Interchange – Tuesday 12th March 2019
As part of our time as second-year students, we are given two days in the year to expand our creative knowledge and skill set in other courses offered by the University. I chose to take part in a day of architecture called “Dome Wasn’t Built in a Day”, a workshop designed to teach us about the architectural history of geodesic domes and allow us to make our own small model of a geodesic dome to ultimately build a 1:1 version of a geodesic dome. This workshop took place in the architecture department of Boardman House, a building of which I never have the pleasure of visiting before this day. The building is filled with lots of lovely, natural sunlight which made me feel like I had a lot of space to think. Compared to our usual space in St Andrew’s, Broadman House’s open plan main floor made me feel as though I could open my thoughts further than before.
Upon arrival, I sat at a desk with other students who were also attending the workshop. I got to talk to a few of them, and all were smiley, happy and talkative. It’s always pleasant to gel with a new group of people so quickly and it is a feeling I cherish every time it occurs.
Shortly after this, we were brought up to the presentation room. The architecture lecturers delivered a presentation including a brief introduction to architecture over the ages which ultimately brought us onto the subject of geodesic domes. From 19th-century log cabins structures demonstrating the importance of stable design to the South Korean domes built in WW2 upon inspiration from Buckminster Fuller, one of the most notable architects and inventors throughout history, we learnt that there are many different ways to make a structure, but the geodesic dome stands out from the crowd.
My notes from the architecture lecture
Now, it was time to get out hands dirty. We were asked to team up in pairs, so my course mate and I went together. We naturally have a very good working relationship and decided it best to work together, as opposed to with new people, to improve our team working skills to reap the benefits in our collaboration unit.
Our first task was to create a geodesic dome from kebab sticks and polystyrene balls and stick them together using glue. Our structure was to look like this, but without the bottom line of interlocking triangles:
A geodesic dome structure
Along with the materials, we were given an instruction sheet to follow. We began the process by sticking five kebab sticks into one polystyrene ball, making sure they were all at an angle to create the shape of the top of the dome.
Stage one of our geodesic dome
Stage one of our geodesic dome
This was very tough to start with because this is not the medium we are used to. Due to the nature of our course, we mainly work with digital platforms, only branching out to other mediums when paper prototyping or using post-its notes. We are not used to using our hands for anything other than typing so we really struggling to begin with.
When the top section was complete, we joined the five balls together to start creating the second row of triangle shapes.
Our project was progressing nicely
Once we had the hang of attaching the kebab sticks to the polystyrene balls, we were on a roll. We could soon see our structure starting to look more and more like a dome.
Our geodesic structure was beginning to look a lot more recognisable
A little while later, our dome required some scaffolding to hold it in the air while we attached the kebab sticks angling downwards. At first, we used a water bottle in the middle of the structure to hold the whole thing up, but soon this became a problem as the polystyrene ball couldn’t balance correctly on the smooth, flat, plastic water bottle lid. As an alternative, I created some small pillars from blu-tac to stick to and hold up the polystyrene balls at the bottom. This wasn’t effective because it didn’t reach high enough for us to attach the kebab sticks at the exact angle, but it was a lot better than having it flat on the table. I was tempted to dream up a more elegant solution to the problem, but I was conscious of the time.
Our make-shift scaffolding
Our make-shift scaffolding holding up our dome
After about an hour of construction, we wanted to perform a strength test. I nervously placed my fingers around the ball at the centre top of the structure and picked it up. Lo and behold, it held together! We were delighted with the results and this spurred us on to complete the rest of the dome quickly and efficiently.
Our construction passed the stability test
When this layer was completeddone, and the final base row added, all I needed to do was make some finishing touches, and it was complete.
I made some final touches to our geodesic dome
When we stood back, observed, and took some photos, we realised that we had made some angles too flat therefore pushing the structure out at the opposite side. This made the whole thing look ever-so-slightly wonky as shown in the screenshot below.
Uneven angles made the structure look wonky
All in all, however, we were delighted with our achievement and brought it back to the BSc base room at the end of the session.
