Tom+Donker+Unit+2

Unit 2: Phone Designs

Skill Exercise: This picture is to represent the school's slogan, Belief, Motivation, Inspiration, Success.

The background is of a a sun rising. This gives the impression of belief. The guy with his arms up gives the impression of motivation. Usain Bolt givers the impression of inspiration. The baby doing a fist pump gives the impression of success.

__**Picture References:**__
 * Belief: Bible-Daily, Sun of Righteousness, [], Accessed: 30th October 2012
 * Motivation: Crescent Solutions, Keeping the Motivation, [], Accessed: 5th November 2012
 * Inspiration: CNN, Can ‘Power Posing’ like Bolt make you a winner?, [], Accessed: 5th November 2012
 * Success: USQ, The Final Battle: Exam Block,[[file:///F:/ICT/Unit%202/%20http:/usqedu.wordpress.com/tag/success/| http://usqedu.wordpress.com/tag/success/]], Accessed: 5th November 2012

**__ Investigation: __** __Situation:__

The modern-day smartphone has many different apps and gadgets within one phone. Having these accessories, the smartphones become more and more complicated to use. The phones are designed to do anything and everything. This is making it hard and complicate for the elderly community to become adapt to having smartphones. Also, the screens and the writing on the smartphones are to small so the elderly might have trouble reading the text. However, more companies are making phones with big screens but the text is till small. For example, the iPhone 5 has a big screen:

And as you can see, the text under the apps are really small.

There are also other examples of things on the phone being to small. Another example is a Blackberry. All Blackberry's have a keypad on them, that's what makes them a Blackberry. However, the buttons from the keypad are very small as you can see: And on a each button there is a letter and a symbol or letter. So when wanting to use a symbol or letter, you would have to press the ALT button then the button with the symbol or number on it. So as you can make out, typing on a blackberry requires a bit of thinking.

So I have decided that I am going to make a phone that is user-friendly to all ages.

=**__Research__**=

__Survey:__

We needed to make a survey asking people what they want in a phone. I interviewed 10 different people to see what they would like in a phone. Here is what I found from my survey: After getting this information, we also had to search what makes a good phone design on the internet. Here is what I found:

Bad Design Points
 * Good Design Points
 * The concept of Active Tiles is awesome and the Facebook integration are great!
 * The ability to have more real estate given to tiles that are more important, e.g. Pictures, helps the user have more emotional attachment to the device.
 * The home screen is not cluttered and the design is intuitive.
 * A fifth of the screen is wasted. [|Positive and negative space balanc] [|e] is critical in design; however, the home screen is off balance with negative space on the top and right side of the screen.
 * The native System apps are all mono color (by default blue) i.e. phone, text, email. Not only is the mono color an eye sore, these are all apps that don’t need this much real estate. They could easily be made into convenience buttons with smaller notifications. Users want to jump to these apps from every screen, not just the home screen.
 * Live Tiles are an awesome concept, but what is the value if nobody designs their tiles to be live by default? Make the app framework and tools work so that developers think live tiles from day 1.
 * Why implement buttons like the arrow over key? People get the swipe, use it. ||
 * Vesselhead, Good Design Bad Design – Windows Phone 7,[], Accessed: 12 November 2012 ||

I also found a website that analyses phones from the 1980's to 2009. Its a very interesting website that gave me a few ideas about my phone design.

Webdesigner Depot, The Evolution of Cell Phone Design Between 1983-2009, []Accessed: 12 November 2012

__**Design Brief:**__

To solve my situation, I am going to make a smart phone that is user-friendly to all ages. If a smart phone is user-friendly, it will atract more attention from the elderly population and also from the younger population. To aim a smart phone at all ages will give the company a good name from old to young, thus giving the company more business.


 * __Design Specifications:__**
 * rounded corners
 * medium size
 * should be made with a case
 * camera's on both sides
 * rounded back
 * touchscreen
 * keypad


 * __Tests:__**

I have decided that I am going to test my design by showing it to different people around the school and they will evaluate the design by answering another questionnaire. Here are the questions that are in the phone design evaluation:

**__ Design Stage __** We had to make 4 different designs for phone pictures. Here are my for different designs:


 * **__Design Specifications__** ||  **__Check Box__**  ||
 * Rounded Corners ||  Yes  ||
 * Medium Size ||  Yes  ||
 * Should Be Made With A Case ||  Yes  ||
 * Cameras On Both Sides ||  Yes  ||
 * Touchscreen ||  Yes  ||
 * Keypad ||  Yes  ||


