Marcelo Rodrigues 1251115
01.INTRODUCTION
01.Science Without Borders is a programme that aims to promote the consolidation, expansion and internationalization of brazilian science and technology, innovation and competitivity through academic exchange and international mobility. The initiative comes from the joint effort of the Ministries of Science, Technology and Innovation (MCTI) and the Ministry of Education (MEC), through their respective funding institutions – CNPq and Capes –, and the MEC Departments of Higher Education and Technological Education.
The project involves the use of up to 101,000 scholarships in four years to promote exchange, in a way that undergraduate and postgraduate students study and do internships abroad in order to have contact with competitive educational systems regarding technology and innovation. Besides, it aims to attract foreign researchers who want to settle in Brazil orestablish partnerships with brazilian researchers within the priority areas defined by the Programme, as well as creating opportunities for researchers in companies to receive specialized training abroad. The LAB Project is a collaborative platform created by the brazilian students of the Science Without Borders programme in the School of Arts and Digital Industries (ADI) at University of East London (UEL). The contents of the platform are composed by a collection of works that show the different experiences of the students in the Creative Industries area during their exchange programme in London. Themes related to the creative industry such as photography, arts, fashion, design, journalism, audiovisual and other, besides including relevant personal experiences of these students in London.
02.THE PROJECT
02.Through this platform, which is a blog (Tumblr), the students are going to have the opportunity to show their academic, professional or independent work. A curator team made up of students participating in the project is going to work to select the projects and avoid spams, as well as post only the things that are related to the areas of interest of the group. This same team is going to be responsible for creating the visual identity of the blog, posting and monitoring and analysing online access. This project aims mainly to valorize the courses within the area of Creative Industries, which no longer are part of the Science Without Borders programme. Some other goals are: • Demonstrate the importance of investing in the academic education of students in the Creative Industries to the economic development of Brazil.
• Attract brazilian university students interested in participating in the Science Without Borders programme in London, through the presentation of the current exchange students experiences, from their academic routine to the cultural environment, besides showing the differences between London and Brazil, both academically and regarding lifestyle.
• Develop the Creative Industries in Brazil through valorization and remaining of the related areas in the Science Without Borders exchange programme. • Document and show online the work and projects accomplished by the brazilian students in the Science Without Borders programme in the ADI School at UEL.
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The blog works by putting up projects accomplished by brazilian exchange students within the ADI School at UEL, both participating actively or not in the blog project. The projects should be submitted by the students in any way they see fit, as long as it’s according to the project assumptions, such as videos, photos, interviews, essays.After that, the projects are going to go through examination by the curator team and afterwards the selected ones will be posted on the LAB Project blog. • All the content produced to the blog is voluntary and authored by the students themselves with no profitable intentions.
• The LAB Project is a multidisciplinary project, developed collaboratively, that should generate a very particular content, bearing in mind the rich experiences that academic exchange brings.
• The blog is going to use English as a main language, with possible translations to Brazilian Portuguese.
The main types of people the blog wishes to reach are: • Fellow students at UEL in the ADI School or not, to whom we want to show the results we have accomplished during our short time in London, to give them a better understanding of the purpose of this exchange programme to the areas of Creative Industries. • Brazilian university students within the Creative Industries areas, with no restriction of age or social status, interested in taking part in the Science Without Borders programme in London. • Professional workers of the Creative Industries all around the world, by showing them the development of these subjects in Brazil. By engaging in the creation of this project, the students want to show how much they have evolved and accomplished when it comes to Creative Industries. This is important so that these creations are not forgotten or obscured, placing them where students can easily spread their work to the world. We believe that by creating a blog from scratch with its collaborative and peculiar features,we are going to have a platform to express ourselves through our experiences here, resulting in an very personal portrait of our whole exchange programme in London.
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03.OBJECTIVES
03.A blog is not only about content. It’s about the design itself. By building this blog from scratch, we will improve our understanding of how the design concepts we studied work in practice, in real products. As students from Interactive Media Design, we aim to practice the concepts of user experience, user centred design and all the design concepts we learned in our modules. We plan on running tests with users at each step, so we can build a product that respects what we learned and believe. This way, we’ll end this project with a larger knowledge of the experience of creating a product and working with a team.
