Fourth Reflection

After I found all my images, created the icons and various buttons I wanted to use for my project my attention turned to how the project would flow. Out of all the readings the one that stuck out the most to me was the article Footholds for Design by Shahaf Gal. I could really relate to Ray’s construction of the bridge while I’m designing my project. A good quote which summarizes my feelings can be found below.

“Ray realized that bridge construction must begin from small components of the bridge. Most important, he realized how critical it was to link the overall design approach with the process of constructing the piece of the bridge.”

I feel this quote applies to my design process because I sat down with a pencil and paper and drew out a flow chart of how I wanted my various pieces to work together. Much like Ray and his small components of the bridge, I had ideas of what my different components were going to be. I knew I wanted an intro, explanation of the project, main page, and the various cities I visited. So from those small components, I mapped out how they would work together to create the experience I wanted.

I started this project very much like Ray with a top down approach. It’s almost like the ADDIE process, because I started with a purpose statement of sorts, “The idea behind this project was that I just moved to Athens a couple months ago and no one really knows me, or what I have done with the past 23 years of my life. So this is my way of showing some of the interesting places I have visited.” I used that statement as my over arching goal to refer to while designing the project.

That’s when I came up with the various components of how I was going to tell my story. I looked at the goal and asked myself how I could best accomplish this goal. I knew I wanted a catchy intro to gain the user’s attention and get them to want to continue exploring. Then I thought I should explain why I decided to create this wonderful piece of software. Finally, I needed to have pictures and a story to go along with each of the cities on my map. Also, I think having the stories and images will give it a more personal feeling. Hopefully I am right.

Reference:
Gal, S. (1996). Footholds for design. In Winograd, T. (Ed.), Bringing Design to Software (pp. 215-227). New York: Addison-Wesley.