Monday Meetings

Stallone creative have a run through of our presentation (in a barber shop style) on Monday afternoon. It transpired that had we not taken this photo and seen Zoe we might all have been marked off for that day as we stayed in the I.T Centre and not class with the competition.

DEDICATION: Stallone Creative "working late"

Wild Card

The last week or so on the Stallone Creative blog has revolved around the peripherals of the feedback tool. We further researched common image sizes and category names— last Wednesday we talked about marketing messages.


The feedback tool has remained largely unchanged, with a working prototype in play it seems like all we have been doing is picking up on bugs. I had a shot at leaving constructive feedback which turned out to be surprisingly difficult!


Recently I keep hearing that the solution is in the brief and with this in mind we've gone back to square one.


That isn't to say our work has gone out the window— far from it. We have introduced structure and a methodical process to the tool, inspired by opinion, research and lager. 


On Friday we will introduce the Wild Card.

this is a mock up of a new page that we will be including in our final presentation.

Feedback : Move Forward

So we brain stormed last week and came up with a marketing campaign for the feedback tool. The basic plan is to show the student designers logo going from sketch form to the final product. Its suggesting that the students , when uploading a piece of work, are moving forward in life with the help of feedback from their peers. There will also be a button the user can click  which says "inspire". This button will then lead to the feedback page. 
Its our way of showing the evolution from student of design into a professional designer.

Lunchtime at Stallone Creative but still working hard in our mind. Presentation this Friday morning going to blow student designers mind (pause for effect).  Still keeping cards close to our chests and keeping ideas on the down low :P

These are a couple of (really) quick banner mock ups. We discussed a lack of marketing for the tool and agreed a selection of banners on the existing website would be a good place to start.

I took the plunge...

Today I decided it was about time I actually uploaded an unfinished piece of work to get to look for feedback. I made a right hash of the image upload (above) by saving a HUGE working file and sticking it on the feedback tool. What a fail.


As I went through the upload process I was pleasantly surprised. Now included in the tool are question fields to suggest up to three key areas for feedback. Unfortunately these did not display once I had finished but I would imagine this bug will be fixed on Monday.


Another bug bear was only having 140 characters to describe the work and give it a little context. Whilst the tool looks like it has been built with a little inspiration from twitter this limitation was quite frustrating, perhaps 250-300 characters might be more appropriate?


I'll check back on Monday to see if any of my various glitches have been sorted. Failing that I'll upload a new file and keep my fingers crossed!

Writing Feedback

Today I had a bash at writing feedback on the student designers working prototype. This was a bit of a challenge for me because, whilst I'm a very opinionated person, I'm also a total prat.

Undeterred I put the kettle on and donned my favourite pants ready for a productive, inspiring and well thought out session on the forum. I was going to change the world, to encourage my peer group to create the best design work Aberdeen had ever seen. 

"You never know" I said to myself half an hour later, "I could comment on someones work today and they could go on to be the next Peter Saville*"

Afterwards I did the dishes all the while thinking about the incredible feedback I was about to give. Then I made another cup of tea.


It's a little after midnight as I write this.


I've left two pieces of feedback and it was really hard! First I looked at an illustration. I knew this could be a tricky start as illustration is a very subjective subject matter and past my initial reaction I've never tried to critique the craft of a piece before. 


So I found a piece of work deserving of the usual reaction found on devient art, that useless string of one word posts followed by smiley faces. I say deserving because my first instinct was to type the word lovely. What a useless response!


I had to think about this, analise what I found appealing about the illustrative style, the choice of colour, use of line stroke and finally (because no review can ever be 100% positive) I had to ask myself what I would have done differently. That was a challenge in itself— I can't illustrate nearly as well as the piece I was reviewing.


Eventually I collected a few dozen words, misspelt a couple for good measure and almost got my point across. I feel I managed to cover all the bases, my comment was fair and balanced and I even made a suggestion for changes. Whew!


