Design Critique - initial commentors to read

Through an initial literature search of visual communication and graphic design the following people have been cited quite frequently. Some I know and have read, some are new. I list their names here merely as an aide-mémoire. I will comment on their critiques later. They are:

• Rick Poynor - a writer and critic based in London specializing in visual culture
  
• Nico MacDonald - a writer on the nexus of design, business and technology
  
• Michael Rock - a founding partner and creative director at 2x4 and Professor of Design at the Yale University School of Art
  
• Steven Heller - author, co-author or editor of over 100 books on graphic design
  

Additional update - Simon Biggs has given me the following names. Some I have read, some are new. I will source them when I return to the interactive literature after I have a visual communication literature position. The authors are: Jenny Preece, Alan Dix, Gillian Crampton Smith, John Maeda, Brian Reffin Smith, Brian Massumi, Brenda Laurel and Donald Norman. I list these names here as another aide-mémoire for future reference.

Developing a Research Position - Part 1 - Design Theory

I enhanced the previous diagram following a coffee tutorial with Chris. The new diagram concentrates solely upon the question about visual communication literature. Future diagrams will tackle the remaining questions. The essays quoted above are only a initial selection taken from a design theory reader (reference below). This enhanced diagram charts the first attempt at assigning relationships between the graphic design literature and interaction design. The links are untested and therefore are indicated as faint.

Bennet, A., ed., (2006) Design Studies: Theory and Research in Graphic Design. New York: Princeton Architectural Press

First visualisation of research

Based upon the whiteboard brainstorm I have attempted to clarify the information that that contained. This is a diagram to use in my next tutorial with Chris and to be understood in context to my previous Abstract draft.



On the image are several areas of questioning that can be expanded over the coming weeks through posts and tutorials.

Abstract - 2nd draft

WORKING TITLE: Visual interactive design: narrative, social, spatial and temporal

Abstract
This paper will explore, from a visual communication perspective, the challenge of designing a graphical user interface for an online interactive product that takes into account interactivity, narrative and user-control in order to facilitate user-participation. I am specifically interested in how graphic design can visually record the linking traces that socially, spatially and temporally map contributors to an online project. These linking traces often can be narratives left by online projects' contributors.

How can these narratives be graphically represented? Once represented can each individual narrative form a larger narrative, creating a meta-narrative, shaped and formed by anyone who cares to interact with it? Can a visual language develop that clearly illustrates and communicates this data?

Focusing upon a practical pilot study this paper scrutinizes these questions through the design evolution of an online graphical user interface. It analyses and evaluates the submission, engagement and manipulation of user-contributed content within a digital environment and identifies which of the four narrative structures (Jenkins 2004) in its underlying narrative architecture is prevalent.

My research position is shaped by a desire to explore the graphic aspect of graphical user interfaces rather than from the technology/HCI/computer science disciplines. This paper adds to the discourse on how interactions can be facilitated by better graphic design, in order to expand visual communication literature and application to practice.

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This is a slightly reworked draft and is the abstract I submitted for critique and peer assessment. I'll feedback the comments I get in a later post.

Abstract - 1st initial draft

Here is the first draft of my abstract due in on Monday.

So far it is very rough but is shaping together in the right direction. I need to do a few redrafts to refine what I want to communicate. Any feedback would be useful at this stage.


This paper will explore, from a visual communication perspective, the challenge of designing a graphical user interface for an online interactive product that takes into account interactivity, narrative and user-control in order to facilitate user-participation. I am specifically interested in how graphic design can visually record the linking traces that socially, spatially and temporally map contributors to an online project. Can a visual language develop that clearly illustrates and communicates this data?

These linking traces often can be narratives left by online projects' contributors. How can these narratives be graphically represented? Once represented can each individual narrative form a larger narrative, creating a meta-narrative, shaped and formed by anyone who cares to interact with it?

