Some updates

I didn't attend Monday's lecture cause i was kinda under the weather. So i will do some updates on project and stuff.

Final project is pretty different for me as compared to the previous 2 projects. I'm not doing much designing now but i'm focusing mainly on the UX/UI review. Last time, i had to come up with the content for critique and prolly get feedback from others and now, i get to critique designs and bring the app out for users to try. Through that i will be doing vigorous QAT and observing how different people uses the app differently and noting down feedbacks. I realise this is something that i like to do cause in 2359 media, i've done QAT for an app and i find it interesting. 

Everyone behaves differently, but it's wonders how a specific good design bring out a same set of actions from users. For example, a button, how do we know its a button and how do we know it should be clicked on. Good designs make their buttons obvious lets say using embossing and color gradient. How can we make an app that is intuitive to kids who might not have prior iPad experience? Things we really need to ponder about. At this point of time, i wish i'm doing a parttime job at some kindergarten then everyday can interact with kids!!

For Million Eyeballs!

Just to zoom into 2 points i really like.


Acceptable Response Time: 
According to Fiona Nah's study,  everyone has a 2 seconds tolerance for loading time of webpages. TRUE. I'm really sick of those websites that does not show all the graphics and text properly within 2 or 3 seconds. Users may leave the website asap and switch to other websites as loading time is the most basic from of UX, and the very first interaction with a new website we encounter.

User satisfaction is achieved when experience exceeds expectations.
* Do better than your competition
* Do better than your users' expectations

CSS Sprites:

Using CSS sprites, we can redue the number of image requests. By loading a big image containing all the different images in it, CSS can simply call out for different individual images within it later on .

Example.

Image from this pretty cool tutorial. 

I guess this method is also pretty simple on the designer side, we just have to simple put everything together and save on a single .png file? awesomeness!

Final projjjj

Hey peeps, 

It's blogging time again. It's really the hell week. or i would say WEEKS. I just had to rush out a photo collage design for critique session and present at the end of the class. I started doing at the beginning of the critique and i uploaded the work and presented at the end of the class. Mentally stressed up ttm. Following lect which is now, i realised i didn't do the survey for mobile assignment!!! So had to rush out again. (sorry for doing it so late, really >..<) 

Anyways, sometimes i look back to the previous 2 projects, i nvr had to rush til the last minute cause it seems designing always happens at the beginning of the proj and programming stuff are at the back. Even when rushing, our pro programmers will be the ones suffering. Of course, let's not talk about trivial documentation which can be done fast fast when writing inspiration comes. I wish i can do more for the group. Somehow no coding background is really unfair to other members... Moreover, for final project, i wont be doing much designing except UI/UX review. 

My final project team have 4 members, Hoang, Wayne, James and me. We decided to go ahead and work with 2359 media to create a interactive storybook iPad app. the content will be for a really nice cartoon with awesome graphics that is going to launch on Disney Channel Singapore. (shall leave out the name for now cause of NDA)

So it will mainly have elements like storytelling, video showcase and games. And all of that will appear as a continuous episode. Simple swiping can bring kids through the different scenes with karaoke-style subtitles. This is followed by video playback that shows part of the cartoon. Lastly, we will try to incorporate interactive games in between the episode! We came up with several awesome ideas for games and i really hope they can be implemented! Kids will be brought into a whole new world when its complete. hee. 

The app will have really awesome cutsey graphics which i believe kids will love!! My role will be doing QAT with kids and reviewing the UI/UX to make the app super intuitive. Prof Ben already gave us some suggestions during the consultation last week so we are going to work on that. However, i have to say, we don't really have complete control of the project cause we are working with external parties so it will take abit more effort for our ideas and suggestions to get through. The difficulty for us would be the coordination part, within group and with external parties. I'm learning :D.

Cheers.