The next piece was more in my comfort zone. I took a look at a book cover that caught my eye due to the contrast between grunge typeface and flat background colour, striking image and sensitive use of colour to tie everything together.


Unfortunately I'm a stickler for the limitations of print and the implications on designers artwork. I spent 108 words on print deviation, silent borders and threw in a little personal experience in to the mix. Whilst I thought my feedback was valid (and educational) it probably didn't help the designer in terms of the overall aesthetic.


So what did I learn?

• Writing feedback is not easy but it is time consuming
• I needed to be lead or I would get distracted by tech specs
• I wasn't sure if my feedback was what the designers were looking for
• I was worried that I might be judged on the quality of my feedback
• I probably wouldn't go out of my way to put myself through that again

The Challenge

On the off change you've made it this far through my rant and think leaving feedback is easy please leave a constructive piece on this article, or my graphic at the top. Given the hundreds of hits the blog has had over the last month I would expect at least one well penned responce by the end of next week!

...

On Wednesday Stallone Creative met to discuss our final visuals for the Presentation on Friday 2nd March.

We identified four key visuals to put together and made plans for Friday 24th Feb. For once we'll play our cards close to our chests but suffice today Stallone Creative are back on form!

feedback on feedback

Feedback on the student design feedback tool

We had the first look of the feedback tool on monday and here are some ideas on what is good and what is bad about the tool.


1)When clicking on the main image that the designer wants feedback on it would be nice to be able to zoom in more. There may be some small detail that the designer wishes the viewer to comment on so a zoom would be an advantage.


2) Being able to edit the images and comments should exist. If someone comments on a piece of work , say for example the colours used, the designer could then edit there work and re-post it (with changes). This would generate a larger amount of feedback and enable viewers to have a comparison of work.


3) Because the feedback tool is based around a forum idea where people just comment on designs, the artwork almost becomes a secondary thought. Yes the first thing the viewer looks at is the the artwork but when various people begin to include their comments it almost becomes a "chat" between those people resulting in feedback being minimal. If you had specific design principles to rate or comment on then people would not feel like they have to say nice things just for the sake of it. Furthermore, when people give proper, analytical feedback through comments it is often taken the wrong way and can result in "broken friendships.




ON THE OTHER HAND......


The speed in which you are able to give feedback works well. You can go from piece to piece quite quickly which means when an artwork comes along that really strikes you, it is quick and easy to add your opinion. 

Design Categories

It is difficult to tailor questions or target feedback ratings without somehow splitting student uploads in to categories or otherwise tagging them. Currently Student Designers use the following tags:

• Graphic Design 
• Product Design 
• Illustration 
• Interactive Design
• Motion Graphics
• Packaging
• Fashion and Textiles
• Interior Design
• Craft
• Service Design
• Photography
• Web Design

Whilst this seems a fine system we decided to take another look at how similar sites define the creative arts. We looked at:

• Creative Review
• Design Week
• Communication Arts
• Computer Arts
• The Guardian
• Deviant Art
• Flickr
• Behance

amongst others and complied a quick graphic showing the common denominators below.

There were few surprises in the top five however I was surprised to see Typography and Advertising and Architecture within the top ten. So many design sites are dedicated to branding that I had imagined it would feature higher. Also, disturbing in their absence were textiles and product design. As this was only limited research and was conducted by students who's prime focus is Graphic Design it is perhaps understandable that the bias shows in the outcome.

However, I wouldn't say this has been a wasted exercise. Now is the time to start thinking of generalised topics/questions to inspire conversation within the feedback tool.

To be continued...

Image Size/Dimensions

Average images sizes 

Image sizes from a variety of arts/design sites including: D&AD, Japer Goodall, Behance, *Wallpaper, The Partners, Illuminating Brands, Cartlidge Levine, Computer Arts, Creative Review, Looks Like Good Design, Flickr, Deviant Art

The smallest image (from Flickr) is 240 x 163, the largest (also Flickr) is 1024 x 696. There are a few sites where the only fixed dimension is the width.