The final product
Throughout the task, we encountered a few different problems. These obstacles weren’t too difficult to overcome, but they were annoying and caused great frustration at times. These were:
- Flat-ended sticks: One end of each kebab stick was blunt and therefore very difficult to place into the polystyrene ball. It wasn’t piercing the surface well enough thereby creating a dull hole of which the kebab stick was falling out. To solve this, we pierced the space with the sharp end of another kebab stick and placed the blunt end in the hole.
- Angled sticks: It was particularly tricky to get the angles right. When the kebab sticks were stuck into the balls at the wrong angle, it was near impossible to bend them to the correct one because it would destroy the ball. We overcame this obstacle by poking angled holes into the balls using a separate pointed stick and placing the desired stick into this hole. This way, we could completely control the angle that the sticks were inserted as not to destroy the polystyrene.
- Dissolving balls: The glue that we were using to hold the kebab sticks in place inside the polystyrene balls was acting as a solvent and dissolving the balls. There wasn’t a lot we could do about this other than monitor the amount of glue placed on the sticks. I also realised that by putting glue on the end of the stick before entry rather than sticking it all around, it would just secure the stick inside the ball rather than erode the outside.
- Holes became too big: Due to excessive amounts of glue and trying to angle the sticks, the holes in the polystyrene balls became very big, and the sticks were falling out. One or two times we had to replace the ball entirely.
This was a great mini team building exercise and taught me new, practical, logical problem-solving skills than I can apply to my University and general life practices.
The second part of our day was to build, as a team of 8, a 1:1 scale geodesic dome from a set of pre-made materials. In the pack came long poles, short poles and five and six-pronged connectors. This was an easy and quick task for us to achieve because we had already completed our own just an hour ago.
We started assembling the pieces the same way, starting from the top, but when trying to attach the second row of triangles, we realised we needed a human version of our water bottle as scaffolding. I volunteered for the role.
Have you ever seen human scaffolding with such great hair?
Having the structure held from the inside was beneficial for the rest of the team because they could work a lot faster by just attaching the new poles rather than always having to lift one side to accommodate the other.
The woman on the inside
In about half an hour, we had completed our 1:1 scale dome.
The 1:1 scale dome
So of course, we all got inside and took a picture.
The team inside the dome
Assembling the 1:1 dome was a great team building exercise for different reasons. Where the first was beneficial to mine and Jason’s already established a working relationship, this involved working with a set of new people. Despite this, we all got along well and were able to communicate our thoughts to each other in a clear and concise manner to complete the task at hand.
Our final task for the day was to think of how a geodesic dome structure could be applied to our individual disciplines. It was great to have an insight into how other people tackle creative problems, a few of which particularly stood out to me:
- Illustration: Create a storytelling experience where people can step into a geodesic dome-shaped headpiece hanging from the ceiling. This idea was fascinating to me because it is entirely out of the realms of what I would have dreamed up. It reminded me of AR and VR.
- Fine Art: A art gallery space with geodesic domes linked by angular passageways. This idea evolved from the thought of being a child wanting to have fun in a Jungle-Jim play area.
- Fashion: A line of menswear based on the shape of a geodesic dome to accentuate different body parts. Hat, jewellery, trousers etc.
I tackled this task very differently by exploring how each face of the shape could be utilised. My first thought was to create a new type of menu called a pizza menu. It would appear in the corner of the screen on mobile devices, much like the much-loved burger menu, and be a symbol for multiple menu options. However, it would be able to hold a lot more information than a vertical menu because it would expand to a geodesic dome in the middle of the screen. The user would be able to twist it round to view more options which are placed on each face of the dome. I soon realised that this would take a lot of rendering power for a mobile device, so I moved on to my creative journey.
Pizza menu
I wanted to make this experience more real for users and push the boundaries of what could be achieved. Knowing that I didn’t have to make it at the end and that this project is entirely hypothetical helped, although by the end of it I want to make my idea a reality.
I kept the idea of making the faces different options and thought of making a portfolio experience, a file system or even a status checked for astronauts; I needed to reign it in a bit.
