VISUAL RESEARCH

LAYOUT TEST

LECTURE FEATURE AND TEXTBOOK FEATURE

ICONOGRAPHY

MARKETING APPLE

LOGO EXPERIMENT

WIREFRAMING

APP ICON

FONT AND COLOUR SCHEME

WHY PATHWAY

TIME PLANNING

I tried to organise myself by setting myself seperate deadlines for the past 3 months

SYNTHESIS

Synthesis:

It may not be apparent how the thesis links to graphic design. The thesis links due to the process of Design Thinking. Design thinking is a process every Graphic Designer takes, when trying to create a product/service. It can sometimes be subconsiously undertaken. It’s the process of problem solving through creating a number of desired solutions. Its the process of design thinking that enabled me to produce this visual response. 

Tim Brown, IDEO’s president and CEO, defines design thinking like this:

“The mission of design thinking is to translate observation into insights and insights into products and services that will improve lives.”

This is achieved by going through the following stages:

- Emphathise 

- Define 

- Ideate 

- Prototype

- Test

Throughout the thesis, I attempted to emphathise with the consumer (student) think what can be improved, what’s the positives as a student? What’s bad? Then I defined the problems with the product (learning experience in higher education) Followed up by ideas/solutions to how we could improve the service. Now to complete the process of design thinking, we need to test the ideas and come up with a prototype.

FINAL SOLUTION

Final Solution:

Please type in the link below, there is an attatched memory stick however for the intended view of the final solution the link is preferred. 

(search link) 

https://www.behance.net/gallery/61155323/Pathway-App

The final design fits the overall tone and design of the app. It is more or less an extension, advertising the features, and creating awareness for the app. It would ideally be set on the app store website or its own website. 

The scrolling infographic successfully markets the product generated from design thinking and acts as a visual response to the findings and research collated in the thesis. Although the thesis focuses on a number of problems the visual responds to the ideas collated in reference to online learning and AI, supporting the thesis question by delivering a visual to how design thinking has aided technology,( in this sense A.I) to fundamentally improve the learning experience for students in Higher education. After under-going final crits, the feedback received was very positive.

EVALUATION

Evaluation: 

Throughout this module, I believe the visual investigation is a successful response to the research collated in the thesis. Undergoing design thinking, the stages neccessary for completion also means delivering a visual prototype response, as discussed in the synthesis. 

I have thoroughly enjoyed the process as a brief, in terms of researching and writing a thesis and then providing a visual example of my research and ideas. It has helped generate the most informed piece of design I have done to date. The research stage was probably the most enjoyable stage, as I found the topic quite interesting, in terms of writing it was enjoyable due to the innovation included. By that I mean the discussion of innovative ideas, which are then supported by research. 

Design thinking is an important process to me as a creative, I believe it helps generate much stronger deliverables, with a lot more depth and assurance, as you compare and contrast with a number of solutions to curate one definitive solution, that is heavily supported by wide sources of research and information.

Going forward into extended practice, I like the idea of pursuing this idea further perhaps create animations for the Pathway concept. A definitive from this module is that I shall be experimenting with design thinking further, as it develops ideas to a much higher standard, and will be a benefitial method for the rest of my ideas.

EXAMPLES OF EMOTION IN WEBSITES

Emotions are integral constituents that are quite often overlooked. Nevertheless, they are vital for building healthy and trustworthy relationships with the online audience. When done properly, they give us a sense of comfort, reliability, reassurance and sometimes even serenity – the sorts of feelings that are alien to UIs yet are familiar to us.