The closest sizes fitting the student designers grid are; 558px wide and 642px wide. This translates simply to css using width: 100%; without worrying about the height constraint. For the purpose of our visuals we will build using these sizes.

Additional Research

Before seeing the feedback tool prototype there is little point altering our current visuals. That doesn't mean Stallone Creative will be having a nap though. having taken a look over our visuals we can now begin the process of evaluating any weaknesses before implementing them in to our final build.

Subjects for research:

• Average images size (profile pic/artwork) in either pixels or percentage.
• Size & placement of current share send, view, enlarge & comment icons. Pixel size for art work.
• Category names for art/design disciplines (e.g. illustration, textiles, photography, mixed media). What is most commonly used?
• Highlight good feedback, think about what is most valuable and why (flickr/dev art seem like the best places to start as it has a huge active community). Can these comments be put in to boxes/or categories)?
• Bearing this all in mind are our current messages right? Do Originality, Impact, Technique and Atheistic best inspire feedback? If not what is better and why?

I'll start on image sizes this morning and hope we have answered all points by the end of the day, ready to identify any issues with the prototype once we see it.

Day 9 - Identifying the key elements

After the meeting with Alex and Matt, we sat down and discussed the key elements of our feedback tool.

Moving Forward >>>

Following our first presentation on Monday the Stallone team have taken some time out to punish our pencils, knacker our keyboards and mash our mice.

Whilst the presentation was well delivered it is clear there is still a need to develop our feedback criteria. With so many design disciplines on the site it is tricky to nail four categories for feedback. It is worth considering what options will be most relevant to all specialisms or how one set of questions could relate to any piece of work. The danger is that most creative work can't be arranged in to boxes, nor should it be.

In the absence of a working prototype we are considering feedback criteria today ready to begin testing/altering the tool on Monday.

Presentation Monday

So we just did our presentation this morning. We pitched a couple of ideas to Alex and Matt from Student Designers. The 'make some noise' idea went down well so hopefully we can take it to another level. Feedback of presentation was,in general, really good. They told us what they liked and why they liked it. They even used the word 'slick'. A great word to describe the group of men they call Stallone Creative i feel. We had fun doing it too with a light hearted animation at the beginning of presentation to describe the collective. Overall i am happy with the way it went and hope to use our feedback to create a feedback tool that Student Designers want to implement.           The Anvil

Last mock up before presentation

Our last catch up before meeting on Monday. We've settled for a couple of ideas we would like to present.

Sliding/rolling gallery is one of them, Volume bars (alias Make Some Noise) and much more which will be presented on Monday.

See you on Monday!

Another mock up by 'the Anvil".

The horizontal volume bar works better in this one. A picture of artist next to their design ,i feel, works well also. If you want to learn more about the designer you can just click on student designers already existing "about" button.


The viewer can also easily look at other work by the designer at the bottom of page.
In reality i would prefer that when the viewer hovers over originality or technique that a helpful pop up will come up on screen and detail what kind of critique is wanted.

Templates/Resources

A variety of icons in keeping with the current Student Designers visual style. These four (Enlarge, Tag/Annotate, Share and Make some noise) are intended as a quick fire resource for the next stage of visuals, where unity throughout each team member is key.

 Although we do have the grid template in Photoshop for ease of use we are simply placing this quick guide behind our artwork. This is ideal for any designer using Illustrator or InDesign rather than Photoshop at this stage.

Simple Layout i chose just to keep in style with the student designers website

further development sheets

Suggested Profile Alts

The profile page. Minor tweaks here to the current page concentrating on including an overview of the users progression/ranking in the site.

In this case our student, Pablo, has his average scores displayed from the "make some noise" category. I've chosen to create an option using a basic colour scheme (red to green). At this point we were still to decide on the titles to vote on. Having seen the latest option for "make some noise" I've updated the next screen.

In the above instance Pablo has the visual element of his score to view however for those interested in seing a detailed breakdown they could click in to a pop up (or a new screen) with full stats.

