Today was a little disappointing considering we were supposed to pull it out of the bag. Yuki worked on some 3D modelling and I used illustrator to produce a concept using the bean idea but Omari was unfortunately very ill today and so his Vector Works skills were lacking. Anyway here are the images of our concept that most (I stress MOST) of us have agreed on and so are pursuing with. Not much time left and all that.
So today we had our formative assessment. Yet again we produced two distinct presentations - paper printouts and PowerPoint. Not that it mattered, we knew we were incredibly unprepared for it considering that we had no sketches…no ideas until 5pm last night and that was only thanks to a 10 minute meeting with Latent.
So we all agreed we were fractured as a group, with me; Omari and Yuki on one ‘team’ and Will and Ash on the other. I spoke to Ash this morning about the bean idea (I will see if I can find an image to post) and he seemed very enthusiastic about it. I hoped that it was the end of all the squabbling and bickering but boy was I wrong. After the presentation we
sat in a group for a few hours and discussed where we would go from here, only to be told by Will that he didn’t like the idea. Whilst we listened to a valid argument from him, we all still agreed that it should be a permanent structure Will thought it was best as temporary - speaking from a financial and ‘commission’ based perspective. So instead of moving forward from our presentation, we moved back a stage - SQUARE ONE!
This resulted in a few more hours being dedicated to hearing everyone’s views, opinions and ideas, to which Will was unreceptive. We were going round and round in circles and as much as I tried to keep everyone calm, I myself found it hard to control my frustration with Will for not even entertaining the ideas that we had all (excluding him because he was ‘building the model’ which wasn’t even completed as he said it was) previously agreed upon.
Here are some images we used in the presentation - we had little time to correctly convey the ideas.
The end result of all this was that I just got up and walked out of the room after we started again for the fifth time. I had certainly had enough of not moving forwards and people (Will) arguing about a concept and simply suggesting “a market”. So to conclude today’s post: Myself, Omari and Yuki have decided to progress the ideas we presented today without Will. Ash is a laid back guy and was willing to support most things suggested so I am sure we will ask him to participate. As for Will, he is more than welcome to be a part of the group, but we have NO MORE TIME to argue. We have taken a creative lead and are going to stick to it. Oh and Shanice has yet to turn up for anything. I even forgot she was in the group again. Oh well.
Anyway…back to Illustrator.
After an interesting meeting with Ruth and (insert name here) yesterday about PPD, we were told that we should firstly have an online presence as interaction designers and secondly that we should have a blog to show our thoughts and design process about our current project.
A little late considering our formative assessment is tomorrow but hey, I thought I’d give it ago. So here is a project blog about the Alexanderplatz project.
Currently I am in Purple Cave writing this… surprise… but I am also doing very little to do with the project. The group agreed I would Photoshop some images of greenery on walls which I found by a guy called Patrick Blanc. Take an image of that, and transfer it to an image of The Galleria in Alexanderplatz… challenging. Then again, there really isn’t much I can do.
For our presentation of initial research (Future City) the group fractured and we did not present as a group. It was full of “I did this…” and “I did that…”, very unprofessional. What was also unprofessional is that Omari took so much time talking about his segment, that it left 2 people unable to talk about their area of research - including me! The cultural probe was drop kicked into the shit-heap but that wasn’t really surprising considering it wasn’t discussed and the only resaon we had anything is because I made it (with help from Yuki cutting out the circles).
We did then decide on a new approach but it wasn’t liked by the tutors saying “You’re designers yet you’re getting the people to design for you.” Bollocks to that. I was fed up of getting contradicting information from the tutors from each discipline.
Goto http://www.newalexanderplatz.co.uk to see the results of our probe.
I bought cameras that weren’t used, made flyers for the website THAT I MADE. At this point, I was confused as to what everyone else was doing - except Omari…who seems to love research and pinning things on a board.
Today:
I need to do some Photoshop work now…