Rich Brown

Rich Brown greets the online audience with a series of self-portraits that convey various emotions. Open face and intent look across the browser screen establishes a friendly relationship and close connection.

http://richbrown.info/

GlemmRide

GlemmRide has a powerful sports vibe and adventurous spirit. A portrait of a young man with a huge smile and hilarious face that marks the landing page evoke positive emotions and certainly grabs the attention. The choice of music and video brings a sense of excitement and very relevant to the overall aesthetic and message. 

http://www.glemmride.at/de/slopestyle

Sileni Nano

Sileni Nano is sated with a positive atmosphere that lures visitors in. The image backdrop of young and buoyant people is spruced up with a cheerful mood that sets the tone for the whole project, supports the theme and goes perfectly well with the rest of the design.

http://www.sileninano.com/

Philippe Hong

Although Philippe Hong does not have a win-win smile, his open face and steadfast gaze are simply charming. Thus, he easily establishes close contact. These subtle emotions also contribute to user experience, making it more human like.

http://philippehong.com/

https://onextrapixel.com/emotions-in-website-design-fresh-examples/

HOW AND WHY FACES INCREASE USER ENGAGEMENT

https://designshack.net/articles/graphics/how-faces-increase-user-engagement/


There’s a lot of science and psychology that goes into design. Even if you don’t consciously think about it, choices that you make when selecting imagery and user interface elements can establish a connection with users (or not) and even lead to higher engagement rates.

A design is not deemed good because of its general style but it is actually much more deep rooted than that. A design is deemed good due to the emotions the viewer feels from it. 

Imagery can help a user figure out in an instant if what’s on your website is something they want to be a part of. The faces on the screen will tell a user if he or she is like the people on the screen (or wants to be like them). A positive match increases the chance of engagement. It shows the user that they can relate to your product or service.

Since faces grab attention better than nearly anything else, you can use them to direct your visitors’ focus to the key elements on a page. Even better, if you use a face that’s looking at your CTA (call to action), most visitors will follow the person’s gaze to see what they’re looking at.

Have you ever noticed that when you see someone yawn, you then feel the urge to do the same?

The same can be said about almost any other emotional cue, from a smile to an expression of disgust or anger. The emotions can actually be transferred or carried from person to person and set the tone for an interaction.

- Faces set an emotional tone

- Guide visual flow

- Avoid 'fake' faces

Faces only work to establish trust and emotional connections when the idea behind the image is real. Inauthentic scenes can backfire and do more harm than good.

HOW TO WRITE A GOOD CONCLUSION

Conclusions for dissertations and theses

When writing longer pieces of work, it is still very important to observe some of the principles mentioned previously. For instance, you will still want to ensure that your conclusion really does conclude, and does not just go off at a tangent to discuss something that is unrelated to the thesis. Some people believe (mistakenly) that a conclusion is the place for you to relax and 'say whatever you want'. This is incorrect. If you do this, you will be likely to be marked down.

There are also likely to be some key differences in your approach when writing conclusions. Certainly, conclusions will be even more important in a dissertation or thesis, purely because of the length of the piece. Among the differences you will notice are the following:

• As well as having an overall conclusion to your dissertation or thesis, each chapter should also have a conclusion (as well as an introduction). The reason for this is that in a longer piece of writing, it becomes more important to remind the reader of what you have done and why you have done it, before you move onto the next stage.
• The conclusion of a dissertation or thesis is not an opportunity to engage in a personal 'rant'. You must draw out key aspects of the literature you have studied along with your recommendations and say how they are justified or contradicted by your research.
• It is a good idea in a chapter conclusion to remind the reader what happened in the chapter (For example: In this chapter, the literature relating to the teaching of vocabulary was considered.). After this, you need to build a bridge linking this chapter with the next one. (This will be further discussed in the next chapter.)
• In a dissertation or thesis, there is likely to be a longer section on the limitations of your research. Important though this is, however, you also need to be sure to sell your research in the conclusion - so it is best not to be too negative or over-modest about your achievements at this point. The key to many dissertations and theses is the need to emphasise the contribution that it makes to research.
• In a dissertation or thesis, it is more likely that you will have a section on the need for future research. In an MA or MSc dissertation you may like to suggest something that could be developed from your work as a PhD thesis. In a PhD thesis you may like to indicate some potential for post-doctoral work.

