Principles of resources, synthesis and iteration
http://www.foylearts.net/ahutton/mobile/?p=413
Hand in date for project 2 next week (22/03/11)
– model
– photos of try outs (in sketch books)
– sketch book of drgs (bound)
– final sketch rendering (flush mounted on A3 foam core board)
– orthographic drg (actual size with overall dimensions) (Folded sheet in back of sketch book)
Body Swap from Chris O’Shea on Vimeo.
Digital entrepreneurs with big ideas are invited to compete for a total of £10,000 in cash to help get their business ideas off the ground. The competition, run by Digital Derry and funded by ILEX, kicks off on Saturday, April 2nd and is open to anyone with a exciting idea for a new digital content business to be based in the County Derry area.
http://tinyurl.com/45e3j34
Stick and Dowel – project 2 (30%)
This assignment is designed to challenge you to design and make a “beautiful”, “interesting” artefact.
It is based around the idea that you can create a simple sculptural piece with a stick and a dowel rod.
The stick should be sized between 30mm to 45mm diameter and have length of between 300 and 450 mm.
The dowel should be between 3mm and 10mm diameter and have a length between 10mm and 3000mm
You should create a sculptural piece that uses both pieces as they intersect. You make cuts in either the stick or the dowel to allow intersection and to add “beauty and interest”
You can glue the components together if you wish. No screws or other fixings are allowed.
You should present a sketch book of ideas, a final design rendering, an orthographic drawing and the constructed final piece. The final piece should be well made, crafted and nicely finished. The final pieces will be offered for sale by auction with no reserve prices at the end of year degree show.
Challanges:
What way can you add “interest” to the components.
What is “beautiful”
You will need to draw and think about your solution. You will then need to “find” your stick. That will cause a random element to the design process. Perhaps the stick will cause a revision to the design. You will then need to make the piece. The making will involve cutting and drilling and assembling. What can possibly go wrong?
On the face of it this is a simple project – drill a hole in the stick and place the rod in the hole – project finished. But it is not that simple. Will the hole be at 90 degrees to the stick? Will there be a number of cuts in the stick made? How ambitious is the design? How capable are you when it comes to making? The design brief is simple but restricted. What level of design ambition will you settle for? How long will it take to design the object? Will you show any of your class mates? Will they come up with the same idea?
Our client is a digital user interface design studio that develops pioneering user experiences for some of the world’s leading brands. They are looking for experienced mid-weight to senior Interaction Designers for their London studio to work on and across an array of digital multi-platform projects, from mobile and tablet to TV, in-car and beyond. You will be working with your fellow Interaction Designers to get to the heart of user requirements and business objectives. You’ll be working fully integrated with the visual and motion design team to deliver beautiful user experiences on spec and on Time. The work you design will be used by millions of people worldwide. You will deliver across a range of sectors including mobile, consumer electronics, fashion, medical and finance.
Main Duties & Responsibilities
Project & team management
• To be responsible with your team for estimates and delivery of the project UX components
• To interface with clients and stakeholders both with the project producer and directly
• To understand client’s complex organisational structures and to act accordingly
• To present concepts and ideas to clients of all levels
• To lead workshops, research and testing sessions with stakeholders
• To be aware of and mitigate project risk
Senior level requirement
• To act as a team and company UX lead
• To mentor Junior Interaction Designers in various aspects of their role
• To represent the company in thought leadership at conferences and workshops
Design documentation expected
• Personas, User Scenarios, User stories, Concepts, Specifications documents (Sketches,
Wireframes, Flows) – showing excellent attention to detail in all your documentation
• Research reports: Contextual inquiry, Task Analysis, Competitor analysis, Usability testing
• Prototypes – working with visual and motion designers and technical delivery teams to
produce prototypes of varying fidelity, and knowing how much time to invest in each (or
even better produce them)
• Understandable presentation documents for non-technical stakeholders
Professional Experience Requirements
Must have…
• Expert knowledge of user centered design, usability principles and techniques
• Agency-side user experience background
• Client-side experience for a technology brand
• Device oriented UX design
• Working with visual design teams comprising of visual and motion designers
• Working with technical delivery teams to solve technical & logical issues on UI design
• Visualising concepts to demonstrate ideas
• Experience working within Agile/SCRUM process
Nice to have…
• Multi and cross-platform design experience
• Experience in interaction design for mobile
• Mobile app project experience
• TV and IPTV UX experience
• Finance sector experience
• Experience leading interaction design teams
The tools they use
• Design Tools: OmniGraffle, Illustrator, Photoshop, Flash, Axure, After Effects
• Project Management Tools: Basecamp, Unfuddle, Jira
Character Requirements
• You have passion and hunger
• Detail oriented, well organised and self motivated
• Excellent communication/presentation ability, capable of inspiring both colleagues & clients
• You are outgoing, personable, sociable and easy going
• You are open to criticism from your team to benefit project development and understanding
• You are always ready to learn and to share knowledge
• You can deal with pressure and can work in a fast paced environment
October, 2010
Salary: Up to £50,000 dependent on experience
Benefits: Pension after 1 year of service.
