Emerging Media Design & Aesthetics
JRMC 7010
As a continuation of New Media Design, this class was a more writing and reading intensive curriculum dedicated to exploring what good UX design looks like and how to ensure usability, understanding, and consistency from the beginnings of production to the final product launch. With titles such as This Is Service Design Doing and Principles of Product Design by Aarron Walter to serve as guidance, gaining more in-depth knowledge into the influence that design has in the world was an eye-opening experience to say the least. Discussion topics would range from theoretical discussions of conventional design principles to the importance of inclusivity and diversity in both design teams and in the audiences we design for, and with each new reading the importance of proper ethical consideration was consistently reinforced into my mind as a driving force in how I as both an advertiser and a designer, hold power over others and their experiences.
One of the greatest takeaways that I was able to get from these discussions was the threat of inaction and the importance of humanity-first initiatives. As designer Alexis Lloyd states, “Design holds power, and as designers it is our responsibility to see who is influenced by our design, how they are influenced, and who is benefiting or being harmed through our design.” Taking a stand for something you believe in and for something that you know is beneficial — especially when it comes to beautiful and accessible design — is imperative to changing the narrative of exclusion previously generated by the lack of humanity-first design initiatives. Empathy becomes the driving force behind innovation, providing a solid foundation for wanting to fix small, simple every-day problems that can be absolutely life-changing for the user at hand. In the words of Walter, “When design isn’t visible, it’s no longer powerful” (Walter, 201). Visibility in this instance is not just about the aesthetics you see; it’s about the feedback you hear, the different perspectives you gain, the constant prototypes, and all of those sketches and late-night experimentations. Design as a process needs to be seen and understood by the people you work with to truly allow for its impact to prosper, and by eliminating the transparency of the design process and allowing this distance to continue to form, it becomes harder and harder to notice new ideas and old values when they start disappearing. People are the cornerstones of design: always make sure to include them in the process, keep that connection, and make them the core of your process. From there, there are so many possibilities to explore. I think a really important lesson that was highlighted was the importance of meaningful design, especially when it comes to straying away from conventional practice. There is no such thing as safe design, but there are better and worse compromises that we can make. At the end of the day, our job as designers is to make the best decision we can, even though all decisions will have benefits and consequences as a result.
While analyzing each new text was a fascinating deep-dive into the importance of ethical consideration and risk when it comes to designing new or improved technology, one of the greatest skills I was able to develop in the class was dedicated to creating an app that solved a problem in our own lives. During my time as a student, I found that looking for housing outside of the university was an extremely difficult and arduous process. While there were plenty of resources available for me to pursue, there was a distinct lack of a cohesive platform that was meant for first-time renters or buyers, especially when on a student budget. Pricing was confusing to find as either a per bedroom or per unit deal, I didn’t understand what the value increase or decrease meant for a particular offer, and what little insight I had into the “game” of real estate was that of google, advice from my parents, or buzzwords from shows like House Hunter. Ultimately, the greatest difficulty I found was being able to distinguish a proper match for my particular circumstances, especially given a lack of renter history and a minimal income. I needed a place that I could see myself living in, almost like that of a relationship. I needed to know what I was getting into before I could select. With this, I came up with an idea: if finding a partner and finding a house are so similar, why not approach them in a similar way?
As such, I chose to design a house matching system for Apartments.com, one of the top rated real estate websites–and apps!–on the market. With this product, my aim was to be able to make a management-based, text heavy interface easier to understand and more fun to use, with potential applications for other location-based arrangements such as event venues, hotels, and vacation rentals. Learning how to utilize Figma for the first time was a lot of fun, and it expanded on my skills involved with Adobe XD and the Creative Suite when it came to creating my ideal prototype. I discovered a new platform to help in creating user-profiles and user-experience journey maps through UXPressia, allowing myself to present critical “pain-points” in an easy-to-digest visual representation. I also was able to experiment with Adobe Premire Pro and my presentation skills, editing a final pitch for my project run-through and demonstrating how my wireframe was meant to look like in post-production.
Personally I really enjoyed the insight that this class provided more than anything: having these discussions and having multiple readings with different perspectives that not only reinforced, but also challenged, design assumptions was a breath of fresh air, and I think that more classes should incorporate material like this as a thoughtful exercise in design choices. As designers, we are at the very least responsible for exploring various possibilities of application within our product—both positively and negatively—and we should work to ensure that we are designing for real-world applications, not just ideal situations and ideal users. As amazing as technology can be, good design is not just a matter of aesthetic choices; it is ensuring that open communication and understanding between the consumer and the company are maintained, and that the burden of processing, memory, and inconvenience is taken away from the part of the user as much as possible. Having check-ins with the audience at hand helps to maintain ease-of-use while also prioritizing user-experience and agency in said design, and by accounting for the incentives of behavior and edge-cases, even in preliminary research, problems can attempt to be addressed as quickly as possible to present better design solutions for said problems.
In terms of my final project, I thought the various project check-ins and in class exercises were a great resource to play with, especially when it came to definitively laying out what I wanted to accomplish with my proposed app addition. I really appreciated their emphasis on the importance of tone; while voice may convey the overall brand language, it is the tone that translates that message to the audience in the first place. The “This But Not That List” was a great example of how to clearly define the needs of the user and how the application addressed these concerns within the designated product, maintaining core value points not just in the design of the product, but its overall execution as well. Keeping these guide points as a front-of-mind consideration meant that reprioritizing the takeaway we desire from our users stays a key motivator for our presentation choices, especially when it comes to icon usage, navigation maps, and resource allocation. Through this, I was able to discern that I wanted to emphasize the quickness of real-time results while reinstating the fun and excitement associated with finding a new place, allowing users to get both the information they need and the visual appeal they desire in an instant.
Because design is a process, each step of the production cycle presents its own unique set of limitations and applications. No matter what safeguards are put into place, there will always be holes somewhere or another. It is vital then that we aim to fix as many holes as possible through research, feedback, and testing, improving upon and sometimes even completely reinventing previous notions of “success” to generate new perspectives towards addressing the problems. In the words of our final reading, no design will ever be perfect, and no product will cease to need improvements; even so, it is my hope that I can continue to learn how to make the best possible decisions I can in design through expanding my own lens of reality, supported by my fellow creative team and with the knowledge of how important and influential good design can really be.