In studio brief 2 I felt as if I could push myself more as the project was a user experience/interaction brief as opposed to an editorial/branding project. This was an aspect of graphic design that I hadn't had the opportunity to explore before and carrying out the brief was more fun than I had expected.
In terms of the brief, it was very open, we could choose any subject to create our design on which I think allowed me to create an original and well thought through app.
The very beginning of the project, where we learnt more about UI and UX design, with the opportunity to hear from Only studio about their work, as well as research into interfaces, helped to inform my design and develop the project on more successfully than if we had not had this element of education and insight.
Initially I wanted to create a website or application on a problem or issue or interest that I have had personally. After brainstorming a few ideas I realised that the ideas I was coming up with were either very similar to existing apps, or not original enough and the same as some of my peers. Instead of a personal issue I began to think on a broader scale, thinking about an existing social problem that I could create a solution to. I eventually settled on an issue that has been extremely relevant in 2017, given the state of UK politics. The most under represented age group in voting in the general election this year was youth, with 18 - 24 year olds not casting their vote. Even though voter turnout for this age group was up 16% on the 2015 election, it still was not enough to swing the vote. Given my own interest in politics and my disappointment with the overall result, I had discovered earlier in the year that if more young people had voted then the result would have been vastly different.
I wanted to create something that would make youth more likely to vote. Earlier on the year I educated myself on politics, as before I was clueless and had no motivation or reason to get involved. This was difficult, but helped by various quizzes to tell me my political affiliation.
I decided for this brief that I would create an application to educate and encourage youth to get involved in UK politics. The outcome would be an application with most need to know information stored in one handy place - this was vital in my concept considerations, as it was evident from research and peer feedback that the reason most 18 - 24 year olds do not vote is because they are not educated on the subject and are hesitant to learn as it is a complicated subject and spread out across the internet. Searching is hard when you do not know what it is you are looking for. Having the information in one place makes it less complicated. The main elements to my app are a quiz - to tell you the political party you are most likely to follow, a dictionary so the user can earn about politics in general, a page on all parties with a breakdown of their manifestos and a page on news to keep the user up to date after they have been educated.
The planning of the application took the longest and was the most complicated, yet vital part of the app. Creating a workflow as well as many different variations and developments of wireframes helped to plan out the design and layout of the app. These wireframes were crucial and I could not have designed the app without them. After the wireframes were created, the design of my application unfolded very naturally with lots of minor adjustments to reach the final design. The main developments of the app were the overall style which was created and applied to all pages, as well as the type. As my app contained a lot of text - in the quiz etc. - the type considerations were vital and adjusted to create a consistent and legible app.
I could've extended and improved my app in a number of ways. When considering my idea in the beginning of the generation process, I thought about reaching youth and getting them involved in politics. If I had created a set of advertisements to be shown on other apps, e.g Tinder, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram etc as extras to go alongside my application, I could've allowed my app to reach a wider audience. If I was to extend my app further I would create these. Another major improvement I could've made on my app to bring it to life would've been to animate the app and show the workflow in terms of transitions between screens, and navigation. I was limited in this by not having the software, e.g Adobe XD - I think if I had this software I could've brought the app to life a bit more and presented it better. Due to the software limitations my final app pages seem a bit flat.
Looking at my evaluation from second year about my project I have highlighted some changes that could have been made to the project in order to improve it. I plan to act on some of these improvements. Also considering the design flaws from the original walkthrough I now have a list of improvements to be made.
- adjust the open screen colours
- adjust the colour scheme used within the app. Grey seems dull and unencouraging, and the colours on white in the results section had faults too. Find another way to work the colour change into a section on the app
- remove some unnecessary sections of the app. Simplify the app as much as possible. I could remove the news page as well as the glossary
- improve the overall design of each page.
- improve the navigation/icons on the app. They are poorly designed and I can find a better way to navigate through the app
- mock up the app more professionally
- show the walkthrough using software like Adobe XD I did not have before
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