Health after 3 months of service
If you would like the opportunity to work for a fun exciting faced paced studio please send your details to David@abrs.com or call me on 01491411020 – 07909223518 for further details
In class last week we discussed why designers draw and drawing/thinking methods for example SCAMPER.
We remembered that during the project work 1. keep all drawings A3, number the pages, work prolifically (quantity matters) 3. define and modify the brief.
In class today we will work through examples of the principles in design of: Time, Totality and Value
We will also discuss the Interative Design Waterfall.
The start up
The business start up situation is simple
Ideally the amount of time between Start up and Sell stuff should be as short as possible. There nearly is always a gap. Funding is often required to bridge the gap.
To minimise the gap you should know:
Tech start up’s often don’t know:
Funding is required while the start up figures these things out. Risky!
It is clear that a business makes stuff for sale: That pre-supposes that:
In many tech start ups those pre suppositions cannot be made. Even riskier!
In start up cases where being able to sell the stuff is a dead certainty the start up owners simply go to bank and get a loan using their houses or their parents houses as a guarantee.
If however as is the case in some start ups, the stuff may not work, the customer may not exist yet and the method of reaching the customer is unclear then it is clear that the risk is too big to use your parent’s house as collateral. For example: Twitter. This is where venture capitalists, business angels and other investors come in. Nothing to worry about, it just is what it is!…..
What is a customer? A customer is someone who gives you money in exchange for products or services. How can you increase the amount of money customer send you?
Sometimes, the end user is the customer, other times not. In the case of a theatre this is true. It is also true for a gallery or a shop and it is not the case very often for a farmer. It is important to understand the “value chain” that exists between the originator and the end user and where your role is in that “value chain”.
Assignment 1
No matter where you are in the development of your business a list of your customers can be a good way to understand the business and how to grow it. Sounds simple ! Write a spreadsheet list of your (potential and/or existing) customers. Looking at each customer describe how you may be able to increase sales to that customer.
WTF is an elavator pitch? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elevator_pitch
10 top tips http://www.readwriteweb.com/start/2010/04/the-art-of-the-elevator-pitch-10-great-tips.php
12 top tips http://www.elevator–pitch.com/
elavotor pitch 101 http://www.elevatorpitchessentials.com/essays/ElevatorPitch.html
Anto’s 5 point elavator pitch guides:
Additional guidelines: In general measure everything, quantify everything. How many of them are there, how long does it take to build one, how much does it cost, how many do they need, how much is it worth, how many people will buy it. Don’t state things, ask questions? What is the value of your proposition to the customer, understand their point of view.
Please prepare well but dont get uptight about this assignment. Its a good skill, but all the good goes out of it if it becomes a stress point.
Sales
Believe in this:
Sales are essential to build a company (sounds obvious?)
Sales as a customer driven culture: Deliver value and success to customers
Do you know what you are talking about? Go over the last written assignment that you wrote about your project. Are there any numbers in it?
