user experience. my experience. reflection.

User Experience has been an enigma, full of its successes and not so successful aspects encompassing all projects: the practical, persuasive, and poetic.

     Success-wise, I’m most proud of the poetic project. We successfully created a system that not only encouraged participation of the intended age group, but also would get families to travel throughout the Kansas City Sculpture Park to find all six sculptures. This project as well as the practical really forced me out of my comfort zone this semester.

     Failure-wise, the persuasive was my golden ticket; I got too caught up on the unknown that I forgot to leap and explore.

     Impact-wise, I think the struggle with the persuasive really pushed me into gear with decisions with the poetic. These projects focused on different aspects that my future design work will be based on: practical, persuasive, poetic. 

iPhone app. nelson-atkins. final screens.

Sculpt Enigma KC allows you to discover sculptures within the Kansas City Sculpture Park via riddles/clues. Once finding + verifying that you did find the sculpture, information about the sculpture is available.

the lesson. final.

This project is brought to you by the combined/morphed systematic minds of two graphic designers: Wendy + De Sando.

After an interview + research, Wendy+I came to the conclusion that our minds thought in a similar system but with a different method. We delved further to find where our systems connected and made one larger system, which our two methods as the ends of the spectrum. Both our our systems dealt with omission, whether that be based on our narratives jumping from one scene to the next, or the abstracted phrases of free form poetry. Therefore, we decided that the definition + visualization of ellipsis was the best word to name our system.

Ellipsis is defined as the omission of one or more words that are understood.

ELLIPSIS is two perspectives on the structure of information. This is the way in which all words and phrases are placed in order with meaning, but moving one piece of that information, the whole structure is at risk of changing meaning or being interpreted incorrectly. 

THE DIVERGE METHOD is restructuring information based on changing small moments that change how the viewer interprets the message. This method focuses is on the user’s ability to directly relate to the text through the English standard of reading, left to right, top to bottom. 

THE DISPERSE METHOD is the deconstruction of information to form new meaning. There is no clear focus initially, causing the viewer to search in the unknown. This method focuses on each user finding their own connection to the piece.

These methods are further explained through use of highly descriptive statements or abstractly constructed phrases. The booklets reflect the differences in method and similarities in message with corresponding pages. Basically, we compared my initial text/narrative that I was working with "Your Life As A Poet" and compared+broke down Wendy's final poetic text and found oddly enough similarities in the story being told. So, we decided to place those pieces across from each other to help future designers look more closely at how they are aiming to connect to the user. It is also to help designers look closer at their own structuring/restructuring of information.

front cover.

one method + ellipsis defined.

definition close up.

inside, opened flat.

opened with methods comparing lines.

up close text styling.

back cover.