THESIS CRIT -( Tuesday)
For the midterm review I had three critics- Anthony Deen, Marco Tandefelt and Chris Prentice. Anthony, my studio professor is an architect who focuses on the integration of technology into his work. He is also very interested in community development and I feel that he has been a good advisor for me because of this innate understanding of the connection between public land and it's actual use by residents. Marco is a physical computing professor in the department, and I think because my project is anything BUT physical computing- he was able to offer up some good outsider advise. Chris, is my writing professor for thesis, however she is so much more. Anezka told us that Chris has an expertise in writing grants, and focusing on academic writing. However, I find that Chris is one of the few people who have really helped me to see the importance of my work and how the message of the project could be extended beyond the thesis.
Okay, so enough with the introductions. Here are the highlights of my feedback:
Overall, all of this was really useful. I am going to make some time to meet with Chris and Anthony to talk about how I can achieve these suggestions, and really polish up my presentation for the symposium. The end is neigh!!!!
- I need to present my "big picture" ideas in a different way, because it is not communicating all of the legs of the project. Chris referred to this by saying I need a "30,000 ft map" of the project and Marco said that I needed to do a sales pitch, (which for some reason as I was standing up there made me think of Crazy Eddy from tv- we've got cables, we've got widescreen tv's....)
- I need to give clear user scenarios about the project. What would the experience be for a teacher vs a student?
- I need to describe the different levels of goals for different developmental age ranges.
- Everyone responded positively to my new web design (thank goodness I was very n vous about this) but Anthony noted that I now need to refine it in terms of communication vs. design.
- Finally, as I knew, I need to show some of my user testing.
WEB DESIGN (Thursday crit)
I have to say that this was a refreshing crit. It has been a rare thing to get specific feedback on my designs in this program, usually the crits are focused on concept- which is fine, but sometimes you just need feedback. For this crit, my entire web class gave me feedback, as well as my professor Jay Van Buren. Jay has worked with a variety of clients, and is known for his work with non-profits and fine art institutions.
Highlights:And that's all. I am just going to keep chugging along and make my way to the end of the semester.
- think about the bubble background- maybe reducing the amount of bubbles and adding a more obvious gradient to achieve a "wave" effect.
- ABOUT page- split the page up into three pages. This will allow for tiered sponsors.
- TAGLINE- move the tagline to live underneath the logo. This came up in both crits. Apparently, placing it where I did, above the navigation produces legibility issues.
- the crab= "awesome", I need to go back and bring that same animated quality to the seagull and oyster. They don't have the same strength as the crab. (Chris also gave me this feedback so I am looking forward to doing this).
- LANDING page- I need to make the current beach conditions more kid friendly.
- There was also the suggestion of moving the characters to live just off the bubble shape. I need to try this out though, because I am not sure how it will look. I like how the whole site looks a bit like a big sticker.
