Arts Festival

My Project

Due to the pandemic, this was the furthest that I was able to get, in completing my project for the keyboard:

I was not able to light up all the keys because I did not have time for it. However, I was able to create the basic structure for the keyboard. My intentions were to first create the base model of a tkl keyboard, then add my own designs to it. Plans were to create the small details of a keyboard so that when I animate it all coming together. It would have more components, adding more variety to the construction of the keyboard. 

Process

In the process of making the keyboard, I made the switch to the new version of blender. The transition wasn't bad at all, and I like the new version of blender much better. Moving on to the creation process of keyboard:

Base of Keyboard

Making the Switches

Adding Switches to Keyboard

Making Keycaps

Adding Simple Texture and Lighting (3 designs)

Adding Lettering

Design Process Investigation

The Design Process

From what I've learned, the designed process "is an approach for breaking down a large project into manageable chucks. Architects, engineers, scientists, and other thinkers use the design process to solve the variety of problems. Use this process to define the steps needed to tackle each project, and remember to hold to all of you ideas and sketches throughout the process."

In the website that I have done my research, they showed 6 steps for the design process.

Define the Problem

You can't find a solution until you have a clear idea of what the problem is. By clearing defining the problem, it will allow you to go about the process in a much more structured way.

Collect Information

Collect sketches, take photographs and gather data to start giving you inspiration. The only way that you're gonna be able to create something that will last, is if you educate yourself in the topic or product that you are trying to improve.

Brainstorm and Analyze Ideas

Begin to sketch, make, and study so you can start to understand how all the data and information you've collected may impact your design. Don't forget that you're not the only one that comes up with ideas, and someone else may have an intuitive solution, that you may have overlooked. You can take that and incorporate it into your design.

Develop Solutions

Take you preliminary ideas and form multiple small-scale design solutions. One solution never seems to be enough to fix the problem. When you bring out a product that solves one problem, it won't satisfy the user as much. If you put out a product with much less flaws than the last, you will impress the user.

Gather Feedback

Present you ideas to as many people as possible: friends, teachers,  professionals, and any others you trust to give insightful comments. The best way to please the people, is to know what the people want.

Improve

Reflect on all of your feedback and decide if or to what extend it should be incorporated. It is often helpful to take solutions back through the Design Process to refine and clarify them.

Web Designer Investigation

Web Designer

What is web design?

After searching through some websites, I found some detailed and some not so detailed. Some ranging from, "Web design refers to the design of websites that are displayed on the internet". To, "Web design is the process of planning, conceptualizing, and arranging content intended for the internet. Modern web design goes beyond how things look (aesthetics) to include how things work (functionality). Web design is not limited to websites as it includes other uses such as web apps, mobile apps, and user interface design". Strangely enough, it was quite easy to find a lot information about web design on the web...

From what I have learned from what I've read, web design has a lot of potential and allows someone to really create their own business. It allows you to put your opinion out there, and people can go to your website. Almost every modern business now needs to have a website in order to survive. You need that quick communication with the outside world, so that they can interact with you and your website. If you don't have a good website, then they will most likely be not willing to learn more about you and whatever your pursuing or doing. 

Web design surrounds our lives, it's hard to go a day without interacting without some of sort of online fabrication made by someone or some company. As the name entails, it involves the creator to think of some way to make it most intuitive for user experience. The designer needs to think how the user will think when first going through the website. Will they be lost? Will they be able to find what they want in a reasonable amount of time? Will the process of buying the product be nice and simple for the user? You need to ask yourself so many simple question when designing a website, or else your website might fail.

Web design is a rapidly growing thing, you see software that people can use to make their own website, but guess what, that also involves an aspect of web design. The layout of the website needs to be clear, it can't be annoying to have to click on the super small button that you finally found in the bottom right corner of the screen. Web design is also very easy to get started with, you don't really need any money to start and there are so many tutorial on the internet. Personally, web design is a great way to start if you want to grab your creative side on the internet.

Investigation Blog 4/28/20

Concept Designer

What I think think about being a Concept Designer before learning about it =>

I think that a Concept Designer is someone who obviously thinks up ideas that may be useful to be put into fruition. 

