3/2/11

ux. possible campaign research.

DIY: SAFETY
  1. why is this issue pertinent and timely?
    • Safety is always an issue being discussed. Safety codes being updated constantly. These codes are having to be updated regularly as people hurt themselves and they are required to create stricter guidelines.
  2. what are its causes?
    • Inexperience of the process. Many of these people do not know the correct way to build things or make things. There is the risk of them hurting themselves because of this amateur aspect. 
  3. what are detrimental effects to individuals? to greater society?
    • Not having the correct safety at even the basic level can ultimately cause death if whatever is happening goes horribly wrong enough.  However there is the possibility that they could get hurt in different ways. Greater society there is the possibility that if the project is large enough and something goes too wrong that it could possibly  hurt people majorly. There is also the idea of when people hurt themselves, there is the possibility of laws being more strict and other things in regard to being safe.
  4. what are preventative measures?
    • informing them of the correct way to do things. Helping show the safety procedures for things.
  5. how does this issue relate to your sub-culture?
    • DIYers make everything with their hands and yet they all have a level of amateur with what they do. Safety is always
  6. what organizations have a vested interest in this issue?
    • OSHA, National Safety Council
  7. what organizations have a vested interest in your sub-culture?
    • Ace Hardware, the home depot
  8. what public service campaigns have previously addressed this issue?

DIY: VOLUNTEERING TIME & ABILITY
    1. why is this issue pertinent and timely?
      • Volunteering has always been something of importance throughout the United States. Volunteering is about helping other people through giving up their time usually spent doing other activities and instead using that time to help others.
    2. what are its causes?
      • People needing help with things they don’t know how to do or simply needing help. The less fortunate who struggle to get by with what they have. People who have skills that others don’t and giving their time to teach others their skills.
    3. what are detrimental effects to individuals? to greater society?
      • Without volunteering, many people would go without many things, especially the less fortunate. Things like volunteer fire-fighter services, volunteering at homeless shelters, or even organizations like Habitat for Humanity wouldnt be able to exist or run without the help of people volunteering their time.
    4. what are preventative measures?
      • Informing people about the positive effects of volunteering and what it does for other people. Talking about the ways it brings the community and people closer together, and then also talking about the effects on the community that would happen if volunteering stopped.
    5. how does this issue relate to your sub-culture?
      • DIYers are about sharing their talents and abilities with other people. They want to share their skills with other people so more people are knowledgable of being self-sustainable to an extent.
    6. what organizations have a vested interest in this issue?
      • Habitat for Humanity, Volunteers of America, 
    7. what organizations have a vested interest in your sub-culture?
      • The home depot, ace hardware
    8. what public service campaigns have previously addressed this issue?
    TRAIL ENTHUSIASTS: BE PREPARED
      1. why is this issue pertinent and timely?
        • Being and staying healthy is definitely important for the jones generation. They are getting older and can’t do as much as when they were younger but they still need to keep their health in mind. Stretching, having water, putting on sun screen, and other things like that are pertinent to them staying as healthy as possible.
      2. what are its causes?
        • Getting hurt on the trail, pulling something, or even possibly breaking something. Not keeping hydrated and having the possibility of fainting or heat exhaustion.
      3. what are detrimental effects to individuals? to greater society?
        • On the person there’s the possibilities of them getting hurt and in a situation that could be life threatening. As for the greater society, this affects everyone. Everyone needs to stay healthy through stretching and other activities before doing anything physically straining.
      4. what are preventative measures?
        • Informing people of what they need to do before heading out to hike. Letting them know of some helpful things to take with them, and even tips on stretching and other things to make sure they’re physically ready to walk for hours on end.
      5. how does this issue relate to your sub-culture?
        • All hikers need to do this before they go out to hike. Getting physically ready before going out and being physical. 
      6. what organizations have a vested interest in this issue?
        • US Army, American Cancer Society
      7. what organizations have a vested interest in your sub-culture?
        • National geographic, the north face, the outdoor channel
      8. what public service campaigns have previously addressed this issue?

      2/28/11

      infoarch. first round of infographs

      Here is the first round of info graphs. They are purely for content, no design, just information. Click on any of the info graphs to get a bigger version.








      infoarch. collection categories.

      My final categories for my suspenders are:

      1. Width
      2. Color
      3. Love
      Width is just that, skinniest to thickest. Color is grouping them by color and then within each color order them thickest to thin. Love(im still working on a good name for it) but it's the amount of use it's showing. Some of my suspenders still look brand new, whereas others are getting stretched out and showing a lot of love to them, the more i love them, the more they stretch sorta thing. This issue with this sorting is the fact some are wearing more than others b/c they are of lesser quality than the rest, so thats a factor I need to keep in mind.

      2/3/11

      infoarch. 95% of typography reading.

      first off, i love the fact that reichenstein has at the top of each article the average reading time for the article. so simple yet so wonderfully useful. good information architecture there, the fact he actually gave it thought and felt it important enough to include.

      Before I ever read this article, whenever I try to figure out widths of anything the very first thing that pops into my mind is how wide will the content possibly ever get. Making it too small can eventually make the information look weird, if its too big the text to whitespace ratio can just start to look awkward. This is essentially what Reichenstein is talking about. Let the information dictate the interface. Gather your information to find the range you have to work with so you can then figure out what design best facilitates all that information. Save font choices and other nit-picky details for last. Rather, focus on the over-all positioning of the type and let the rest of the smaller details fall into place naturally. I know personally, I get caught up choosing what typeface I want to use and this can end up with two things. Either me never fully figuring out what typeface to go with, or over-analyzing typefaces and not being happy with what I end up choosing. Why do I do this? Because I'm OCD about things and can get nit-picky very easily but this doesn't really facilitate being productive. But, I know this, so I do my best to keep it under control.

      i love this list from the follow up reading. this seems like such an amazing list of key points to keep in mind when designing a website:

      1. Text-background color contrast>
      2. Lazy handling of titles and subtitles
      3. Text sizes
      4. Text blocks that are not split up into enough small, scannable, digestible parts
      5. Indiscernible links. Visited and non visited links are not discerned
      6. Text is not treated as an interface but as decoration
      7. It’s not clear if the text is a navigational element, a link or plain text
      8. Fancy navigations marking the center of attention (content is the center of attention, content deserves the most love from the designer)

      as a final side note, i LOVE what possibilites html5 and css3 have within them to help us with all of these aspects of website design.