PLANNING TOOLS FOR INTERACTION

Over the past four weeks we have been doing in class exercises to help with our understanding of Interactive Design and its processes.

Each week we were given a brief surrounding the process of making toast. Firstly we had to design a Flowchart then a Storyboard lastly we created a user persona and displayed their characteristics in a Mood Board. My examples are as follows:

FLOWCHART:

Flowcharts are a great way to Illustrate visually a method or procedure of doing something where the result entails solving a problem. It is a tool to assists program designers in fabricating the final program or interactive. Here is an example of a flowchart demonstrating effective toast making.

STORYBOARD:

Storyboards are a series of images displayed in order for the purpose of previsualizing an animations, motion graphics, screen based graphics etc. Here are three of the steps from my instructions on making toast displayed in a storyboard format. Storyboards are a good way to visualize something and distinguish potential problems before they occur. They often include the use of arrows, instructions indicating movement, key points, direction and a sense of shot eg. long, short shot.

Step #3: Plug in toaster

Step #4 Set temperature dial

Step #5 Put bread in toaster

MOOD BOARD:

The Glass Wall Homepage Redesign 2002 explains Mood boards as a, "very basic but highly effective tool. They work as an extension of persona's, creating and immediate, understandable, visual reference for each one".

This Mood Board is representative of the persona Mandy Lang.

Mandy is a 29 year old female flight attendant who loves traveling and meeting new people. She is constantly shopping in different parts of the world which has her well informed of high fashion brands. She also has a love for fine dinning and knows all the trendy bars to go to. When she can she loves to sit back and enjoy a little bit of television; her favorite show is the Simpson's. As she is never in one place at one time Mandy finds it difficult to hold a steady relationship however she is attractive and always has plenty of new friendships arising. Mandy is fairly computer literate however finds little time to use the Internet constantly. She does however keep up to date with her friend life's around the world via facebook. Not to Mandy's liking the airline she works for has stopped paying for Mandy's breakfast. As she has always eaten outside the home, she confronted with the daring task of learning how to make toast.

Good luck Mandy!