the idea of the T-shirt online shop is a suitable solution for our project as our target audience is the teen.

Easter week

This week we do not have class so we have the online meeting. We discuss deeply about our topic and decide what kind of research we need in the coming week. We find that the peer pressure will force the university student to spend money on their clothing. Also they will follow the celebrities’ step and wear the clothing of famous brands.I read the articles that my group mates have find. I find that the famous clothings have some same characters, like they are unique products in the market, they have different style and look that fit different kind of people. It is difficult to keeping cool in these day as everything is costly.

I find some t-shirt online shops on the internet and there are many designers submitted their work to sale. The price of the t-shirt is not expensive but customer enjoy to wear them. I think it is because those t-shirt are unique and have their own personalities(just like the characters of the famous brands). So, customer buy the products is mainly because the style of the product but not because of the price. Therefore, university student still can spend less but get what they want to wear.