Assignment 3 - Develop a prototype for your mass customisation product design tool.
Website
Report:
Basically, my idea since the second assignment has been the same except for a few changes which will be highlighted shortly. Here is a summary of the prototype;
There is a lot to write about for my prototype, but much of the design process has been shown on the website. The about page contains the general information about my idea – the “customisable pouch”.
The first page, design, is a help guide on how to design a pouch and that goes through most of the possible selections for the pouch. The product is supposed to be thoroughly customizable to the user who has control from the size, the shape, the colours, down to the zipper and buttons.
The interface page contains the main interface for the customization system and a quick pouch design of a snowman through the storyboard stage in the display box. I tried to design the interface to be as simple as possible. The first section is the measurement of the inside of the pouch. To the right are the selections for the pouch, as well as for the strap and the back. Once a decision has been made to edit the part, finer details are shown on the right. These include elements such as the form, colour and pattern. And these lead to the various collections from the database – animal limbs, crocodile textures, Swarovski beads and so forth. The top right hand corner shows the main overview of the pouch.
The user can change the selections with arrow keys for more items. The largest space has been put for the “work area”. Users can zoom in and out, look at different previews as well as undo and redo edits. This region is combined with the selections. For example, the user can drag and drop selections, select an arm to change the colour and so forth.
To tools page is about the interactions, which are the software oriented buttons. For the interface, they have been placed at the bottom and right hand side. The reset button is placed away from the more popular selections.
If only I can use Adobe Flash and Actionscript well, I would have it all interactive. Instead of screenshots for the storyboard process, I wished it was a working prototype.
To make up for the loss in interaction, I did some creating in Context Free. Because many people have chosen to make visuals which are for aesthetic reasons, my purpose was to create an outline of the pouch shape. If people were at the form section, and clicked on “randomise”, a shape (derived from Context Free code ) would emerge. The examples can be found here.
I spent a lot of time on the code; hence I did not research in the patterns because there is more code out there for pretty designs than function designed forms. Another code for the forms can just be a simple design grammar shape rules.
The changes I have made have incorporated the idea of “monster” pouches. Something like Spore, where you create your own little creature. But I have still retained the idea of objects and items like clothes and food. But the context free blob design was more on creatures with 4 legs. It was quite fun find the animals amidst the random circles.
I am quite satisfied in the customization progress because I first started out finding a website which was shocking. I believed that I would be able to design better pouches than they did by providing everything customizable for the user. I believe it worked. Give the user everything so he or she can create anything they desire (better than paying $50 for a striped pouch saying Pop)!
Report:
Basically, my idea since the second assignment has been the same except for a few changes which will be highlighted shortly. Here is a summary of the prototype;
There is a lot to write about for my prototype, but much of the design process has been shown on the website. The about page contains the general information about my idea – the “customisable pouch”.
The first page, design, is a help guide on how to design a pouch and that goes through most of the possible selections for the pouch. The product is supposed to be thoroughly customizable to the user who has control from the size, the shape, the colours, down to the zipper and buttons.
The interface page contains the main interface for the customization system and a quick pouch design of a snowman through the storyboard stage in the display box. I tried to design the interface to be as simple as possible. The first section is the measurement of the inside of the pouch. To the right are the selections for the pouch, as well as for the strap and the back. Once a decision has been made to edit the part, finer details are shown on the right. These include elements such as the form, colour and pattern. And these lead to the various collections from the database – animal limbs, crocodile textures, Swarovski beads and so forth. The top right hand corner shows the main overview of the pouch.
The user can change the selections with arrow keys for more items. The largest space has been put for the “work area”. Users can zoom in and out, look at different previews as well as undo and redo edits. This region is combined with the selections. For example, the user can drag and drop selections, select an arm to change the colour and so forth.
To tools page is about the interactions, which are the software oriented buttons. For the interface, they have been placed at the bottom and right hand side. The reset button is placed away from the more popular selections.
If only I can use Adobe Flash and Actionscript well, I would have it all interactive. Instead of screenshots for the storyboard process, I wished it was a working prototype.
To make up for the loss in interaction, I did some creating in Context Free. Because many people have chosen to make visuals which are for aesthetic reasons, my purpose was to create an outline of the pouch shape. If people were at the form section, and clicked on “randomise”, a shape (derived from Context Free code ) would emerge. The examples can be found here.
I spent a lot of time on the code; hence I did not research in the patterns because there is more code out there for pretty designs than function designed forms. Another code for the forms can just be a simple design grammar shape rules.
The changes I have made have incorporated the idea of “monster” pouches. Something like Spore, where you create your own little creature. But I have still retained the idea of objects and items like clothes and food. But the context free blob design was more on creatures with 4 legs. It was quite fun find the animals amidst the random circles.
I am quite satisfied in the customization progress because I first started out finding a website which was shocking. I believed that I would be able to design better pouches than they did by providing everything customizable for the user. I believe it worked. Give the user everything so he or she can create anything they desire (better than paying $50 for a striped pouch saying Pop)!
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