After coming back from the two week break, I had chosen the topic of my essay and planned the structure of it as well as what I wanted it to include. I looked at various books, journals and articles as well as what people had posted on LinkedIn that would help as part of my research. I found that the WCAG guidelines were very useful as well as the government guidelines and the legislations they had in place. I found this to be very interesting as it was the early stages of the research and I was able to explore many areas. Initially I wanted to base my essay on neurodiversity as well as addressing accessibility obstacles encountered by those with hearing and vision impairments. However I soon came to the conclusion that this was a very broad topic and would be better to narrow it down, just focusing on neurodiversity. After doing this, I went onto writing my draft introduction that would form the basis of my draft research report proposal.
This screenshot show my initial essay planning
I also conducted 2 user tests on the existing website to identify any issues and put this as part of my research that would help direct the design choices I make. I added notes and ways that I could make improvements of my design – highlighting pain points, opportunities and solutions.
Throughout the week, I continued experimenting with the design layout and structure for the individual events pages. We thought that it would be cool to place all the event details in a ticket as well as experimenting with the overall layout of the page with basic illustrations to see how we could make it more fun and engaging for users, whilst also making it less text heavy. These images show how I experimented with different font sizes and placing of the terms and conditions, with Emily focusing on the image placement separately.
I also helped Lizzy with some design suggestions for the events landing page, which she took on and incorporated, however after talking to Graham he said it would be best to not have illustrations of peoples faces on the cards. From this we agreed to get rid of them. After talking to Dave he pointed out that a users may not be bothered to flick through the reviews and if we were to have them, it would be best to have them all displayed, to reduce the chances of users losing interest. These images show the suggestions I made before getting rid of it:
I feel that this week has gone quite well, as I get along with my group and we all bounce ideas off each other which I think is very beneficial. I really appreciate getting other peoples opinions on the work I do as well as giving my options on the work they do. It also shows that I have become more agile in the way I work and more responsive to change, reiterating and adapting my ideas so that everyone agrees.