spatial experience: self assessment.

i... don't know what to think about spatial experience. i've really struggled to wrap my mind around trying to figure out even what kind of thinking it requires from me, if that makes sense. it's as though i'm not quite certain how to frame the problem to begin to figure out how to answer it (which sounds a little melodramatic, but not entirely incorrect).

michael and i had a successful and fairly well-balanced partnership for the first project, beginning with an exciting and outlandish concept and then working hard to justify its artful impracticality across a wide breadth of installations and purposes. it was very much a learning experience, particularly the process of 'programming the space,' a task that seemed to endlessly telescope in and out of distance and complexity. the limitation of a single scenario helped tremendously in alleviating the overwhelming nature of determining every piece of wayfinding in and around every building on campus, reducing it to a representative few.

now, i'm excited to be working with abby carr for the first time, on an interesting lens through which to view dieter rams's ten principles of good design in an exhibition space.

week six: wireframes

this week has been wireframing. i didn't get as much done as i would have liked (all of it completed would have been preferable) but i have this scenario wireframed which includes the registration with the community, so the others should be much shorter. 

the following scenario looks at two different people and how they connect. this starts with isabel, my first persona, who is about to go off to college far away from her boyfriend. she happens upon the apart together website, the homepage of which is a daily survey question about users' relationships. these may be factual/numerical or more poetic (how often do you call vs. what would be your perfect future?) but also allows for the possibility of collecting and displaying statistical data. a new user trying to answer one of the questions is prompted to sign up.

isabel signs up.

she's asked to provide basic information about herself and her relationship so that she can be searched and matched with people with similar experiences, should she so desire. this information will populate her profile.

after providing her profile content, she is presented with some basic links to either set up her account or jump in to using the site.

she joined the site to ask questions and get advice, so she asks a question. a post is automatically tagged as a question if it contains a question mark, and keywords are pulled into the tags as well. isabel could add other tags of her own, if she wants. she can also list what feelings she associates with her question, which help her post find its place in a mood-map, an extra way of navigating content.

isabel's scenario is over. she closes her laptop and goes to bed after posting her question.

next, we have maggie, an established user. she signs on and is presented with the day's questions.

declining to answer at the moment, she goes to the stream, which displays all the recent content (stories, questions, advice, mixtape playlists, photos, videos...) in tiles or in a list. she sees a question from a little while ago about high school sweethearts, something she feels like she knows a lot about.

maggie has the option of responding to the question in text, attaching a song through spotify, loving the post, or viewing related posts. she clicks isabel's photo to visit her profile instead.

the profile has a place for a single profile image as well as an image of the couple. information appears about both the user and their relationship. the posts and answers they have added show up. maggie has the option to simply message her, or offer to mentor her, as isabel indicated that was something she wanted when she was signing up.

maggie offers to help support izzie through the rough transition of college and keep in touch, offering advice and her own experience to somebody who wants it.

spatial: concepting and programming.

concept:

abby carr and i brainstormed on this for quite a while. we wanted to come up with something really original and unique to relate to dieter rams' 10 principles for good design, so we started throwing out ideas. 

one thing led to another, and all of a sudden we were talking about sex toys. i know, right? it started off as a joke, but the longer we talked about it, we found ourselves more and more fascinated by the idea of artifacts designed for pleasure—not just sex toys, but things like playground equipment and children's toys. moreover, we found that there's actually quite a huge market for these well-designed "artifacts of pleasure," as we began to call them, and that most of them aligned with rams' ideas regarding participatory design and usefulness.

so, we give you... 

"artifacts of pleasure"

programming/game plan:

we spent some time working on how we want visitors to move through the space and roughly worked out what content each gallery would hold. we want this to be a really interactive and participatory experience, so we've left plenty of open space and created various opportunities for movement and play. and yes, that is a slide.

we still have yet to work out our exact content (pending concept approval), but we're both very excited about putting a new spin on rams' 10 principles by showcasing these "artifacts of pleasure."