It was hard to find any answers from google about the sole purpose and role concept design has. After some searching I found an article, What  is Concept Design in Product Development?, and it showed a little more to what concept design is. It says that in 2007, a Danish agency FORA said there is "no collective perception" of concept design. Then summarizes that concept design, "is the solution to a problem that has not yet been solved or which so far has been solved unsatisfactorily."

I think as you break the larger concept of product designer, it can be easier to see the steps that are involved into making a product. Concept design is a subclass of product design, which I think is the very first step that we have to take when looking to create a new product or make one better. Concept may start out to be a random thought and turn into a real product. If you do not have a concept, you are just going to be lost and have to end goal in sight. Therefore you must first think of a concept that you want to see come alive, then act upon it. Now, I don't think that concept design should just stop when you randomly think of something that you think is cool. Grab the opinions of others and see if it really is a common necessity and that people would use if they were able to get their hands on it. Once you have verified that your idea or concept is something that would be in demand by other people, that is when you start making a blueprint of what you have in mind. Start creating a more detailed picture and continue to brainstorm until you feel that it meets the needs of the people you interacted with.

The article defines concept design as "the initial big picture or macro design. It shows us what problems the product will solve, how it will solve them, and what it will feel like as it is solving them. Arguably the most creative stage of product development, concept design is stickies slapped on whiteboards, ink and wash, napkins and crayons even. It calls on us to consider sweeping ideas and all the various possibilities. The more the better. In concept design lies the very soul of innovation.

Everything needs some sort of foundation in order for it too survive. Without that strong foundation, it will break down in a matter of time. When you don't have a strong concept to rely on, your product most likely won't do as well as you may think it will. You must have a concept that is strong and demanded by many in order for it to become something greater.

April 20-26 Investigation blog

Product Designer

What is Product design?

It is commonly known as the holistic approach of building a new product from start to finish. This covers everything from doing market research, identifying problems, product development, designing informed solutions - and everything in between. Still, this definition of Product Design could read pretty vague.

From the perspective of a product designer, Martha Bergmann, she says that "product design is about creating products that meet the needs of its users through business strategy, data analysis, user experience design, user research, user interface design, motion design, mock-ups, and prototypes. It's all about problem solving and design thinking, which is part of that product design process." She brought a lot of different types of things that go into the process of product design. I feel that I can summarize this into something really simple, creating something that is optimize for a user. Anything that involves designing, should always have the user experience at the forefront of their mind, because it matters most what the users think.

Another product designer, Elona Jaquez, says "product design is the intersection of the various UX design disciplines that go into creating modern digital products. These generally include UI design, interaction design, user research, information architecture, problem definition and design thinking, prototyping, visual design, motion design, and management of design systems. Jaquez brings a lot more vocabulary to the table when it comes to what is need for the product design process. Once again, there is a common focus on the experience of the user. Even though I boil it down to the simple definition, it doesn't mean that there isn't more that goes into the making of a product.

Finally, Andrew McKay, who is a Sydney based Product Designer focused in the mobile app space, has been working along side leading Aussie apps. Andrew McKay states, "one of the biggest differentiators between a traditional user experience role and a Product Designer role is the life cycle of the designer's role. As a product designer, my role is to not only deliver to a client's brief but to also maintain and constantly iterate and improve on that product, based on the user base and the original assumptions evolving into new pathways." This is a complete different approach that McKay came about describing what product design is. He goes into the life cycle of a product designer and that there is more to it than you may believe. He says something that I completely agree with and think that every designer should do, and that is to continuously improve on your own product. No large, successful, and growing company would be able to be where they are without constantly improving on their product. If they were to ignore their problems, they would crash in no time.

April 13-19 Investigation blog

What is Industrial Design?

Design => A plan or specification for the construction of an object or system or for the implementation of an activity or process, or the result of that plan or specification in the form of a prototype, product or process.

Designer => The person who produces a design, which is a term generally used for people who work professionally in one of the various design areas

Examples

1. Textile designer

2. Fashion designer

3. Product designer

4. Concept designer

5. Web designer

6. Interior designer

The rational model

The rational model was made by Herbert A. Simon, an American scientist, and Gerhard Pahl and Wolfgang Beitz, two German engineering design theorists.

