READER & USER
In this term of comm. Design1, every student has been given a pair of word, and our goal is to successfully convey the meaning or the concept of these two words by using different design methods. The words I had was USER and READER.
In the first half of the term, we were limited to use only text and image, and then text plus image to convey the concept of the pair of words, and since my words was so easy to understand, in the beginning, it seemed to be an easy task to accomplish. However, after the first week, I find it so hard to really distinguish these two roles, the user and reader can transformer into one another simultaneously, and the more I try to define these two roles, the more I get sucked into the chicken and egg trap. Imaging yourself surfing on the web, are you a user or a reader? The truth is, you exchange your role spontaneously from one to another, there’s actually no exact point where you can really distinguish if you are the reader or the user.
I had a hard time on trying to define the two words in the first few weeks, and then my instructor (Brad) suggested me to read this article online about user and reader, I also tried to take a step back from defining the words and start thinking about how to separate them rather then defining them. Moreover, I tried to reduce my designs and make them as simple as possible. After a long time of work, I think I ended up with some good designs, and I also explored three different directions of the words.
In the second half of the term, we were request to use motion,sound,motion plus sound and interaction as our method to express our concepts, and I found the sound piece to be the most challenging among all the other techniques, I believe it's because I am so used to create in a visual way, it turns out that sound has become one of my weak points in design, even now I am still struggling in creating a good sound piece.
Besides the sound piece, I really enjoyed creating in motion and especially in motion plus sound, I really liked my motion plus sound piece and I believe I've expanded the concept of these two words to another level, but still conveyed the ideas thoroughly. In the end, I think I've learned a lot in this class, and I especially liked the way we criticed in the class, it was challenging and very inspiring.