Week 5 presentation: developing your digital media project

Creating a digital media project can be a complex process which involves various stages of research and development, from market and user research, to technical exploration, product development, user testing, design development and finally product release.

To help streamline this process, careful project planning and management is key, here we will begin to introduce some tools and strategies for ways to develop your own digital media project.

Remember that you might develop a speculative project which is highly experimental, in which case you will not be expected to produce a fully functioning product but rather an effective mockup or prototype of your idea.

Christian Bale - American Psycho https-//wrightoncomm.com/an-introduction-to-design-thinking/

To begin, let’s ask a simple question: What is a digital artefact?

Well, it can be many things, we’ll introduce some definitions to help narrow it down but for the purpose of this project: YOU will decide what the parameters of the project are, what platform it will exist on, who the users are, who contributes to it.

Remembering that for this course your digital artefact could be an ambitious, speculative project which is presented as a mockup or prototype!

https-//www.ideou.com/blogs/inspiration/what-is-design-thinking?

Broadly speaking a digital artefact would: 1) include several elements – think of it as a series of media elements around a topic/subject 2) exist in public, which could mean it is availiable online, it could be an application or a digital publication. It might exist within it’s own site or be distributed via existing platforms ie.

Facebook, pinterest, instagram, youtube, etc.

3) have a social function – it should respond to a need – it should be useful or meaningful for an audience – speak to them, understand them and what they need: it should test content and prototype with users, change and adjust based on feedback.

Your artefact could function by:

1) make knowledge public for other people to engage with

3)

2) explore new ground, reveal something new – either information or technology or both

make a platform to build a community or bring people together online

Before pitching your digital artefact, you need to have some idea who your intended audience or users are/will be:

“if you aim at everybody, you will connect with nobody” So you could start by: identifying intended audience/users, what their needs and interests are, how they interact with technology – if you use a platform, you need to make sure that platform is used by your audience or intended users.

Now is the stage of your project to dive deep and undertake research.

Scope out your idea, its context, the stakeholders, and try and understand/empathise with the ‘intended’ audience or users.

You may want to impliment Design Thinking as a methodology to begin your project. It is a method of dealing with complex ill-defined problems through a human focused approach.

Design Thinking is a way of clearly describing a methodology that many of us do instinctively, by understanding the human needs involved in any project and re-framing the ‘problem’ at hand in human-centric ways.

The methodology is fed by creating many ideas through simple but effective techniques such as brainstorming, and by adopting a hands-on approach in prototyping and testing.

PROTOTYPE

IDEATE

Build real, tactile representations for a range of your ideas.

Generate a range of crazy, creative ideas.

There are slightly different approaches to this methodology, some involving 5 or 7 different stages, but all approaches follow the same, human-centered approach to dealing with complex problems.

EXPLORE

EMPATHIZE

DEFINE

UN D E RSTA N D

IDEATE

PROTOTYPE

E X P L ORE

TEST

IMPLEMENT

MATER IALIZE

DESIGN THINKING 101 NNGROUP.COM

Empathise, Define (the problem), Ideate, Prototype, and Test.

One of the main benefits of the five-stage (or seven-stage) model is the way in which knowledge acquired at the later stages can feedback to earlier stages. Information is continually used both to inform the understanding of the problem and solution spaces, and to redefine the problem(s).

U

N

IZ AL

RI TE MA

TEST

DEFINE

Return to your users for feedback.

Combine all your research and observe where your users’ problems exist.

PROTOTYPE

IDEATE

Build real, tactile representations for a range of your ideas.

Generate a range of crazy, creative ideas.

EXPLORE

ND

Conduct research to develop an understanding of your users.

TA

Put the vision into effect.

RS

EMPATHIZE

E

E

D

IMPLEMENT

Empathise, The first stage of the Design Thinking process is to gain an understanding of the problem you are trying to solve from the perspective of the intended user/audience. This involves undertaking basic qualitative research processes such as: consulting with specialists to understand more about the area of concern; observing, listening and speaking with people/users to understand their experiences and frustrations; immersing yourself in the context of your project and the people involved so you can gain a deeper personal understanding of the issues surrounding the problem.

https-//www.nytimes.com/2018/12/10/well/live/how-to-foster-empathy-in-children Illustration: Gracia Lam

Define, During this stage, you collect and organise all the information you have gathered through observation, listening and interview. This is where you will analyse your observations and synthesise them in order to identify and define the core problems at hand.

Ideas (ideate), This stage is open and free-flowing, it’s important to try and not self-censor and allow ideas to develop organically.

There are many possible techniques that can help you develop new ideas such as Brainstorm, Brainwrite, Worst Possible Idea. Brainstorm and Worst Possible Idea sessions are typically used to stimulate free thinking and to expand the problem space.

Image: https-//www.engagingpresence.com/

Prototype, This is an experimental phase, and the aim is to identify the best possible solution for each of the problems identified during the first three stages.

The solutions are implemented within the prototypes, and, one by one, they are investigated and either accepted, improved and re-examined, or rejected on the basis of the users’ experiences.

Image: www.mockplus.com/sample/post/airbnb

Test, Although testing is the final stage of the 5-stage design thinking model, this is a non-linear and iterative process, the results generated during the testing phase are often used to redefine one or more problems and inform the understanding of the users, the conditions of use, how people think, behave, and feel, and to empathise.

Image: https-//www.ranker.com/list/people-in-old-medical-devices/ amandasedlakhevener- freckle removal 1930

Allow yourself to be taken through various stages of FOCUS and FLARE, where ideas are refined and targeted during focus and then allowed to expand and be highly speculative during flares. This is an iterative process so don’t put expectations on yourself that you will encounter your best idea straight up, allow yourself to get lost in the process, refocus and get lost again – you will discover new pathways this way.

Image: https-//designthinkingformuseums.net/2017/10/13/five-mistakes-of-beginning-design-thinkers/.png

EMPATHY is the place to start.

As an example, in it’s early days as a company, Google defined it’s ‘10 Things Philosophy’ which would help it’s direction as a technology company and focus its product development. Number 1 on the list was and still is: (1) Focus on the user and all else will follow.

Since the beginning, we’ve focused on providing the best user experience possible. Whether we’re designing a new Internet browser or a new tweak to the look of the homepage, we take great care to ensure that they will ultimately serve you, rather than our own internal goal or bottom line. Our homepage interface is clear and simple, and pages load instantly. Placement in search results is never sold to anyone, and advertising is not only clearly marked as such, it offers relevant content and is not distracting.

And when we build new tools and applications, we believe they should work so well you don’t have to consider how they might have been designed differently.

Image: https-//wrightoncomm.com/an-introduction-to-design-thinking/