Finally for the "tagging cover flow" showing the amount of comments, tags given and received. This could also incorporate a star rating, the more feedback left the higher the ranking.

Depending on how easy it would be for student designers to manage this data would be used for the featured designer on the home page— currently reserved for featured projects. Alternatively featured projects could continue untouched but with the projects decided by the activity of the user.

A second mock-up of the interface.
Here i have put the overall rating horizontally so as to differentiate with the other ratings on left.


Underneath each heading i.e - originality,technique etc, there will be helpful questions or tips on exactly what each heading entails.
So when voting on aesthetics the question underneath will say.'IS THE ARTWORK APPEALING TO THE EYE". I feel this gives the viewer a better understanding of what they are critiquing.


The profile will incorporate picture,details of the designer and the brief that they were set.

First design of "make some noise"

Make Some Noise




The idea behind this involves people rating designers artwork with specific "design principle" criteria. The viewer can vote on the originality of the design, techniques used, how appealing the aesthetics are and impact of the artwork. A scrolling system could be introduced so the viewer can easily add or take away from the ratings "volume bar". Furthermore, clicking the mouse on a certain bar could be a quicker and more effective way of voting.


The whole idea of "make some noise" is to bring a more interactive way of "liking" or "commenting" on a piece of work. The target audience being students means that the feedback tool should have a modern and relevant look. Music websites such MTV and Radio One are very popular with 18-25 year olds. So being able to relate design to other students interests would, we feel , be appropriate and very effective to our feedback tool.


Once a viewer has voted on all four topics an average or overall rating is given. The best overall ratings are put forward for student designer of the month. 

some more development.

some more development sketches. along the right hand side of the page is just a small look into how animations might work in the site. the top/ middle is a look into the sliding mechanism the "tagging" system could use. The bottom is a new idea following the same idea as the "tagging" system but with a bit of character, based around leaving twitter style (character limited) comments in the form of post-it notes.

Tagging / Annotation

Targeted research, tagging/annotation systems in current use.
(Note Facebook is absent due to restricted internet access.)

Development

i redesigned the portfolio page to have a cover flow

 here is the main portfolio page of a designer on the website

  here is the feedback where the user will be able to change basic things about the design like colour font and rotation. users will have to email the designer.

Sketches and rounding the ideas

Feedback doesn't always have to be only one way tool. It could be use for both, author and viewer. In these days where everything is similar the small differentiates are the  key players. That extra little step up that some companies goes to satisfy their customer. We will go the extra mile!

Young designer or senior designers are constantly developing. Catching and bouncing ideas of various places and people. Somethink useful for his own development. Features that would be a mixture of handy instant reusable knowledge.

• Ranking different categories- actions slider will be available for instant evaluation (Authors Own Idea, technical difficulty, colour balance, etc)
• Colour scheme of the artwork (for downloading into swatches)
• Social network connection (via Facebook, Twitter)
• Brief summary about the work or author
• Ranking points count - user, talented user, flying talent, designer, moonwalking designer
• Follow this artist through the SD Forum/ Community

 When people sliding between pictures, they are alway curious, what's next picture?

We can show them a strip of thumbnails which would moves independently and by selecting the thumbnail the art work and it's info will show up. It also could work well with authors other work-gallery style.

 Sliding is more fun than a grid view. 

Last sketch-board was dedicated to mobile design. I would say mobile web app is as important as our own website. People could get "addicted" to ranking somebody's work and leaving feedback. Even when they  are traveling or away from office. It's mobile feedback tool.

Development work for 'make some noise' idea

Day 5 and the end of week one.

It's 4pm on Friday. We've finished up our group discussion and selected a couple of favored ideas to develop for Monday. It's time to find some inspiration...

Meeting 2:

Clarke “Sanchez” Cooper
Welcomes the group back to the table. Thanks everyone for taking time out on Wednesday  to meet outside of class hours. Proposes additional similar meetings in future.