04.USER CENTERED DESIGN METODOLOGY 04.Good design is not only about aesthetics, it also has to cover the user needs and expectations of the users. The best way to achieve this is incorporating the user into the design process, in other words, allow the user to give a feedback over each one of the stages of the creative process, from the early concept designs to the final product. This methodology is called user-centered design (UCD), which is, taking into account what the user needs and desires. This methodology is meant to facilitate a design of a product so it can be easy to use and also useful. There are many ways for designers to get this feedback from the users, usually the first step is to gather information about the focus group, what are their interests, their opinions about similar products and what they expect from them, this information can be acquired through interviews and questionnaires. For this project we applied some UCD techniques: questionnaires, interviews, personas and card sorting.
05.QUESTIONNAIRE
05.Questionnaires are used to get the user's response to a set of predetermined questions that are relevant to the project that is being developed and are good for generating statistical data. Questionnaires are often done online so a higher number of people can be reached, but it can also be sent via mail or even verbally. For this project we decided to do first a questionnaire with students from the creative area aged between 20 and 25 years old who are living both in Brazil and in London. The questionnaire was anonymous and focused on what websites related to the creative industries are accessed by the group and what kind of content they look for in them. With the questionnaire we were able to understand how frequently the websites were accessed, if people would like to contribute with it and also what they think that could be changed.
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MOST MENTIONED WEBSITES
1. Ideafixa (www.ideafixa.com) 2. Zupi (www.zupi.com.br) 3. Behance (www.behance.net) 4. Hypeness (www.hypeness.com.br) 5. Graphic Exchange (www.graphic-exchange.com) 6. Ffffound! (www.ffffound.com)
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MOST RESEARCHED CONTENT 1.Music 15% 2.Design 25% 3.Fine Arts 23% 4.Digital Midia 15% 5.Theatre 2% 6.Cinema 15% 7.Other 6%
ACCESS FREQUENCY
More than 5 times a week 54%
3 to 4 times a week 13%
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1 to 2 times a week 33%
We also asked if the users thought that the websites were easy to use and navigate, and despite the answers, some users still would make changes in them.
ARE THOSE WEBSITES EASY TO USE AND NAVIGATE?
No Yes
WOULD YOU CHANGE ANYTHING IN THEM?
“I think that those are the websites that I most access because it makes me feel more comfortable with the way that the content is organized, I don’t think that I would change any of them.”
“I would make the navigation shorter, in some of the websites I need to go to the next page or click on a lot of hyperlinks to get to the content that I want”
“I would like some of them to post more frequently. Regarding the navigation, most of them work very well.”
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06.INTERVIEWS
06.Interviews involve the interviewer talking to one participant at a time, in that way, it is possible to focus in exploring the points of view and opinions of a user in detail. Interviews are most often applied in early stages of a design process to gain a more complete understanding of the area that is being explored. Along with the first questionnaire, we decided that we should interview some students that are already living in London, and ask them questions regarding their opinion about the city and how they relate with it. We asked them what they liked and disliked to do in London and what they disliked about the city. We also asked them to go deeper by citing interesting stories that happened to them while in the city. This interview was important for us to get to know better our audience and was an important factor in the early stages of our research.
Name: Luciana Mayume Mitishita Age: 21 Course: Graphic design
Do you have any story that’s funny/ cool/interesting about the city? I actually do. One day I was in the tube with my friends and there was a magazine on the seat. Inside the magazine there was a scratching off lottery ticket. It hadn’t been scratched yet, so my friend started scratching it. It had three “tries”. She scratched the first one and we lost. So my other friend scratched the second one and we got the prize, £80,000. We were so happy, we started to hug each other and yell at the tube, it was a bit lame, but anyway, we just had won a lot of money. The last one was mine to scratch, do I scratched it and got £1,000,000. We were cheerful for three seconds until we realised that something was wrong. As we read what it was saying at the back of the ticket, we had not won anything. It was disappointing.
What do you most like to do in London? I think that going to gigs, going out with friends and enjoying the cultural programs that the city offers. What don’t you like about London? Let’s see, I hate bank station, and when the tube is too crowded. Sometimes tourists annoy me as well when there’s like a big group of them walking and they suddenly stop for no reason at all.
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Name: Pedro Henrique Silva Costa Age: 21 Course: Architecture
What don’t you like about London? When the climate changes so abruptly. And the tube not being open for 24h. Do you have any story that’s funny/ cool/interesting about the city? Not that I can remember right now, I’m afraid.
What do you most like to do in London? During the week and in the morning I like to go see the main touristic attractions and also places that are not on the list of tourist attractions. At night and on weekends I like to go out to parties and clubs. And studying, of course, since that’s what my country expects me to do.