Focusing upon a practical pilot study this paper explores these questions through the design evolution of an online graphical user interface, through multiple iterations to a final conclusion. It analyses and evaluates the submission, engagement and manipulation of user-contributed content within a digital environment and identifies which of the four narrative structures (Jenkins 2004) in its underlying narrative architecture is prevalent.

My research position is shaped by a desire to explore the graphic aspect of graphical user interfaces rather than from the technology/HCI/computer science disciplines. This paper will add to the discourse on how interactions can be facilitated by better graphic design, in order to expand the literature and application of practice.

Right, the next 5 years begins here

Right. End of stalling, procrastinating, hedging and misdirection. The hard research begins.

Here is the initial mapping of my research standpoint to date. This whiteboard brainstorm was drawn up in the presence of Dr. Chris Speed and Dr. Mark Wright of ECA on Tuesday 21st October.



It visually maps my main areas I have explored over the last 9 years. Some of the topic areas cover research I did on my Bachelors degree in Design and Art Direction at MMU* and on my Masters in New Media Production at ICDC†. My position to my proposed research will be graphic design-led, interactive and evaluative. My previous practice and education has been strongly rooted within visual communication but with a graphic design “hole”.

At this early stage I am nowhere near formalising my main research questions. My enquiry to date has been only loosely structured, but has followed paths through human-computer interaction, computer science, game design theory, sociology, human factors, experience design.

My Masters project neoTribe was a pilot project that began to explore the visual representation of ethnographic data, the dissemination of contributed narratives and the potential for the creation of meta-narratives. During today's tutorial Chris and Mark facilitated routes through this web of associations.

I will now try to sum up what I remember as my own associated path through this diagram. My starting position is within graphic design, but with a graphic design hole within my professional practice formed out of working as an illustrator, a publisher and interactive designer, rather than as a pure graphic designer. I teach on a graphic design degree on the theoretical, contextual, research and work-related aspects of design. My research therefore comes out of graphic design into the associated field of interactive design.

My stance is shaped by a desire to explore the graphic aspect of graphical user interfaces rather than from the technology/HCI/computer science direction. I am wishing to add to the discourse on how interactions can be facilitated by better graphic design. To aid this enquiry I am specifically interested in how graphic design can visually record the linking traces that map contributors to an online project socially, spatially and temporally. Can a visual language develop that clearly illustrates and communicates this data? I attempted this in neoTribe to a limited degree using techniques derived from Bertolt Brecht's Complex Seeing theories of representing information.

These linking traces can be recorded as narratives left by or contributed by the online project's contributors. How can these narratives be graphically represented? Once represented can each individual narrative form a larger narrative, creating a meta-narrative, shaped and formed by anyone who cares to interact with it?

This then throws up issues of agency and authorship, discussed through Foucault and Barthes. Narrative through interaction (rather than interactive fiction) has led me to look to Game Design Studies and Narratology, especially Henry Jenkins' paper on Narrative Architecture. Through discussion with Chris he also pointed me towards looking at Flow State by Mihály Csíkszentmihályi, a positive psychologist. Chris suggested taking a Situationist approach to the information. I'm not au fait with Situationism so I will have to have a discussion with my colleague in my staffroom when I get back to work to clue me in on the essentials.

Addendum Mark has reminded me that we also discussed "Mobile as well as web instantiations and this led to mentioning Michel De Certeau "walking the city" and tying the spatial/temporal into the narrative theme. Chris also mentioned Nigel Thrift."Thanks Mark.

This post has been written to record my thoughts soon after the tutorial. I will need to reflect upon what I have written and it will then help me to write the abstract I need to complete for Monday. Once I have written this I will post the abstract on this blog. Chris/Mark/Simon please feel free to comment as I know I said a lot more in the tutorial than I have written here, and I know I have not included a lot of salient points.

This is an open blog so anyone else reading this please also feedback your comments. I will translate this whiteboard into a diagram and put that in another post. By then I will be able to reduce my ideas into something more tangible to research.


