Week 7B- March 5

Today was mostly a work day once again, basically to work on our app screens and begin to put interaction and usability onto them using the program Axure. I also tested the improved app icon on the lab's icon with the improved white outline, but afterwards decided that it is too detailed and instead took it off. It was agreed that the CL is enough for the icon to be recognizable. Below you will see the icon with an without the hat. I feel that eliminating it was a great executive decision. Though I enjoyed how it looked on the logo while it was blown up on my computer screen, it was simply too small to see in the icon menu on the iPod, and thus seemed useless to have. I also re-did the iOS icon sizes with the new icon, which I will post below.

Jenna is still working on the app screens....here is what she has so far:

Homework:

- Finish final screen designs and begin to test in Axure (show others outside of class to get users' opinions)

- Finish 25% of the presentation in InDesign

Week 7A- March 3

Today in class, we mainly further refined our ideas and discussed our app screens and style tiles. There are still some adjustments that need to be made to our app screens until they are complete, but I feel that we are on a good route at the moment. We also learned about what UI kits are and our option to use them for this project. We were then given the guidelines for our final app presentation which each team will present next Wednesday in class showing all the ideation that we did along the way while creating this app.

Homework:
- have 2 more screens finished for next class
- have a game plan for presentation formed
     **Project is due March 12, each team will give a professional presentation**

Week 6- Outside of Class

This week outside of class, I worked on the three full color app screens, and based the typeface, color, and button types off of the style tile that Jenna made, both of which you will see below. We have switched responsibilities and she is now working on the icon while, as mentioned above, I am now working on the actual app screens and building off of her wireframes. By switching responsibilities, we are adding our own ideas to each aspect of the application. I feel that my screens could use a bit of work in terms of adding depth and organizing space a bit better, but I will find out in class what improvements I could make.

Jenna's Style Tile:

My full color screens:

Week 6B- Feb. 26

Today in class, we mainly had the Skype session with Jennifer Aldrich, which you will see in a separate post. After that, we went over some notes, such as knowing what a signal, cue, viewport, nav springboard, and hub and spoke function is. We were then given the rest of the class to work on our homework, which is to create at least 3 full color app screens in Photoshop using an iPhone template, a style tile showing the colors and typefaces we wish to use in our app, as well as further refining our icon and applying it to our app screens. Jenna will work on the style tile and refining the icon, while I will do the three full color app screens.

Week 6A- Feb. 24

Today in class each team critiqued another team's icons and wireframes. After viewing ours, the suggestions we got from other teams about our icons was to perhaps integrate the CL from my icon into Jenna's purple C wearing a graduation cap. For the wireframes, the teams enjoyed my idea of the navigation bar at the top of the screen that gives you the option to go back, view options, and displaying where you are on the top of the screen. Jenna's was successful in terms of her rendering of the different accounts on the app that would be located under the specific school, which in our case is Millersville. It was then suggested to have a 4-digit passcode, just like on an iPhone in order to gain access to your account. That would then give you access to view activity on your different accounts, and display a barcode and photo in place of your physical ID card.

Below you will see the icons I worked on so far. I will post screen shots of Jenna's wireframes later...

Week 5 Outside of Class

This week outside of class, I worked on the colored icons and read the assigned readings. For the icons, I used the sketches that were rated the highest and that more people liked when we did our round robin critique last class. I decided to go with a typeface that looked like "college" lettering for the C and L. Below you will see my illustrated icons.

Week 5B- Feb.19

Today in class, we did a round robin activity where each team rotated around the room to view and rate other teams' icon sketches. The sketches in which I combined the different categories of symbols got the most ratings, especially the graduation cap with the wing. Afterwards, we learned about wireframing, and were given a tutorial on how to use Azure, which is the program we are using to produce the wireframes for our app. Below are screenshots of the wireframes I have completed so far, as well as the ideation behind them:

Homework:
- Wireframes in Azure
    - watch training videos
    - develop 6-9 wireframes in Axure
-Design 6 colored, detailed icons in Illustrator (no depth)
   - Size: 120x120
   - Corner radius: 13.5

Read in IID book:
- Branching and Nodes
- Geon Theory
- Reading Distances
- Sequence Mapping
- Wireframes