That’s when we came up with the JamiHub. Your home in your hands.
Our notes about the JamiHub
This structure would be two domes together to make a geodesic sphere with a diameter of 15cm. The main features are:
- It fits right in the palm of your hand.
- Each face of the sphere is an option to a different part of your home, e.g. lighting, sound, heating.
- The sphere can be twisted in the middle to increment and decrement the value it is controlling at that moment.
- It is weighted with gyro technology, so when the user is holding it in their hand, the “bottom” half is deactivated, so they are less able to select an option accidentally.
- The top activated section is lit and shows whatever options are available on those faces. The position of the options on the looks doesn’t change, the user can twist the sphere until they find the option and when selected, the interface changes to show the metric value along the circumference.
- Its capacitative touchscreen makes sure only humans can use it, and it doesn’t activate when placed on a surface.
- Wireless charging lets it easily be placed on the side ready for its next use.
- It has different idle, sleep and shutdown indicators to let you know what is going on. If the device is idle, a pattern of your choice will gently roll across the panels. If it is going to sleep, the lights will slowly fade out. If the device is being turned off, it will vibrate slightly and turn black.
I feel confident in this idea, and it received a lot of positive feedback. I want to try and make something like this for my final project in Year 3, but we shall see how things pan out first. I don’t think I will be able to acquire the appropriate hardware to invent is in real life so I would like to make it using 3D modelling and VR technology. Using the Leap Motion, I can give users the experience of using a JamiHub to personalise their home.
At 0:51 in the video above, it shows a pair of hands being shown in an area of the screen. I image the user being able to “reach in” and hold the Hub while the rest of the screen is a digital world designed to look like a living room. When the user interacts with the JamiHub, the room around them changes, showing an excellent example of the product being used in a home environment.
I loved today, and it was great to push my creative boundaries. I couldn’t have been more satisfied with how it went, and I am very interested to see if this plan can come to life. We shall see.
Broads Meeting – Thursday 14th March 2019
To protect the identities of those working for The Broads Authority who are featured in this post, I will be using pseudo names throughout.
Thinking back to the happy feeling of when we finished our first presentation at the end of the last unit, and Bella asked us to present it to the board, when the day finally came I was filled with the same feeling of proud happiness.
As well as us presenting our work, our tutor also planned to show a short presentation introducing our next steps and a brief look into what the GCS has been up to. This meant that our presentation was to be cut down from 25/30 minutes to 15. We spent the first part of the morning doing so by cutting away some dead wood, so to speak. We each shortened bits here and there and my main tasks were to amalgamate our user personas into one slide to reduce the amount of information spread over multiple slides and reduce the size of Geraldine’s user journey.
Edited user personas slide pt.1
Edited user personas slide pt.2
Geraldine’s shortened user journey
We arrived at the Broads meeting at about 1 pm where we were shown to the main conference room. We had an hour to set up, which was just as well because we experienced a few technical difficulties. As people started flowing into the room, I started to feel nervous. Not too much, because we had already shown the presentation twice, but I could feel the butterflies brewing. When the board members were seated and technical difficulties overcome, our tutor introduced us and we started the presentation.
The presentation took about 20 minutes and we were able to deliver the message quickly and efficiently. I felt the butterflies in my stomach the whole time because the setting was a lot more formal and professional than the two before. Showing Bella and Richard and then the GCS was a lot more casual and laid back so I felt like I could incorporate my usual casual and humorous personality, whereas during the Broads presentation I read the room and decided that that approach would not suit this setting. This put me out of my comfort zone. Everyone was watching us so intently so I felt pressure to not stutter and to deliver a clear and concise message, which ironically, made me stutter a few times.
After we had all shown our presentations, we welcomed comments and Q&A session. The board members agreed that we delivered a professional performance, which put my mind at ease. There were a few critical comments from individuals, such as:
- Behaviour in the Broads: The member of the board who represented the RSPB requested emphasis be put on changing the behavioural habits of those who visit. This would include things like not leaving litter, keeping dogs on leads in protected areas and enjoying the Broads in all its natural beauty. We were thinking of incorporating this by including buzzwords in the copy, but being careful not to overwhelm and affect the overall experience design.