* MMU = Manchester Metropolitan University
† ICDC = International Centre for Digital Content, part of Liverpool John Moores University

Update

I have woefully neglected this blog in favour of another. Since my last post I have been leading a multi-disciplinary team of students and graduates on a Liverpool Biennial 2008 project.

This has been a massively ambitious project comprising of a live action/cg video, a project blog (currently private), a website, a DVD, a book and an academic paper. This project launches on 29th October with a private screening for invited guests. The video will then be exhibited in the The Blackie in Liverpool until the 20th November as part of Liverpool Biennial 2008. The video is De La Salle High School's entry to the Future, Fiction and Fantasy exhibition. Until the launch the video is confidential, afterwards I will include a link.

In the meantime I will tease you with this production image from the project…




On top of this I have also began my MPhil/PhD at Edinburgh College of Art. Within this capacity this blog will disseminate my research ideas.

Trigger::Interaction::Resolution

I have been focused upon posting to two other blogs, one which is my annotated bibliography (seek previous post). In the latest post to annotatedBib I have made a connection between an explication of interaction design by Bill Verplank of Ivrea and Stanford, and an explication of experience design by August de los Reyes. These can be summed up in the following diagrams based upon originals.

Interaction Design: Bill Verplank

Experience Design: August de los Reyes

I see there is a correlation between these two concepts that help to describe the interaction experienced by a user.

For every interaction there is a trigger to set it off. This results in a resolution to the interaction. This resolution in turn sparks off another trigger and so the cycle continues.

Mapping this experience cycle onto Verplank's diagram the user must first know what the trigger is and then do something to set it off. The interaction is communicated by a combination of aural, visual and/or tactile feedback leading to the final resolution.

This resolution can be experienced emotionally, physically, sensory, cognitively and intellectually. The user then feels that something has happened and the interactive cycle can continue until the desired task has been achieved.

By mapping the experience to the interactive cycle it is possible to understand the process of designing a successful interface. After all, as Verplank puts it "It is the responsibility of the designer to help people understand what is happening!"

References
de los Reyes, A. (2002) Flash Design for Mobile Devices, Hungry Minds Inc. p36

New sub-blog has been launched

As I have developed this blog to focus upon my interactive design research interests I have felt a tension between using it as a reflective dialogue and an annotated bibliography for my PhD contextual review.

So as my PhD application is gradually moving along (I'm in discussion with academics at my first choice institution whether they can support and supervise it) I have decided to start a sub-blog dedicated to an annotated bibliography. This separation of content will hopefully end the tension, making it easier for me to post to this blog on a more regular basis.

The new sub-blog is called annotatedBib. Visit it if you feel studious.

Beta test of new degree website

Just to prove that I haven't been slacking my commitment to this blog I thought I'd use this platform to announce my brand-spanking-new degree. The new degree BA(Hons) Entertainment Design was validated two weeks ago and I have now designed the course website. It is at beta test right now and can be viewed (and tested) by clicking here.



The website has been designed using CSS so that it can grow or shrink with changes in browser and resolution sizes whilst maintaining its integrity. As it is undergoing beta tests any feedback would be useful. Internet Explorer users may encounter problems. Please let me know the precise nature of them so I can solve them.

On a more research-based note I am engaged in aspects of narrative and digital interactive artefacts for my PhD proposal. So far I have found the Ludologist camp within Game Theory, especially theories by Jesper Juul of Singapore-MIT GAMBIT Game Lab. I have 2 weeks away from work over Easter and will post more on this point during that period.

Whoops!

Time has flown and I've written nothing on this blog at all. Not that I haven't been researching anything. In fact I am getting close to my potential area of PhD research, that and validating a new degree has sort of taken my time. I am now course leader for BA(Hons) Entertainment Media Design, a degree that focuses on asset creation, interactive design and motion production. Its recruiting for September 2008 if any one is interested. ;-)

I'll get back to this blog sooner than later.