Major Project Background taken from http://deco1800.uqcloud.net (2/9/16)
"The National Library of Australia maintains a web-based portal, Trove (http://trove.nla.gov.au/), that hosts & links to content by and for Australians. The content available through Trove is wide-ranging and falls under many categories – books, newspaper articles, photographs, people, audio, maps etc. Trove acts as a “Google”, if you like, of content from it’s own digital archives and those of other Australian organisations – libraries, museums, research institutions etc. Trove is the portal to a vast array of content for a vast array of interests & purposes. The problem with this is that it becomes cumbersome to search and filter the resources available.
For this project, consider yourself to be a design & development consultancy that has been engaged by the National Library of Australia. The NLA are looking for proposals that highlight, reveal, focus the content available through Trove. They want something that goes beyond the simple search paradigm that they currently have and that sheds light on rarely visited corners of Trove. They are NOT asking for a new search interface but for dynamic interfaces that focus on highlighting, connecting & enriching areas of content in the archive. Concepts should consider the breadth & depth and occasional weirdness of the content returned through searching the archive.
Applications can be purposeful or playful, serious or silly, niche or general – the key is for it to be engaging, to invite the users to connect with & explore the archive content through your ideas."
The project background then continues to explain further the major project in detail including the three different parts. From my own understanding of reading the brief, I am to work with others to design a dynamic interface that offers an engaging way to view and search the information using the Trove website. I am not completely sure of any ideas as of yet, however I am sure that through further thought, there will be a lot that are appropriate to choose from.
Looking through past projects on the DECO1800 site, there are a few good ideas that offer further insight into the purpose of our designs. There is a site - History Chains - that is dedicated to every individual user's research projects into history where they can pin, comment and pin each part of data from Trove. It is an intelligent way to introduce research in a fun and easy way. One of my favourite adaptions of the information from Trove was a game similar to the 4 pics 1 word game app called Picture Perfect. The game is based on categories based on Australia such as historical figures, flora, fauna, etc. where the users must guess what the four pictures mean and submit their answers. Then they are able to see their scores after. I find that an example of a fun concept and can be engaging to many different age groups and help assist the learning of Australian culture (historical and environmental factors).
I find it that these sites all represent the concept of 'Design' of which we discussed in our Week 2 lecture. Design can be many things, including:
- A creation that serves purpose and functionality
- Builds on ideas of others
- Affects different perspectives of the product being redesigned
- ie. redesigning a doorknob could result in instead redesigning its door, the house, the street, the community, etc.
Of course, they are representative of the designing concept - even if it is a fact that is incredibly obvious it can be extremely helpful on how to approach the problem. The application doesn't have to be designing directly from the problem, it could also be built upon other ideas explored by past students. I have a feeling that there is a purpose of showing the past students examples, to help aid the others into understanding but also to encourage the idea of "building upon" these good ideas. Of course they don't mean to just add a small thing, more like continue with the main concept but change it. Similar to Dyson, where they invented a vacuum that used air instead of vacuum bags.
Another question I ask about the brief is based also upon our 2nd weeks lecture. What is the problem? is it a tame or wicked problem? is it a creative or a problem more for engineering? What type of problem is it?
I feel that the brief is broadened to a sense so that many results can arise, similar to the project descriptions we encountered in DECO1100. It is not 'wicked' exactly as there are examples offered however it can be quite scary to first read-through. A case where it seems like a lot of work but you don't particularly know where to start. I believe it would be a creative problem as this is the sort of atmosphere carried through out the Multimedia Design degree but also because a disjointed process is promoted for the project. We could go through plenty of prototypes and plenty of ideas and go through the loop many times in order to finish off with one good idea, and even then the project may not even be completed yet. Any design can be built upon.
Furthermore, through this reflection I feel as though the brief's details are clearer. My next move would not only to be coming up with ideas but also researching more of Trove first and the past work examples given. Thinking about the different ideas these people have came up with and whether or not these concepts could be built upon in a different, innovative way.
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