User testing

I have asked 10 young people, who are flatting to test my interface. Here I provide pictures of some of them while testing.

My Development (part 3)

After testing by representatives of the user group I am aimed at I applied some more modifications to my interface.

First of all I made the whole interface more cartoon like.The reason for that is that when I asked my users if they like watching cartoons, all of them answered "YES", which proves my theory that young people in their early 20th still like dealing with nice and friendly cartoon characters. Another important change was made because of some complaints about the buttons. Most of the users could not easily find out wich objects are actually buttons. So I highlighted my buttons with light yellow color, trying to keep the same style for all of them. I also made my man wave on the first page greeting new users and gave him a bright yellow bulb-heart. I also added some text around the button which leads to the room indicator page (from energy consumption page) in case user will need some more clue what the button is for. Furthermore I added "BACK" buttons for more convenience.

 

 

 

I also decided to try the method offered by Angela on the lecture - turning the whole thing into black and white, so I could see if color blinded people would be able to use the interface. And I was quite succesfull. Everything could still be seen clearly.

My Development (part 2)

After trying to actually run my interface as if I was a user, I decided to make a significant change. I added three more pages to it, so the user can acces not only the page which represents the room where he/she spends the highest amount of energy, but the other rooms as well, so he/she can check and reduce the energy consumption if needed, and consequently gets more options for saving energy.

 

 

 

 

 

My Development (part 1)

Here is my first introduction to Adobe Flash Professional CS5 and my first steps in using it and designing my application.

 

 

My first scetches

 

 

Useful web-sites

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=tWFWJGA7qrc#at=146
http://ilovetypography.com/
http://www.formfiftyfive.com
http://www.typographyserved.com/
http://trufitt.com/2009/09/21-beautiful-infographic-videos/
http://ignorethecode.net/blog/2010/01/21/realism_in_ui_design/
http://visualization.geblogs.com/visualization/appliances/
http://numberpicture.com/
http://moritz.stefaner.eu/projects/oecd-better-life-index/

Inspiration

I was inspired by this famous new zealand political character.

The image was retrieved September 9th from: http://booksellersnz.files.wordpress.com/2011/09/orange-man.jpg

It could seem strange, but I got the inspiration for my colour choice from tomatos. Looking at tomatos I noticed that  combination of green and red looks really natural and in my case it will remind the user about an enviroment and human's responcibility to save energy in case to help nonrenewable resourses to remain on the earth longer.

The image was retrieved September 9th from: http://www.wallpapersphere.com/preview/photography/tomato-and-parsley/1024+x+768/898/11743

Project 2A written description

For the project two I am going to design a laptop application which will offer not only to monitor energy usage in the household, but also will give clues where exactly to pay attention to save energy.  I am going to use Adobe Flash to come up with the design of the interface (because this would be the best way to get a visual prototype of the device, which will illustrate the design and scheme of its work) but for the actual application more technologies such as sensors on appliances will be required. This device is going to be designed mainly for young people and students, who are flatting so the device will not have any standard numbers bar or pie-charts, that usually bore young people and overload their brains at university. Instead the energy usage in the household will be represented by nice and friendly character – smart energy friend, who will help to find out how to save energy and which field of the house needs more attention for it. Smart energy friend will help to catch the interest of young generation and get them engaged in saving energy.  As young people tend to daily suffer from stress I used pale green color, which is famous for its calming effect. Although the interface is aimed at young people it also can be used by anyone interested in fun way of saving energy, for instance kids and their parents.

Project 2A proposal

Experimentation

I have decided to concentrate and work on my third idea (The idea of using character). Here is some of my experimentation

As my main materials I used Flour and Salt

I sifted flour so that there were no lumps remaining

Then I added salt

and some water

After that I stired ingridients together and got stiff dough. Then I sculptured a little man's body and arms separately, made holes in them and put my details into the oven for an hour to dry.

When I've got my details ready, I slipped the threads in the holes

And tryied to make my man move his arms.

But unfortunatelly I failed. I could fix his arms in a certain position but I couldn't make him move them just using thread.

To get his arms raised I had to move them with my fingers.

So, because it is really hard to make an actual object I decided to design an interface instead. But I am still going to use the idea of a character.