Where is the pain? Sell me this pen! Answers
Guideline 1.
In general measure everything, quantify everything.
How many of them are there, how long does it take to build one, how much does it cost, how many do they need, how much is it worth, how many people will buy it.
Guideline 2
Don’t state things, ask questions?
Guideline 3
What is the value of your proposition to the customer, understand their point of view.
Making a good Elevator Pitch
In Ireland the Entrepreneur has historically had a bit of a bad name. In the Pogue’s song ‘Navigator’ the emotional pivot point is on the word Entrepreneur as Irish emigrants are exploited by (probably other Irish) Entrepreneurs as the infrastructure of the other country was put in place.
The canals and the bridges, the embankments and cuts,
They blasted and dug with their sweat and their guts
They never drank water but whiskey by pints
And the shanty towns rang with their songs and their fights.
Navigator, navigator rise up and be strong
The morning is here and there’s work to be done.
Take your pick and your shovel and the bold dynamite
For to shift a few tons of this earthly delight
Yes to shift a few tons of this earthly delight.
They died in their hundreds with no sign to mark where
Save the brass in the pocket of the entrepreneur.
By landslide and rockblast they got buried so deep
That in death if not life they’ll have peace while they sleep.
Navigator, navigator rise up and be strong
The morning is here and there’s work to be done.
Take your pick and your shovel and the bold dynamite
For to shift a few tons of this earthly delight
Yes to shift a few tons of this earthly delight.
Their mark on this land is still seen and still laid
The way for a commerce where vast fortunes were made
The supply of an empire where the sun never set
Which is now deep in darkness, but the railway’s there yet.
Navigator, navigator rise up and be strong
The morning is here and there’s work to be done.
Take your pick and your shovel and the bold dynamite
For to shift a few tons of this earthly delight
Yes to shift a few tons of this earthly delight.
I wonder is there a part in the Irish psyche that is set against Entrepreneurship? If there is it must be pretty deep because I am an Entrepreneur and even I have a bit of bad feeling about Entrepreneurs.
Didn’t the settled Irish in America most cruelly exploit their countrymen who had just arrived? Duffy’s Cut, for example, is a story of murder of Irish workers because they were suspected of having Cholera. But Patrick Duffy hired then for near nothing and put them to work digging. They died like so many others building America in employment more like slavery under the control of Irish Entrepreneurs.
Perhaps it is just that the Irish have been oppressed forever, in employment or impoverished and out of employment. It seems that there are few great Irish Entrepreneurs and when we have one, they turn out to be bad. More often the Entrepreneur was the Englishman or American whose company employed the Irish once we had emigrated.
In Derry many of the cities greatest Shirt Industry Entrepreneurs were of Scottish descent, not Irish. The Irish were the ones working in the factory, not the owners.
Recently the history of entrepreneur’s has not been great either: Entrepreneur developers are largely to blame for the economic meltdown of the Celtic Tiger. Having bankrupt Ireland in mad speculation they now escape to the UK to avoid Irish bankruptcy laws. When they get through the courts in Britain they come back and buy mansions.
The Shirt Factory Horn – courtesy of BBC Northern Ireland
The worker is more respected. Even today, Entrepreneurs such as Denis O Brien, Michael O Leary are treated with some suspicion. Builder developers, people who have tried and lost are not particularly liked. Listening to the news about the collapse of the Celtic Tiger it seems like the ordinary honest worker has been robbed again.
Faced with a lack of industry in Ireland successive governments have sought inward investment. There is a sense that a job in a big respectable American/German/Japanese/English company is as good as it gets. On occasion this strategy has been brilliantly successful.
I wonder if because of the success of Inward investment projects is the idea of the entrepreneur not being one of ‘us’ is re-enforced?
There was period of super confidence when being Irish and being an entrepreneur were almost the same thing. In 1998 and again in 2002 tech start-ups in particular seemed to flourish.
Class task: Name four Irish Entrepreneurs
(Back to contents)