- Children’s section: A few people mentioned bringing in a child-friendly section, but I explained that this isn’t possible inside the scope of this project. We already have so much to design and develop in a short space of time and doubling this workload with a children’s section, at this stage of the project, is vastly out of reach.
- Signposting for families: Instead of adding a whole children’s section, we thought of how we could encourage parents to use the app with their children. By signposting parts of the app to say “Now pass the phone to a little one.” or “This section is child-friendly.” the experience can be adaptable for young and old. However, this method does pose problems because we have to decide the most youthful level of maturity to design for.
- Legacy report: We have been asked to write a statement at the end of the project to explain all the work we have carried out. This project will go on for a few years after we have finished with it, so people will want to carry on in our footsteps.
- Go the extra mile: A few members mentioned the use of a tag line “Go the extra mile.” This is intended to encourage users to walk further than usual and encounter more of the Broads.
Following this, we were shown the Wi-Fi boxes. Even though they functioned well, the usability still needs to be improved. Connecting to the service is at an awkward stage where it doesn’t automatically bring up a portal. When we were testing, I had to connect manually, tap on “more information” and copy and paste the IP address to input this into the browser. This shows visible negative impacts on the user experience before they have even begun to experience our work.
Nearing the end of our time there, we still needed to discuss our chosen location, Oulton Broad. Earlier in the week, Jamie had informed us that himself, Richard and Bella had spoken about which of our visited sites would be best to focus on for Stage 2 of this project. They decided on Oulton Broad because:
- It is easily accessible by public transport like bus and train.
- It has a heavy footfall, even more so in the Summertime.
- There are a lot of amenities in the town and surrounding area.
- It satisfies all three themes of ecology and biodiversity, landscape heritage and cultural heritage.
- There are open, public spaces for the public to sit, stand or walk and enjoy the app.
I must say, I was hesitant at first. When we were first told, I wasn’t thrilled with the decision and strongly felt that we should pick somewhere else. However, after a group discussion of the pros and cons of Oulton Broad, I was swayed and can now see why it was chosen over everywhere else. It is enough of a challenge to get us thinking of ways to improve the public’s experience but has enough going on already to base our work on.
Whilst walking home and pondering the day’s events, the reality of the importance of the project set in. During stage one, I treated it much like any other University project with importance and urgency. We completed the tasks to a high level of quality and precision and achieved a good grade at the end. However, this Board meeting has really heightened the level of excellence I believe we should apply. I have always known that this project is important to us, the Broads Authority and the Broads themselves, but the true reality has just kicked in. I hope to use this feeling as a positive and strive to achieve the best and bring people to enjoy the Broads in all their glory.
Group Work – Friday 15th March 2019
Today we began work on the screen layouts of the digital prototype. We used an industry standard user experience technique, paper prototyping, to understand the functionality of the screens as well as the aesthetic features. Myself and my coursemates are very familiar with working in this way so it was a good experience to pass on our knowledge. Whilst explaining it all to the GCS, I felt confident in my practice. Doing this really made me feel comfortable that I know my subject area well enough to educate others.
We started the process by drawing a phone screen. It was interesting to watch the GCS decide to make a large A3 scaled version of the phone and to make the elements the right size on the screen. When I start this rough process, I don’t apply this type of accuracy. I like to get my ideas down on paper, as messy as they may be, because I know how much time will be spent digitalising it all later on. However, on this occasion, I thought it would be good to try something new, so we tried to scale it all accurately. This took a lot of time and was wrapped up in too much perfection.
The first few iterations of the landing page showed some problems that we urgently needed to address:
- Branding: The GCS had created a logo for the Angles Way which they wanted to show off, however, The Broads Authority also want their logo on the front page. Though both logos have fair ground to be featured, where would they go?