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Name: Ingrid Cabral Age: 23 Course: Architecture and Urbanism
Do you have any story that’s funny/ cool/interesting about the city? Yeah, you know I said I like to get in abandoned places. I was by Battersea Power Station, it’s been deactivated for years, but this idea of the status of years back made me go to the entrance, which was closed because they are fixing everything to make that area a living complex, which I completely disagree. The Holi festival is going to be there, as a celebration to that place. Anyway, when I got to the side of the place, there was a cocktail going on for the apartments that are going to be built there, it was very posh and I was wearing a band t-shirt, denim trousers, a converse and my backpack. I go to the door and I was looking at the factory, since it’s so big, so a man approaches me and asks me if I was there for the cocktail, I said yes. So I got very near the factory, it was really nice. And wrong.
What do you most like to do in London? I like to visit places where people don’t usually go, like, abandoned buildings, for example. There was one time I tried to get in Millenium Mills, it’s a deactivated factory nerby UEL What don’t you like about London? I don’t like when people use the public space and leave trash on the floor, like in parks. They use the space, eat, drink and leave trash. For me it is like leaving trash in their own houses, getting it dirty and don’t even care about it. Public space is like a big house where we all live in.
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Name: Flávio Gomes da Silva Abrantes Age: 22 Course: Electrical Engineering and Administration
tube to open and got the first train home. I was at the jubilee line and to get to my house I have to go all the way east, so I have to change trains very near the last stop. Since I had just got out of a club I was a bit tired and drunk, so I fell asleep. When I woke up, I was at Queensbury, which is one of the last stops going West. I was a bit pissed off, but ok, I changed platforms and got the eastbound train again. Again, I fell asleep and woke up in Stratford, which is the last stop of the Jubilee line, that means that I had missed my stop again, so when I got the train again I went standing so I wouldnt fall asleep. When I finally tried to get off the train at my station, my oyster wouldn’t go through, it said “Seek assistance”. When I talked to the staff I had to pay a fine because I stayed too much in the tube.
What do you most like to do in London? Going to pubs and the variety of cultural events that are free. What don’t you like about London? I don’t like that the tube is only opened from 6AM to 1AM. In a city so big like london it should at least work between 5AM and 3AM. Do you have any story that’s funny/ cool/interesting about the city? Yeah, one day I went with some friends to Ministry of Sound, we got out of there at like 5AM so I waited for the
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07.After collecting the information about the focus group, the designers are able to create a profile that will represent the group, this profile is called persona. A persona is a collection of representative information, of both fictional and realistic details that focus on an accurate characterization of a certain group, however, depending on what is being developed, it is necessary to have more than one persona, since it is unlikely that only one will cover all the characteristics found in the group. Sometimes it is hard to observe why and how would a certain group of people use the product being developed, and because it represents a large group of users, it is easier and more effective to work with a persona than using real people.
07.PERSONAS
The main focus of the website being developed is the Brazilian students that are either willing to study in London or already are allocated in a university in the city, for that target group, three personas were created. The personas that were needed for the development of the website must have been Brazillian people that were somehow related to studying and living in London. The first persona is a 21 years old creative industry student that wants to study abroad in London and needs information about the city. The second persona is also a creative industry student but who is already living in London, this persona loves to go cultural events and knows everything that is going on with the city and is happily willing to contribute with the website. The third one is a engineering students who lives in London but does not know about cool/artsy places in London to go to but is interesting to find different places to hang out.
Name: Luisa Adegas Age: 21 Gender: Female Course: Advertising Interests: Fashion, Culture, Music, Clubbing City: Sao Paulo Profile: Luisa is a brazilian student who is interested in studying abroad. She is interested in moving to London because she thinks that it will be a great city to live in, however, she is not so sure about it and uses websites to know more about the city and then make a decision. Name: Anita Macedo Age: 22 Gender: Female Course: Graphic Design City: London Profile: Carrol is a brazilian student who is currently studying in London. Ever since she got there, she always had what to do and looked for new places in the city that were not tourist attractions, in fact, if you ask her something she doesn’t like, it’s gonna be tourists. Since she’s got so many good places to recommend, she feels like she wants to share it with people that are planning - or had just arrived - to live in London. Name: Jesse Blueman Age: 24 Gender: Male Course: Mechanical Engineering City: London Profile: Jesse is currently living in London but haven’t been to many places other than the tourist attractions and nearby pubs. He is interested in culture and music but he doesn’t know how to find trendy events to go to.