It consists of:

1. Designers attempt to optimize a design candidate for known constraints and objectives

2. The design process is plan-driven.

3. The design process is understood in terms of a discrete sequence of stages

My Thoughts on the Rational Model

I think that it is something that I would typically follow throughout making some sort of design for either the project that I was working on, the keyboard. Or anything else that I would go about thinking to improve a design on. I like the first step, because I think that is something that should come naturally to someone who wants to design something. I take something that I already know exists and try to think of ways to improve it. The rest of the model seems a little to robust though for my liking, I like to grab an idea and continue to improve as I move throughout the project. When I think of something that is plan-driven, I think that you get so focused on the plan that you lose the purpose that you started out for. And that is to improve the thing that you are working on.

3rd Marking Period Blog Post

3rd Marking Period Blog Post

Intention Definition & Exploration of Ideas

I have been working on trying to create a more efficient design of a keyboard. This falls into the category of industrial design. Industrial design focuses on how things can be improved and how things may be constructed to allow the user or person experiencing whatever object that is before them in the best way possible. My focus, being on trying change the layout of the keyboard, is to find a way so that they layout of the keys may be organized in a fashion that is the easiest for the user. The keys should be layed out in a way that each finger is used to the best of its ability. Even though that this sounds weird, I believe that this is a way to think about constructing the keyboard. Thinking in this way will help me reach conclusion than just experimenting with the layout of the keyboard and spending an unnecessary amount of time testing things out.

Planning

 I was planning to completely finish the keyboard, and start incorporating my own designs in blender. I would have to make the letter on the key caps and then make them transparent so that the light can illuminate the keyboard more. You would also be able to see which key is which. I went about this process by first creating all of the letter objects for each key, sizing them to a reasonable scale. After doing this for each key, I then would convert the letter(s) into a mesh, then lower them so that they were in the key cap properly. Once I have lowered and scaled it, I would use boolean modifier to then combine the two together. Following the boolean modifier, next I would go into edit mode on each key cap. Grab the faces of the key that weren't transparent and convert them back to their original texture. When all of these steps were done for the entire the keyboard, I then render the picture to see if there were any problems with the lighting, and fix any mistakes accordingly. Finally, I would move onto adding in my own designs, trying to make it look appealing and make it efficient for the user.

Producing

I haven't been able to execute everything that I have planned for. I have run into some problems that have really stalled my progress completely. When I was first trying to combine the two texture, I didn't know that I would have to use something called bool tools. Once I installed bools tools, I was able to get the rest of the keys done for the most part. After this, I moved the keys down to the keyboard base, and checked out what it looked like in the rendered view. The lighting was a little dull, so I continued to try bring up the strength of the lighting. I realized that it wasn't looking the way I wanted, so I decided to grab of the faces of the lettering and turn them into an emission texture.

This image shows how I want the key to look at the top of the keyboard, rather than the bottom of the keyboard. Some of the letters, like "f" and "k" weren't even combines properly. The other keys don't show the lighting that well, and look very dull to the ones that are at the top of the keyboard.

Evaluating

When using the bool tools, it worked for the most part. It would sometimes not combine them correctly using the union modifier. It would still cut off some of the transparency for the top part of lettering. I would then have to go into the knife tool and cut a line on the top of the key cap. Merge the two vertices from the knife tool and the original vertices of the letters. Go inside of the key and convert those faces to the transparent texture. Then the all of the key caps were completed. Continuing from this, I couldn't find a way for the lighting to go through the key cap like I wanted to. It would be too weak to easily see the lettering from the key. Even though I brought the strength of the light in the switch as high as I thought it would really make a difference. So now, I am in the progress of the grabbing all of the faces of the letters on the key cap and turning them into emission textures.

Integrating

I learned that there is hopefully a much faster way to go about this. I know that this is my first time making the keyboard, and there were many steps that I could probably of taken to make the process faster. It was also moving to the new interface of Blender 2.8 that made the process a little slower. Next time when going into something that involves lighting, I will do some more research to see if their were something that I could have done instead of an emission light. Everything that I have done this marking period, seemed to very repetitive and tedious work, which was really hard to have a steady work flow. It also had some bugs when going through it, which also slowed down the progress.