OUGD504 - Critique

My first critique helped me to choose which problem would be the best to progress with for this brief. For this, I sat down with Simon and five other students for crit style discussions on the user interface problems we had each previously identified with. During this, I took notes from some of the feedback given to my peers such as writing the problems as a question. I had a question for each of my previous problems. These were:

1.

How can students at LCA easily find the work given to them at uni whilst staying motivated and positive about what they are doing?

2.

How can a design conscious audience find the typefaces they encounter and like during everyday life?

3.

Where can cycling fans find all the information they may want to know about their idols, teams and races within the sport without having to individually search what they are looking for?

After going through each of my questions and explaining my first ideas thoroughly, I asked my peers a number of questions that would help point me in the appropriate direction for this project.

Which problem do you think is strongest and could be explored in most depth?

Peers noted that because of my interest and past knowledge on cycling, this problem may produce some detailed and interesting outcomes. However, being surrounded by design students would benefit my second ideas as I would be able to talk directly to my target market and understand what works best for the interface. Because of this, we agreed as a group that this may be the most appropriate idea for my design for screen project.

I explained that there were programs that already help users find their desired fonts however these are often problematic and don’t help the user find their desired typeface. As well as this, their dated designs don’t suit the target audience. I asked whether it would be more appropriate to re-design one of these existing interfaces or create my own experience.

My crit group felt I should look at how others had tackled this issue and look to improve on their ideas within my own interface design. Despite this, they believed that a redesign of a current interface may also work well as most programs, such as the WhatTheFont example I showed them are dated but features could be added to enhance the users experience making my final interface something they regularly return to.