When writing an assignment, be careful of the following points:

• The topic you are writing about may not always require a full conclusion (this is particularly the case if your work is heavily analytical or mathematical, or not very discursive). Remember not all assignments require discussion. Check what the expectations are in your own department. Ask your tutor if you are not sure.
• Even if you do not need a full conclusion, remember that any assignment nearly always needs to be rounded off in some way and brought to an end. Consider this: will the reader will know that you have finished your work? (Or will they just think that you have run out of time - or energy)?
• Keep in mind the balance of your assignment. The conclusion should be clear and relatively brief.

EDUCATION DOMINANCE

http://www.acuitus.com/web/education-dominance.html

DARPA - Education Dominance

Training and human effectiveness

Program Manager: William D. Casebeer, Ph.D.

Education Dominance set out to demonstrate that education could be improved by an order of magnitude. Instead of just looking at the classroom, the program focused on the end-goal of education—becoming the expert in your field.

We know how to create experts, as Anders Ericsson and Malcolm Gladwell have articulated—a decade of very hard work and a host of fortuitous circumstances. The objective of this DARPA project was to demonstrate that we could create experts in months rather than years, and to get every student to that level of competence and confidence.

A second major objective of this program was to recognize that this level of education would be impossible to scale—the resources required, from exceptional (and thus scarce) resources such as the world’s best teacher to the support costs of one-to-one tutoring where every student had access to, for example, an enterprise scale network would be prohibitive. Thus, the second objective was to demonstrate economic scalability—in this case to demonstrate that technology could replicate an exceptional educational environment.

The third element of the program was to identify a pilot project where the value to exceptional education was nearly unlimited, where the potential ROI to even an expensive school would also be at least an order of magnitude. The Navy presented such an opportunity. Their computer networks are arguably the most challenging in the world—with nearly 300,000 nodes and over 200 networks that are constantly being reorganized and often becoming autonomous. The challenge to the current Fleet ITs is so great that typically at least a problem a week cannot be solved onboard ship, and needs to be escalated off-ship for solution by elite teams.

Over 6,000 tickets are escalated off-ship; many take weeks to solve; several hundred represent over a million dollars each in operational costs.

Education Dominance was chartered to demonstrate an order of magnitude gain in educational outcomes, to replicate these results using technology, and to demonstrate a path to driving the Navy’s trouble tickets to zero (among other operational objectives).

The program was structured in four phases: create a school that demonstrated the factor of ten efficacy gain, run rigorous field trials to validate the gains, replicate the school using technology, and revalidate.

The initial school was run in Monterey, with fifteen entry-level Navy students with no prior IT experience. The school was predominantly one-to-one tutoring with two dozen carefully selected IT experts serving as tutors; all were gifted teachers who had also done something in their career to demonstrate that they were truly exceptional at IT.

The Institute for Defense Analyses (IDA) then conducted five weeks of intense, often grueling competitions between these graduates and Fleet experts, many with over ten years of experience and more than 40 advanced schools among them.

The Education Dominance graduates won all competitions, often by wide margins, demonstrating not only a mastery of their subject but also exceptional problem solving and reasoning skills—applied to the subject domain, exceptional confidence and very deliberate precision. All are characteristics of experts that are rarely engendered in a classroom.

The second phase of Education Dominance focused on porting this school to the Digital Tutor, technology that had been developed in advance of the program. This artificial intelligence platform is designed primarily to replicate the behaviors of exceptional tutors; an immediate indicator of its success is how often students refer to their tutor as “he” rather than “it”.

The Digital Tutor, in phase three, was installed in the Navy’s entry-level school for ITs in Pensacola, and continually tested while the content was under development in steadily increasing increments. Again, IDA ran tests after each cycle, against sailors taking an eLearning course offered by the Navy, the school’s instructors, and a classroom using Microsoft and CISCO curricula. In all trials the graduates using the Digital Tutor dominated, often by margins that were described as “huge”.

