More DETECTr Screens

After a few rounds of user testing in the last couple weeks, I’ve now arrived at that point where my deadline is fast approaching and I need to remind myself to keep moving forward in an agile manner. The promo isn’t going to be near completion, but then again, this project has surprised me in its scope and I like it! I’ll continue to work on DETECTr thru spring break. By the time spring quarter begins, I should have a more cohesive update complete with promo video.

In the meantime enjoy some perspective prototypes:

DETECTr Mock

In the last couple weeks I’ve been getting lost and possibly carried away with the research behind DETECTr. I’m no scientist, but I should’ve known that the concept of ionizing radiation is a complicated one. I’ve poured over article after article, sifted through countless wikipedia entries and gave myself a headache trying to figure out conversion tables for radiation measurement units. I had to take a step back.

It’s not that I’m not interested, on the contrary, I’m actually nerding out here; which knowing me can be a problem in it’s own right. I just want to do this right (or as close to correct as my limited knowledge on the subject can get me).

Anyways, I took a break, drank some wine and made a couple screens. Here’s a little teaser from my app-controlled-geiger counter.

 

Sprint One: Geiger Counter App

Since the 2010 earthquake in Japan and subsequent meltdown of the Fukushima Nuclear Power Plant, there has been a lot of buzz regarding radiation contamination. In Japan, there is a growing concern over just what is safe and what is  not. With no government agency or corporation gathering the much needed data on hotspots and contaminated zones, the burden falls upon the people. Now there’s already this organization: Safecast. They make diy Geiger Counters, tutorials and operate a crowdsourced accumulation of data on their website. While this provides a much needed service, it relies on the accuracy and tenacity of its users to manually upload all data acquired by their equipment to the safecast website. I wanted to create something simpler, easier to use, understand yet still a robust and reliable tool.

Enter RadApp (tentative title). It’s main screen will consists of an easy to read graphical interface with readouts for not just nearby radiation, but also your accumulated dosage based on how long and how much ionized radiation the user has encountered since they began metering. The app also needs to have a pain free implementation of the data sharing option. Users must be presented with an easy to understand and unobtrusive method for uploading and accessing readings all within the app itself.

There’s a lot of potential here and I’m excited to start this project. I only fear, it may be a bit much to cram into a few weeks.

AE: Kinetic Balls

In preparation for my final project, I’ve been experimenting with the Newton Plugin in After Effects. This time around I decided to play with collision , the transference of energy and magnetism. The result is this not perfect, but close emulation of the effect of gravity within a 2d environment.

 

I am beginning to draft assets for my final deliverable which will be a full length music video for a local artist. The video will be composed almost entirely within After Effects and will primarily be in 2d. In the mean time I intend to familiarize myself with the one remaining component to this final composition; In the next video I will be experimenting with sound keying.

Here’s an early version of the protagonist from the upcoming music video “Diskull” by Phædra:

AE: Newton Fun

AE tutorial: Trapcode

Jumped head first into tutorials last night. Messed around with different settings and effects and eventually focused enough to follow along with this: http://www.redgiant.com/videos/getting-started/item/346/

After a couple hours of fumbling around in render modes, I managed to extrude the text a bit for some 3d goodness. Found a nice hi-rez space scape image and threw that in for some context.

AE Tutorial Binging

After a week of watching After Effects Tutorial, I’m just about done with the first set of chapters, but have only begun to scratch the surface.

I had a few technical difficulties with my version of After Effects not wanting to work with a fresh install of OS X Mavericks. After a set of CC updates I’m back in the driver’s seat.

I’ve decided to post my first ever attempt at creating something dynamic in After Effects. It’s not much, but it should serve as a starting point and measurement of progress further on down the road.

The wrench in the gears

We were given the details of a new assignment last week in my WordPress class. Suffice it to say that building a Blogazine for Special Topics would be a little pre-emptive and redundant. Sooooo, instead I’m switching gears and quarters. Originally I intended to work on the Blogazine during the first 2 quarters of the year and save the last quarter for some After Effects work. Now because of this new project, I’m reversing the process; pushing the website out to the final 2 quarters and starting After-Effects training now.

More Research

I spent almost all of last night reading through and soaking in the polished blogazine design and eloquent copy that is http://dustincurtis.com/. The guy has one of the most engaging blogs I’ve read in a long time. Part of that is due to the way it’s presented.

Dustin uniquely crafts each post/article as if it was going to print. It makes sense, he has a background in print publication. Combined with a well developed, concise and cohesive writing style backed by seriously interesting and relevant topics makes for an incredibly addictive experience. He has since moved on to a traditional static blog format at a different url (http://dcurt.is/) for the sake of rapid updates and faster posts, but his original layout remains up and contains enough content to keep you busy for some time.

Dustin’s layout style is something I feel has been severely overlooked in the past and is just now becoming a topic of attention (see Smashing’s ‘Death of a Blog Post‘). And it goes without saying that attention to detail goes a long way into crafting a unique and engaging user experience. It may be more work, but it’s worth it.

I’ve been looking for an excuse to get into storytelling design; one-of-a-kind dynamic scrolling environments possibly utilizing parallax and other scripted events. And with news of a new project hitting soon in another class that focuses on that very subject, I may have to re-evaluate my project timeline and adjust/switch accordingly.

Roll with the punches.

Stay tuned.

Branding Research

Starting this week, I will begin the comparative process of combing the web for competitors and evaluating their design approaches, content delivery and overall presence. The key is to get a better understanding of the current environment I will be up against and fortify my web presence with the best practices deemed most suitable for employment, but also to gain perspective on how to set my brand apart within this blog/editorial/lifestyle-niche landscape.

The Juvenilia

The Juvenilia embodies a certain youth-centric playfulness that’s not lacking on interesting content and well written copy. They’re focus encompasses nearly every medium I foresee covering and, as far as pure content is concerned; it’s as close a match as any. Delivery, however is another story.

They seem to be between a radical change in architecture and are currently offering an archive of blog posts containing all of their various artistic exploits over the years as well as an issuu.com flash controlled e-pub view of their first printed publication. The first issue is a sort of “best of” leftovers of their old web-format ways. Again, this is familiar territory for me being that the print version of my zine will follow a similar approach. Though that is the only similarity I can draw at this time. The site is aggregated by the usual navigation elements, but divided in it’s approach. Nearly all content is posted within the blog where it’s then categorized by medium. Where as the Issues section tries to break down the physical publication by taking the user off-site to a third party–No bueno.

Overall The Juvenilia is similar in content approach, but they’re content delivery is split in two different directions (at this time) and makes for a bipolar viewing experience. Integrating print and web into the same delivery system has it’s caveats, but it can be done with the proper understanding of each forms strengths and weaknesses and focusing both within their respective boundaries. I feel having a solid understanding of the end product will inevitably lend to the proper placement and architecture of the site both from a user experience perspective and a design forward one.

I will edit this post with more site research to come. Weeeeeeeee