new blog address

hooray for a teeny bit of extra time! i’ve gotten my new website hosting setup and that means a new spot for the blog. you can find it at: http://www.lawaugh.com/blog/

bear with me on the design… it just took me like 3 hours to set everything up. (that equals mental exhaustion).

Team Fried Pickle Tribute

An interface for pickles?

Prototyping

The phrase I chose to prototype was “What if online shopping had crowded spaces?”

At first, I had no clue what to do. Everyone was scrambling around for materials and it looked like they all knew exactly what they wanted to make (they didn’t, but they sure played it cool). I picked up some popsicle sticks and some orange rubberbands and came up with this:

With this protoype, I was trying to respresent crowding, but in a way that was still connected. Since I was unsure of myself, I also put together a few more representations of crowding- a pile of nails in a little box, a group of corks tied together, and a roll of paper. Once our 30 minutes was up, we set up all our projects and went through and talked about each one- sort of a mini-crit. Since no one knew what the parameters or expectations were for the prototype, it was an interesting discussion. The first thing Denise said was (paraphrased) “Ok, so these prototypes show that you’re all designers. You’ve all tried to come up with solutions to resolve the question that you chose. And that’s ok- that’s what you’re trained to do.” Out of the prototypes that I set up, she chose to talk about my popsicle stick creation (which was the one I planned on going with- the others were afterthoughts). She said it was interesting because, when you picked it up, it had other qualities like movement.

Once we talked about everyone’s projects, Denise gave us a little insight into how we might think about the bigger picture of our phrase. She said that we were going to take 30 minutes and make another prototype, but that we needed to think about it less as a solution/resolution and more about the idea—the portrayal and representation.

Free Association

Our assignment for last Wednesday’s studio:

A. Bring in some junk- anything you have lying around that you don’t need that could be made into something else.
B. Make sure you have access to ichat.

When class started, Denise asked us to throw out some ideas of what an interface genre might be, since our next project will center around just that. I suggested online shopping, some others were online newspapers, customization tools, personal profiles, video games, etc.

Then she asked us to all sign in to ichat and invited us to a chat. Using the genres we suggested, she created phrases for a free association exercise. She would throw out a phrase and we had to respond with the first things that popped into our head, no matter how outrageous. We took one minute for each phrase. Here’s a snippet from the ichat.

After we finished the ichat, she told us to pick one response to our phrase to form a question and then take 30 minutes to prototype that phrase out of the junk that we brought (everyone put their junk on the big table and we shared everything). Pictures in next post!

Digital Networking

Since I’ve been in grad school, I’ve become really interested in how people are interacting more and more on a digital level and the implications of this on face to face contact. Last semester, my final paper discussed how design has started to address this and how it’s becoming part of a shift within the design world.

I came across this article on Time.com about how digital networking can actually enhance human physical relationships. Since I’m just starting to develop an opinion on this, I admit I never thought about it that way. Even though I’m on Facebook, I’m still a little anti-Facebook in that I don’t use many of the features and don’t get on much if I can help it. I guess I’m just afraid of that time suck. And maybe the TMI aspect. It feels a little too voyeuristic at times, but at the same time it’s interesting to think about the value it may have in furthering relationships.

How’s this for an interface?

This summer, in an effort to revamp my portfolio site I polled a group of friends, asking them what web sites they liked best and why. My favorite response:

Hey Lauren,

I just wanted to send you a link to one of my favorite websites.  I
think it’s a good model for other websites to go by.

http://www.havenworks.com/

Juan

Awesome.

Project Design

A few of us were talking about grad school being a little bit like the reality shows Project Runway and Top Chef. Sometimes it feels that way, I’m just glad we don’t get eliminated! Anyway, here’s an article from Speak Up posted a few months ago about a real show that’s in development. Pretty funny…

http://www.underconsideration.com/speakup/archives/005544.html

Wrapping up my Christmas Break Project

Over Christmas break I designed an invitation package for my friend Allison’s wedding. It was an exciting project, especially since Allison was a gracious client and was really excited about my suggestions. Allison comes from a laid back, outdoorsy family, so she wanted invites that were elegant yet not so stuffy and formal- her only big specification was no script fonts. Since her reception will be held at a place called Allison’s Woods near Statesville, NC (public forest with lakes, recreation, etc.), she asked that a tree be incorporated into the package in some way. I took the tree imagery a step further by incorporating GMUND’s Savanna paper (in Glowing Massakar) as a pocketfold to house the invitation and corresponding pieces. The paper has a wood-grain texture and is truly beautiful in person.

I paired images of a tree and a pair of birds with Archer for the design of the package and ordered polymer plates from Boxcar Press for printing. I also ordered custom ink colors in chocolate and moss tones from Vanson (via Boxcar). Yesterday Liese, Caroline and I printed all the pieces on the letterpress and they turned out great! Thanks for your help guys- I never would have gotten all this work done without you!

I don’t claim to have the best photography skills, but here are a few pics so you can get the idea…

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