Design for Change - Idea 2

So, I spent a few hours trying to decide what to do now. I had a chat with my dad last night and he reminded me of a project that he is currently developing at a school in Dublin. It's an educational concept called "One to One". The idea behind this concept is that every student has their own computer, a laptop for example that works on the campus using wireless networking and is sync'd to the main college network. The students can also use this computer away from he campus. For information check out 1 to 1 section on Apple's website:

1 to 1 learning

I propose to design a lightweight, compactable and durable substitute for a laptop in which students can use this concept of 1 to 1. As a reference for requirements, I shall use my dad’s site in Dublin.

Here is a list of things that i am going to investigate:

- Flexible LCD screens
- Micro technology
- Newton technology
- Touch screen and multi sensor technology
- flat keyboards
- fabric keyboards
- wireless technology
- types of litium batteries

From this i hope to create a prototype to show what im waffling on about!!

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Entrepreneurship and Pro Practice - John Wilson

The third week of entre/pro practice module and I think possibly the most rewarding for so far on my behalf. Our guest speaker was a man named “John Wilson” a leading political debater and expert in the area of broadband and wireless all around the UK, in particular Cardiff and South Wales. He is the Chair of the Wales Broadband Stakeholder Group, founder of Welsh community wireless network, Arwain.net and co-founder of “Access to Broadband Campaign”. The man is also the winner of 2003 CNET Networks Outstanding Contribution to UK Technology Award.

This guy quiet possibly knows everything there is to know about communication networks and how to “persuade” a city council into providing wireless broadband for its community!

John I think was very easy to listen too, he presented his knowledge in a very light and humane manner. He was kind enough to show us a video documentary he created a few years ago for Channel 4 about a wireless community project in Colorado USA, set up by a man who became a key thinker and mentor in Johns mission in Wales and the UK.

As mentioned in liz’s blog I really enjoyed this presentation. A friend of mine back in Kilkenny, Ireland is investigating the same ideas as john on a more personal level and we converse about this topic a lot and I found a lot of what John was talking about was relevant.

Thanks John!

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Get on with it!

right, its 1.30 GMT, im making breakfast and then blogger, your arse is mine!!

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Design for Change

Ok, in this module we have being given a brief to design anything that will aid or change the way someone uses technology.

"Your client, who you can assume is a community, charitable, public or business organization, has commissioned you to help identify key changes in the social, economic, cultural or technological environment and to suggest concepts for products and initiatives which can address those changes."

My first proposal was to create a tablet fridge magnet that people could hand write messages on and intern will be sent, using Bluetooth to the Internet as an rss text or photo feed to a central site which is accessible by mobile devises such as a mobile phone, PDA, etc. The application of this devise is to simplify messaging services. I think if people had the option to hand write a message (for example "bring home milk") over typing it as and email or SMS they would. Unfortunately this was seen by Stuart as a replacement for SMS which, and I agree is a technology that works very well.

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Entrepreneurship and Professional Practice (Nathan Barley)

This is a Channel 4 comedy series. Why we were watching this as part of our “Entrepreneurship and Professional Practice” module seemed odd to everyone. Nathan Barley is what he describes as a “Self facilitating media node”. This means he shamelessly advertises to everyone and anyone his website “trashbat.co.ck”, run from a warehouse style media office. I’ve always wanted one of those!

Pingu, a frail programmer who slaves away bringing Nathan’s ideas to life. Picked on by Nathan.

Nathan idolises a man called Dan Ashcroft, a journalist who works for the magazine 'Sugerape'. This magazine is Nathans bible for anything cool. Dan despises Nathan, as he does the magazine he works for. To this genre of people, Nathan and others like him are considered “idiots” and nothing more.

Claire, Dan’s sister, dislikes Nathan too but takes advantage of him and his facilities to pursue her independent filmmaking career.

A part of this class we were asked to make a list of observations with reagards to motivations, scales and roles of the characters:

Motivations
Notoriety and love of the job (nathan),
Notoriety and financial success (dan),
Building a successful Filmmaker (claire)

Scales& Organisation
Claire - Starting out in the world with her new career
trashbat.co.ck - small Business. 2 people. Designer /Technician relationship
sugaRAPE - medium sized business. Diversity of shared roles
Sunday Telegraph - large organisation with people assigned very specific roles.

Roles
Creative Designer and Promoter - Nathan
Technician - Pingu
Journalist - Dan
Filmmaker - Claire

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Live Brief

Orange Broadband
The brief asked to create an ad campaign for a New Orange Broadband Offer. Orange is officially a mobile telecommunications company in the UK. The brief requires an advert of any kind to inform the public of a new broadband offer coming to the list of services available by Orange. I chose this brief because I felt it would give me a chance to utilise my skills in 3D design and film editing. Also, it gave me a chance to look at some new techniques and programs such as Real Flow, mentioned on my previously in my blog.

I decided to begin by writing out concepts and doing some sketches with progressed into storyboards. My original idea had proven unachievable in the time frame and the availability of funding and proper resources. The sketches that accompany this text show the original storyboard.

The Storyboard I chose to run with comes across as a simplistic idea of a computer logging onto the Internet by a cable (broadband connection) directly into the orange network represented by a very large towering Orange Logo.

I made the background colour of the scene white to give an angelic and clean look. I had always liked the white styling of 'Apple Computers’ Website (http://www.apple.com), its clean, crisp and very professional looking when it comes to displaying anything. That’s probably why paper is white by standard!

The reason for making the Orange logo so big and dominant in size was to give it a sense of being and power. The logo is representing a network server, which in turn becomes the connection Internet. When the computer at the start of the scene is up close and displaying the text “>: connecting...” it is connecting to the broadband orange network. When the computer connects, I felt a small clip of the companies website with help to promote itself.

Having discussed some possible new slogans with colleagues, I made a decision to stick with the current one being used by orange, “the futures bright”. Also the brief didn’t really state that it wanted a new identity, so a new slogan wasn’t needed for submission.

The audio track “Eple” by Röyksopp, I felt was an appropriate backing track to this 3D video advert. It has a nice smooth tone and fits the edit of the video smoothly. It has being used before in ads for technology. Its tone is invitingly “boppy” and makes the advert look fun.

I used 3D Studio Max to create the main scene. I used Combustion to composite the scene with layers from Adobe Photoshop. Apple Final Cut Pro was used to edit the final video. Apple Garage Band was used to record live dialogue and sounds. Finally Apple DVD Studio Pro was used to author the DVD on which I have presented my Full Motion Advertisement. This advert is rendered in Pal format. The DVD is multi-regional. The target medium for my advert is primarily television but can be adapted for Cinema adverts as orange have done before. A future medium could be the use of advertising by Podcast. People who are looking for certain services, etc can subscribe to a Podcast stream from Orange and view the advert.

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