I have now completed Design for Interaction at Ravensbourne. It’s been a fun three years despite the many ups and downs that have come along with it. The last few weeks of our degree were very stressful, but certainly something I’m glad I did and worked through.

My final presentation consisted of work from the RSA brief, the collaborative brief and the individual brief. Overall I think it all went well, though there were a few things I was disappointed in. But I feel a lot of that was partly due to learning and experience.

Following our final exhibition and presentations we went onto New Designers, a degree in show in London which was a lot of fun. Our group took a slightly different approach, involving Ping Pong and Top Trump cards. I’ll aim to post more about New Designers later today or tomorrow.

The idea behind my major project at Ravensbourne is to create an experience that enhances a childs enjoyment of a museum throughout; this is to say, it doesn’t rely on a single space or object (such as activity rooms or interactive tables). The goal is to find a way to allow the child to interact with the museum as whole so that they can enjoy everything the museum has to offer as opposed to just what is ultimately targeted for children.

The direction I’m moving in is to provide the child with a camera which they can run around the museum with, taking photos of what ever captures their interest. Creating interaction through observation (I guess this is something photography essentially boils down to). Having taken their photos, the pictures are then uploaded to the museums website, where they will be tagged alongside information about the exhibition piece as well as photos others have taken. Photos can be commented on and favored by others providing a sense of community on the site.

In addition photos are uploaded to a ‘photo wall’ which displays photos children have taken along with their name and age. Having photos on display like this provides the gallery with a new and constantly changing exhibition piece, and also gives the children something to be proud of.

I have more plans for the camera as well as the photo wall, I’ll post more on that as it develops.

It’s been an eventful and interesting week, not entirely for the best of reasons. But work has to be done and work has been done. We’ve had the presentation to find out who’s work should be submitted for the RSA Design Directions competition. Unfortunately my work was not deemed good enough for the competition, but since I would like the opportunity to take part, I have entered myself. These are the presentation boards I had for my stamp designs during that presentation.

 

We still have a couple of more weeks to work on the boards before the work is finally submitted and there are a few changes to those boards I wish to make. However in light of feedback from friends and tutors, I’ve decided to go in a different direction entirely. So here’s an example of the new stamp designs. This one features ‘Solar Energy’

I realized I haven’t really spoken all that much about my dissertation, so, considering the fact that I am around the halfway point and have just handed in my formative draft of it, and then considering the evolved purpose of this blog was to, well, blog about projects and progress at university, I imagine it’s high time to do so. So, here we go.

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As I said earlier, I’ve been working on some new designs for the RSA project we’re working on. The previous designs were rather rushed and looked clunky. Here are the beginnings of the new designs. They still need some work, but I think (and hopefully others will agree) they’re a major improvement over the previous ones.