Clarke has researched trends within student friendly web sites and proposed two themes for the feedback tool. “Make some noise” uses volume control imagery to show favoured design work. By turning up the volume students can rate and broadcast work.

His second proposal is a tagging system similar that used by Facebook (credits Stewart Ainslie as also working on a similar theme— pub chat).

Ondrej
Is keen to know more about the tagging system, he and Andy are both concerned about how tagging might get in the way of the work on display.

Stewart
Keen to defend the tagging concept, proposes that tags are listed as comments beneath the work and that a click or hover state could reveal the “pins” on the artwork.

Ondrej
Is interested in conversations stacking based on replies or new responses. How might this be conveyed visually?

Andy/Stewart
Briefly discuss splitting shapes, using the students designers logo as a graphic aid, pros / cons.

Clarke
Starts to think about colour/shape/icons.

Edwin
Discusses how Clarke’s make some noise theme. Would like to see how Clarke develops the music bars / volume control theme.

Clarke agrees with Edwin. He will pitch the idea to Alex & Matt on Monday.

Andy spent time on the student designers web page considering identity elements and how they might tie in to the interface. He has explored using the Student Designers mark as a graphic element within the design as well as what sliders buttons etc could look like. For Monday he is mocking up a simple visual of how we might make alterations to the profile page to reflect feedback incentives.

Clarke suggested giving the tool a name/logo/identity of its own.

Stewart shot the idea down, suggesting it would water down the student designer brand.

* Ultimately this was wrong of Stewart as the final decision rests with the client. However, time spent on an individual identity is time that could be better spent on the tool itself...

Andy Will pitch featured designers alongside general incentives on Monday.

Ondrej Has sketched up detailed plans for a “cover flow” presentation style for the tool. Benefits of this method of display are both that cover tool was developed and is ideal for mobile devices and also that it provides an addictive platform where “once you pop you just can’t stop”. It also provides ease of comparison between one piece of work and the next.

He also stressed the critical importance of industry professionals being involved with the site. This could be college/uni tutors as well as full time designers from agencies around the world.

Stewart talks through a few concepts and their pitfalls, is concerned about the quantity of active users and how to encourage interaction with the feedback tool. Is also interested in how social networking tools could be used alongside the site and why access is currently restricted to students.

His strongest concept for Monday is the “tagging” system. This would be used for giving feedback to particular areas of an image, similar to flickr. The differentiating factor would be that rather than the author it would be the users who tagged their favorite elements, or areas for improvement. Obviously this would still leave the need for general comments much more like a forum.

Edwin was inspired by Nike and their flash based NIKEiD customisation tool. Ideally this would allow students to change the colour and tweak layout options on each others work, an advanced markup system. Whilst this would be an incredible feature the worry he had was that it might cause offense and could be difficult to implement.

As we talked this idea through we quickly realised that the technical issues surrounding this concept would make creating it a mammoth task.

Implemented instead as a customisation option for designers profiles this could become a reward item for leaving feedback. As Edwin and Andy discussed the idea it became clear this is something we would have to run past Alex and Matt. What options are available for suggested alterations outside of the feedback section of the site?

Additional questions:

• How many active users?
• What can an unregistered user see?
• What can be shared via social networks? How valuable is the ability to share? We had taken it for granted that facebook and twitter would be essential links— perhaps this is not the case. Should the emphasis be on keeping work and review internal?
• Can we register without being a student? If so then why invite students only?

Tasks:

• Clarke will attempt to create a profile without proving he is a student. He will present “make a noise” on Monday.
• Andy will develop visuals supporting our customised profile/incentive scheme. These will be very simplistic at this point just to illustrate an idea.
• Ondrej will present his cover flow visual.
• Edwin is looking in to twitter with Stewart to ascertain what is visible to an “outsider”
• Stewart has just finished his secretarial duties, will proceed to drink tea.

Development

Here's the start of my development. Just some ideas and notes I've scribbled down today.

initial sketches Development will follow soon