Research Into Interactive Design

My research into interactive design was critical to my Political Poster Collaboration project. I wanted to create a website that allowed anyone the ability to interact with art and design as it relates to political movements.

Case Study / Open Collab :

Open Collab is a website that inspired me in this project. This website is a collaborative website for designers. Their website works by operating as a, "platform created to facilitate remote collaboration between creators. Participants respond to a predetermined subject by creating texts or images. Once submitted to the platform individual content is randomatically combined into an endless stream of aleatoric compositions.

It is because of Open Collab that I incorporated the ability for novice designers to create their own poster from the experienced designers work. It gives them the ability to create something new and unique.

The Art of Experimental Interaction Design by Andy Cameron:

The Art of Experimental Interaction Design by Andy Cameron, was another inspiration to me in this project. The book gives perspective on interactive design by stating that, "Interactive media...involves a blurring of the lines between author and audience in which the audience, to a certain extent, participates in the creation of the message itself."

I really enjoyed this definition of interactive design because it gave me a better understanding of not only what I am trying to do but what I want people to get from the website.

Prototype Research:

After researching interactive design, I began creating a prototype of the website I wanted to create. This involved sketching wireframes of my proposed design.

The prototype gave me an understanding of how many pages I need to create and a basis before beginning the design process.

Logo Design & Development:

The logo design was what I wanted to focus on first. I wanted to create something that looked like it had interactive elements even when it was not moving.

These initial ideas were fun and playful and were a great inspiration for the final logo that I ended up with.

As I began designing I wanted to do more research into user interface and user experience because that is a crucial for the efficiency of my website. I looked at the website Migrant Species to help me with this. I really enjoyed how simple this website was and the intention behind it.

Case Study / Migrant Species:

The website Migrant Species inspired me to make Political Poster Collaboration easy to use without too many distracting options. I made sure that the website included a download button that was visible and accessible.

User Personas Research:

To further work on the user interface and user experience, I created user personas to understand what someones user journey may look like and how they would be using the website. I used the book Design is Storytelling by Ellen Lupton as a reference for the user persona.

In this scenario, Sophie would use Political Poster Collaboration as a tool to craft her political messages. She wants people to understand how she feels about the political movements that are important to her. It was because of this that I added the option to share the posters on social media.

Icon Design Research:

After gathering more research I decided to sketch icons that could help Sophie and others like her navigate through the website. This was a useful sketching session that was inspired of off similar shapes that I used in the logo.

After designing the icons I wanted to figure out how to incorporate more protest images into the website. I think this would get activists more excited and inspired to create poster designs. I was inspired by the design of the National Women's History Museum by Pentagram.

Case Study / The National Women's History Museum:

It was because of this design that I decided to incorporate protest images in the pieces of my logo throughout the website. This allowed my to tie the logo into the design to get the message across in a simple way.

This is only a snapshot of the process that went into the project, Political Poster Collaboration. Feel free to check out the final project here.