 * **__Design Specifications__** ||  **__Check Box__**  ||
 * Rounded Corners ||  No  ||
 * Medium Size ||  No  ||
 * Should Be Made With A Case ||  No  ||
 * Cameras On Both Sides ||  Yes  ||
 * Touchscreen ||  Yes  ||
 * Keypad ||  Yes  ||


 * **__Design Specifications__** ||  **__Check Box__**  ||
 * Rounded Corners ||  Yes  ||
 * Medium Size ||  No  ||
 * Should Be Made With A Case ||  Yes  ||
 * Cameras On Both Sides ||  Yes  ||
 * Touchscreen ||  Yes  ||
 * Keypad ||  Yes  ||


 * **__Design Specifications__** ||  **__Check Box__**  ||
 * Rounded Corners ||  No  ||
 * Medium Size ||  Yes  ||
 * Should Be Made With A Case ||  Yes  ||
 * Cameras On Both Sides ||  Yes  ||
 * Touchscreen ||  Yes  ||
 * Keypad ||  Yes  ||

The best design is my third design. It is a very different shape then whats on the market and it fits all the design specifications (except for that it is a large phone). It also has the biggest touchscreen and the biggest buttons so it will be user friendly to all ages. I will evaluate this design by giving out a survey to several people evaluating the design.

Final Picture:

These are the references of pictures that I used to help me make my final imagine:
 * Wikimedia Commons, Beach Sunset at Point Chevalier Bearch-Auckland, [], Accessed: 26th November 2012
 * Stencilease, Diamond Shape Stencil, [], Accessed: 26th November 2012
 * TechniPages, Real Technical Knowledge, [], Accessed: 27th November 2012
 * AntiQuark, AntiQuark Photoblog, [], Accessed: 27th November 2012

While making this picture, I decided to add in something new. I added in the slogan and the name of the company to give the picture that feel that it is being advertised by a proper comopany. **__ Evaluation Stage __** To test my final image, I created a questionnaire asking questions about the phone design. Here is the Questionnaire: I gave the questionnaire to several different people of different age groups to see if my phone design was liked throughout all ages. I gathered all the different answers of each questionnaire and put them into one tally chart:


 * __Comparing the product:__**


 * **__Design Specifications__** || **__Check Box__** ||
 * Rounded Corners || Yes ||
 * Medium Size || No ||
 * Should Be Made With A Case || Yes ||
 * Cameras On Both Sides || Yes ||
 * Touchscreen || Yes ||
 * Keypad || Yes ||
 * __Reflection on each stage of the design cycle:__**

__Investigation Stage:__ We first had to make up a problem that we would solve. For example, making a phone that is user friendly. I think that my problem was a good one and one that is a problem with smart phones today.

For the research section, we first had to make a survey about what people look for in a phone. I think that my survey covered all the areas needed to make a good phone design that everyone will like. We also had to find information that makes a good phone design on the internet to help us make our phone designs.

We also had to write a design brief the states what I am going to do about the problem. I think that my design brief was good and well thought out.

Finally, we had to make tests that we can apply to our finished picture. This also fits into the evaluation stage because it evaluates the final picture. I made another survey to see what people liked and disliked about the picture design. I think that my design tests were good and really did evaluate the final product.

__Design Stage:__ We had to design 4 different phone designs, each being different from the other. Each of my phone designs were unique and different then the phones on the market today. I think that my designs were well drawn and I annotated each design well. I also added in the colors of the phones and also added in what type of background the picture would have.

__Create Stage:__ During the create stage, I had a few difficulties with the program we had to use; GIMP. You couldn't add in straight lines so what I did was use Paint to add in the lines then add them into GIMP in a new layer. I think that doing this worked well because my final product looked good and like my design. I had several layers, which made it easier to make the image because it made each section of the picture easy to edit. I think that I worked well with GIMP but I still would prefer using Photoshop.


 * __If I Was To Do This Unit Again:__**

If I were to do this unit again, I think that I would make design a few more designs so I have a greater area to choose the best design from. I would also use a different picture editing program because I don’t like using GIMP because it doesn't have the simple tools, i.e. straight lines, ect. However, GIMP did have a few more useful tools then Photoshop but I would still use Photoshop because I have more experience with it.

If we were to do this unit again, I would research good phone designs more so I could see what is on the market and what makes a good phone. More research would also be helpful because it shows you what is usually made, thus you being able to make a unique phone.