Saturday, April 6, 2013

Interdisciplinary interaction design workshop

Digital design experience uses traditional design principles. Lesson 1: have a student critique a website or app checking the elements and principals of art. Choose websites that have good use and bad use of these designs for them to critique. Discuss what you would change and what you would keep. Lesson 2: designing a tablet or phone physically what should it look like, size, how thin, where should the buttons be, weight. Have them draw it out and write a paragraph about it. Then look at various types of devices. Lesson 3: Have card board cut outs in various sizes for mock tablets and phones. Have the student write about: which fit your hand the best? can you type easy? how about taking pictures can you do it easily? Now draw on the tablet where the button would be, power, sound, camera front and back. Things to think about make sure the camera is not in the way of holding it. You don't accidentally turn it off, up or down the sound while holding it. Now, make a sketch on separate paper of the screen outline then how would a app or page look like on it. Think back to lesson 1 how can you use what you learned critiquing. Design your own app or web page and draw it on your devices screen. Think about Miller's magic number 7: A user can only take 7 things on a screen at once. So have no more than seven elements on the app or website. So design your app with 5-7 elements on your screen. Also think about which direction your device will be held before you start drawing you could make a sketch seeing if it would look better landscape or portrait. Windows 8 has everything blocked off into sections. Apple uses springboard pattern. Think about how you will lay out your 5-7 elements.















Today Barcamphbg

Learning about technology at the 5th annual barcamphbg at Harrisburg University let you know what I learn :)