Reflection - This lesson reinforced to me the importance of UI to create the best user experience possible and how there is always more than you think of an interface. The content should also speak for itself and without it being right the design doesn't work. But this class also made me aware of the fine line of creating an interface that lacks personality which is why it is important to have icons or mascots. Looking back on my smartwatch app it makes me happy to think that I achieved what I wanted to with a comforting app with a reliable character. This class reinforces all the elements that we should be considering when creating an interface, as I can get lost in the design and lose the content.
Content curation is when you find and collect the best online content and then present it in a structured way that is easy to understand and interesting. A good way of describing curation is that it is the scrapbooker's way of designing things, I thought this a very clear way of describing it.
https://www.shiftelearning.com/blog/conquering-content-curation-best-practices-for-instructional-designers#:~:text=Content curation is the scrapbooker's,audience achieve their desired outcomes.
The content can come from different areas from the client (like a company website that has information about who they are and worked with), from yourself (like writing an article), and from the user (like a social media post).
It can help you in lots of different ways.
https://sproutsocial.com/glossary/content-curation/
An example of good content curation is social media everyone is posting their content, and we can go through and find lots of different areas. Pinterest is a great example of this, as it all full of curated content most posts are from users, and then some advertisements. This has created a really popular platform, if I want ideas Pinterest is one of my first searches to find something.
It has become a highly individual platform when creating your own boards has influenced your explore page and suggested content for each board. The photo above is a screenshot of my own Explore page, from looking at it I can see where most of it came from like Fiona Apple as I search outfits of hers for a fancy dress party, and outfits that I have added similar to a board before.
Pinterest uses curated content to keep you engaged and shows you more areas to explore, this fits with who they are as a brand. Their mission statement is about inspiring others, being inclusive, and helping find what you're looking for.
We also went on to talk about user stories and did an exercise creating user stories about using autonomous vehicles. I found this helpful to use how they relate to everyday people trying to do something. I had already begun exploring user stories after the module induction, with the ease-of-use characteristics used to create user personas. In class, we talked about Ron Jeffries who is one of the founders of Extreme Programming explanation behind it with three cards. I think this exercise was very helpful, as I understand the concept but doing it like this showed how I can apply it to all areas.
Module Introduction - Content design
‘The reason for writing a grammar of a visual language is the same as for any language: to define its basic elements, describe its patterns and processes, and to understand the relations between the individual elements in the system’ Visual grammar makes up design and we always use it without being aware but is always considered.
This book talks you through visual grammar, it was an interesting read a quote from it is ‘Without this interaction between elements, a composition is static and not dynamic’ which I think explains visual grammar as a whole. It has to use the content to create an engaging design that meets the needs of the users.