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08.CARD SORTING
08.Card sorting is a technique used to start a way to start developing a website’s structure. It is an inexpensive, quick and reliable method that is meant to generate an overall structure for a project and can give suggestions for menus and navigations. However, it will not result in a final structure and will not tell you what is wrong with the website, but it will help with future issues regarding the informational design phase. The process involves sorting a set cards labeled with pieces of content or functionality, into groups that make sense to users or participants. With the personas defined, we decided to start thinking about the layout of the website, and how it should be structured, for that purpose, we choose to start by doing the card sorting method. Chosen based on the personas, we selected 5 users to take part of the test, each one of them received a set of Post-it notes with predetermined sections for the website, however, they could create new sections if they wanted. It was possible to notice that, even with different structures, some elements remained at similar spots on the layout. With the card sorting results in hand, we started to make an analysis comparing them to the most mentioned websites on the questionnaire. During the analysis we noticed similarities not only between websites mentioned on the questionnaire but also in the card sorting results.
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09.WIREFRAME
08.Wireframing is considered one of the most important phases for the creation of a website, the wireframe will be the first representation of the actual layout, will help the designers see how the information will be disposed in the website and how the navigation inside it will work.It primarily allows the designer to define the information hierarchy of the website, making it easier to plan the layout according to how you they want the user to process the information. The wireframe also helps the designers to locate problems related with the layout and navigation of the website, since it can be given to users to be tested. Based on the analysis of the card sorting results and cited websites we were able to create the first wireframe for the layout of the website. The test results showed us that the users prefer the logo of the website being on the top of the page, while the search tool in the top right corner of the page. All of the users would also prefer all the posts of the website being close together in the middle. The place and order of the menu varied from all of the users. With that in mind the wireframes were created. We showed it to some users for them to give us feedback on it so we could improve our wireframe before starting the final layout.
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LOGO
ABOUT US TRAVEL ART MUSIC
POST
ABOUT
FOOD CLUBS ETC
SEARCH
POST
CONNECT
POST
With the feedback given by the users, we started making changes on the wireframe. This changes would help us to improve the website, for example, one of the users said that we should assign one colour for each section of the website.
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LOGO
ABOUT US
TRAVEL
ART
MUSIC
FOOD
CLUBS
ETC
SEARCH
POST
POST
ABOUT
POST
POST
CONNECT
final wireframe
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10.FINAL LAYOUT
10.The final layout is the result of all the researches that were done until this point, the questionnaire along with the interview, helped us knowing better the users who will access the website and by knowing what they liked to do in London, it also helped us to shape the contents of the website as well. They also helped to gather information about many different websites that have similarities with the one that we wanted to create, those websites helped us to collect information about what kind of elements should be part of our layout. Despite being very useful
helping us to better define our focus group, creating the personas was a difficult task, since gathering all the characteristics from many different kinds of people in one persona is risky, because you could end up leaving some important characteristics from the group out of the persona, however, by creating more than one persona, this kind of problem occur less often. The three personas created represent our target audience and the people that will most likely access the website. Another tool that was used was the card sorting process which gave us
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the first insight on how the website should look, it was the first time that the users really showed us what they would like the site to look like, it also helped us to define where some of the website elements should be placed. The card sorting results, plus the websites mentioned on the questionnaire, gave us enough information to start building our first wireframe, which was the starting point towards the final layout, however, we still wanted to make sure that the website would meet the user's needs and expectations. Upon having the first wireframe done, we showed it to some users, expecting that they could give
us feedback over it, however some of them said that the layout was good, other users thought that it could have some changes, although some users pointed really good changes that could be done, we needed to take extra care, because some of them could end up changing the entire layout. With the alterations on the wireframe complete, we decided that we were able to create the final layout The website will change some of his features to match the colour of the session that the user is in.. The website can be accessed at: www.thelabproject.tumblr.com
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11.CONCLUSION
11.Science Without Borders was a very good opportunity for me and I was able to learn a lot, and also hope to learn more during the time I have left at UEL. Doing this project with other students from different areas of the creative industry helped me understand how those areas can be, in some way, connected and how they can relate to one another. Since it was a very big group of people doing the project, I came across some problems, learned a lot about group work and also about deadlines: people sometimes would need my work to get things working for them, and in the same way I would also need a piece of their part to proceed with my project, overall it was a big collaboration between people. Despite those problems, I have learned that if I had any kind difficult during my project, I could always ask for help to one of the group members, those kind of situations made me realize that there is always something new to learn. With this project I could apply some main points of what I learned during the first semester and it was a nice way to do something real and not just a fictional student project. This project and also the first semester in the university made me improve not only my design skills, but also my english language which was essential for my stay here. I started to give more attention to the design process as a whole, not only focusing on the aesthetics, my research skills improved greatly, since my course back in Brazil is more practical than research focused, and I hope that this next semester will bring me new things to learn and experience.
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