November 2012
3 posts
Week Ten - Scenario Mapping
This week’s lecture focused primarily on creating scenarios in order to better understand our main goals, possible problems, and ways in which to overcome such problems. Generating a scenario is a useful tool in it allows you to consider aspects that may otherwise go unnoticed. This is true because when you create a hypothetical scenario, you are essentially going through the same process...
Week Nine - Prototyping
While in the early stages of planning a project, it is important to not immediately immerse oneself in work, but to instead first plan an approach and consider important details. In this week’s lecture, we learned several methods of prototyping that furthered our understanding of how to plan ahead. The first, known as paper prototyping, is the method which we chose to apply to our project....
Week Eight: Mapping Methods
In this week’s class, we discussed different mapping methods that can be used to visually organize data in the brainstorming process of a project. One method I find particularly interesting, both in the context of this lecture and outside of class, is the inforgraphic method. Infographics, as the name implies, make use of images and words, to create a representation that is successful in...
October 2012
2 posts
Week Seven: IDEO Research Methods
In last week’s class, we explored different research techniques utilized by the employees of IDEO. Many of these were interesting in that they defied traditional research standards and went beyond to create a new way of looking at things. Our groups each picked two or three different techniques and discussed how they could be utilized effectively. One of our groups that I found particularly...
Week Three: Varying Methods of Art and Research
In last week’s lecture, we touched on several different forms of art and research. Specifically, we learned about three different relationships of the two: research into art and design, research through art and design, and research for art and design. The first, research into art and design is fairly self-explanatory in that it is just as it sounds: researching, as Christopher Frayling...
September 2012
2 posts
Week Two: Enhancing Toronto's Parks
Within an urban environment such as Toronto, parks are of utmost importance, as they provide the otherwise heavily-cemented landscape with greenspace, and also offer citizens an environment for entertainment and leisure. However, as technology continues to advance, we believe that so should the nature of parks. To come up with a list of things we believe could be improved, we followed a brain...
Week One: Coffee Shop Intervention
One critical aspect of new media practice is to think outside of the box and to consider solutions that are often otherwise overlooked. This week, we were asked to apply this way of thinking to the betterment of local coffee shops. We were each asked to visit a separate coffee shop and comment on the many interactions we witnessed in the environment. From this information collected, we were to...