Finally, IDA ran two weeks of competitions between the Fleet and Education Dominance/Digital Tutor graduates—encompassing very challenging, real-world trouble shooting problems, building enterprise-caliber networks from scratch, an advanced knowledge test and an oral review board. Again, the Education Dominance students dominated in all competitions against Fleet experts with an average of ten years of experience.

DON NORMAN

Don Norman

ZONE OF PROXIMAL DEVELOPMENT (ZPD)

SCAFFOLDING LEARNING TECHNIQUE

Wood and Middleton (1975) - Scaffolding

The following study provides empirical support the both the concept of scaffolding and the ZPD.

Procedure: 4 year old children had to use a set of blocks and pegs to build a 3D model shown in a picture. Building the model was too difficult a task for a 4 year old child to complete alone.

Wood and Middleton (1975) observed how mothers interacted with their children to build the 3D model. The type of support included:

• General encouragement e.g. ‘now you have a go.’
• Specific instructions e.g. ‘get four big blocks.’
• Direct demonstration e.g. showing the child how to place one block on another.

The results of the study showed that no single strategy was best for helping the child to progress. Mothers whose assistance was most effective were those who varied their strategy according to how the child was doing. When the child was doing well, they became less specific in their help. When the child started to struggle, they gave increasingly specific instructions until the child started to make progress again.

The study illustrates scaffolding, and Vygotsky's concept of the ZPD. Scaffolding (i.e. assistance) is most effective when the support is matched to the needs of the learner. This puts them in a position to achieve success in an activity that they would previously not have been able to do alone.

Wood et al. (1976) named certain processes that aid effective scaffolding:

• Gaining and maintaining the learner’s interest in the task.
• Making the task simple.
• Emphasizing certain aspects that will help with the solution.
• Control the child’s level of frustration.
• Demonstrate the task.

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Freund (1990) - Dolls House Study

Freund (1990) wanted to investigate if children learn more effectively via Piaget's concept of discovery learning or by guided learning via the ZPD.

She asked a group of children between the ages of three and five years to help a puppet to decide which furniture should be placed in the various rooms of a dolls house. First Freund assessed what each child already understood about the placement of furniture (as a baseline measure).

Next, each child worked on a similar task, either alone (re: discovery based learning) or with their mother (re: scaffolding / guided learning). To assess what each child had learned they were each given a more complex, furniture sorting task.

The results of the study showed that children assisted by their mother performed better at the furniture sorting than the children who worked independently.

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Educational Applications

'From a Vygotskian perspective, the teacher's role is mediating the child's learning activity as they share knowledge through social interaction' (Dixon-Krauss, 1996, p. 18).

Scaffolding is a key feature of effective teaching and can include modeling a skill, providing hints or cues, and adapting material or activity (Copple & Bredekamp, 2009). In the classroom scaffolding can can be performed with just about any task. Consider these guidelines for scaffolding instruction (Silver, 2011)

• Assess the learner's current knowledge and experience for the academic content.
• Relate content to what students already understand or can do.
• Break a task into small, more manageable tasks with opportunities for intermittent feedback.
• Use verbal cues and prompts to assist students.

A contemporary application of Vygotsky's theories is "reciprocal teaching", used to improve students' ability to learn from text. In this method, teacher and students collaborate in learning and practicing four key skills: summarizing, questioning, clarifying, and predicting. The teacher's role in the process is reduced over time.

Vygotsky's theories also feed into current interest in collaborative learning, suggesting that group members should have different levels of ability so more advanced peers can help less advanced members operate within their zone of proximal development.

DISSERTATION QUESTION

Discuss the significance for a graphic designer to integrate anthropomorphic principles into their practice?

After much thinking this was the final question, I chose. The question can still change depending on the content written in the essay, but this will be the subject that I will base my research on. The reason behind this choice in question is because of the interest I have in this topic. I also think it is a question that very few designers really tackle, due to it being something every designer does so subconsciously. The potential for the visual investigation is also behind why I chose this question. It is an interest of mine to create a piece of design from the ground up focusing not just on form follows function but really using 'feeling' as a focal point.