- “Welcome to Oulton Broad”/”The Angles Way”: We were sure that we needed a tag-line welcoming users to Oulton Broad because our experience realised heavily on the location it is used, but at what point to we remind them that they are on the Angles Way? Should this be included in a title or in the copy?
- Copy: Will the landing page consist of a header and a tag-line or copy text as well?
Whilst the graphics and interaction designers were teasing these issues out on the landing page, Jason and I created post-it note information architecture diagram on the back wall for everyone to refer to in the future. During this process, I came up with an idea of how to include the map. Throughout the user testing sessions, incorporating a map came up consistently. I have kept it in the back of my mind, wondering if we should include a map or options symbol, but had not, until now, decided on a solution I was happy with.
So far, our overall digital experience works on a linear model where users navigate through using right and left directional arrows. However, my concept has taken shape from the grid idea that we came up with last week that works on a horizontal and vertical axis. With A-Frame tutorial framework in mind (the use of 2, 2.1, 2.2 etc.), letting users move up and down as well as left and right can work because related content can be included as an added extra. After all, there is only ever a finite amount of space on a web page, especially so when working with mobile.
I pitched this idea to the rest of the team and they were happy to go ahead and try it. I included it in the post-it note diagram to help visualise it to my peers.
Post-it note IA including the map feature
In the diagram above, black writing is the name of the screen and red is the content on it.
- The user sees a physical signage board at a specific location and is asked to connect to the Wi-Fi box or scan the QR code. This part is yet to be finalised.
- When the web page has loaded, they are greeted with a landing page, welcoming the user to the location they are currently visiting. On this screen there is one arrow facing downwards and one facing the right.
- If the user presses the down arrow button, they are shown a map where they can view other POIs and amenities. This can only be accessed from the landing page.
- If they press the right arrow button, they are brought to the theme selection page. The user can pick one of three themes to explore.
- When they have clicked on a theme, they are shown a brief description of that experience in their location.
- When the user clicks the right arrow button (I forgot to include this on the IA map), they enter the experience.
- An exit modal is present throughout the experience for the user to either view the map, go back to the home page or select another theme.
One of the designers suggested that we take inspiration from Snapchat’s map feature where the user drags down the screen, and the map appears. We liked the idea but weren’t sure how difficult that would be to hard-code, and with time constraints in mind, we are not going through with it.
I noticed that we were spending a long time creating the map and the paper prototyping screens, so I came up with a better strategy. I proposed the idea of us splitting into three groups, each containing on technical specialist and one creative, to maximise our productivity for the morning. I teamed up with Corrina to work on the landing page, Ameer with Zach for the map and Jason with Chloe for the theme selection.
Paper prototyping the core pages of our digital app experience
Creating our screens brought us up to lunch time. We were happy with the results and agreed that we should have a team building lunch at Wetherspoons. It genuinely was really nice to spend some down-time with the designers and get to know them a little better and build trust between us. We will be working together for the best part of a month, so building a nice relationship between us is important to me.
“Trust us an essential component of design teams. People who trust each other feel comfortable sharing inforamtion, will be more willng to be vulnerable, and are more likely to ask each other for help.” (Brause, 2017)
When we came back, we informally presented our work to our BSc tutor, the Graphic Communications tutor and their head of year. The GCS showed their tutors they new paper prototyping skills and I presented the map information architecture. In general, our work was applauded which was a really great feeling. Our BSc tutor was hesitant to whether we had time in the project to complete the map, and I have to admit that I agree. It is a gamble, but if we can make it work I think it will be a great touch based on our user research. Meanwhile, the Graphic Communications tutor spoke to the GCS about layout.
Conclusion
This week has been full of variety and excitement in many different ways. I have learnt new skills in and outside of my trade, nurtured ones I already posses and was even able to pass some of my knowledge on. I have been feeling very grateful this week for the opportunities I am being presented with during my time at University. Personally, University is a stepping-stone to the rest of my life, and the things I have achieved this week will have a butterfly effect on the rest of my professional career.
Bibliography
Brause, C. (2017). The Designer’s Field Guide to Collaboration. New York: Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group, p.55.