Communication Through Visual Design

By

Sundeep Bharthepudi

Design methods change based on technology but communication remains at the core of visual design. Technology has helped design evolve to the point where it is not only used to inform the public but to also entertain. Game design is an excellent example as a game can be informative, educational and entertaining. The design of visual information has concerned man since the dawn of history and flowered during the development of print technology. Early printmaking was limited to static images and text, the majority of the prints were of an informative nature such as technical illustrations and religious icons.

Information communicated from one human to another has always needed a design or a plan. Throughout history, pictorial imagery and emblematic presentations have aided man in making more complete and better defined records, thus making his life more intelligible and well ordered. In ancient Syria, many Centuries before Christ, men of intelligence and sophistication rolled and stamped images on clay. And these cylinder seals are certainly among the oldest existing artifacts that preserve information in both pictorial and word like symbols. The hard and durable etched surfaces preserved a greatly condensed record of powerful society. Today, we are assaulted by communication stimuli on all sides. The very idea of visual information- whether by primitive word and gestures or by a blatant audio visual advertisement on a television screen – remains relatively the same to the clay stamps in ancient Syria. This bombardment of information generally has a limited set of aims: to inform, promote, influence, entertain, or express.

With the rise and spread of print technology and the printed page, came the great acceleration of human progress. People were becoming increasingly curious about the world and literacy was at the same time both the cause and effect of mass communication. Without literacy there would have been no widespread market for printed materials and without the printed media there would have been less reason for people to learn how to read. As time progressed processes and techniques improved with technology. News was being illustrated in pictures created by traveling artists whose work was transferred onto plates. This transfer process is known as photo-engraving, which first appeared in 1872, and by the following year the United States of America already had its first newspaper illustrated with printed photographs. Graphic images rapidly became an important part of our life. Shortly there-after a brand new medium entered the scene: the motion picture. This powerful visual medium, reduced word content to only a few captions. The influence of movies in spreading visual information throughout the world was a phenomenon in the history of graphic communication. In addition, the newsreel was becoming another part of the national habit. Motion picture and TV demonstrated their ability to reflect the world’s manners and morals and their ability to alter and modify them. In a broad sense, they are part of a nation’s news system, it’s industry, and the educational system of a society. Significantly, they together with radio, have represented the first important attempts at mass communications in illiterate countries throughout the world. Their visual strength is such that they are a prime institution capable of initiating ideas and altering our thought patterns. It becomes obvious that without prints we should have very few of our modern sciences and technologies for all of this is dependent, fist or last, upon information conveyed by exactly repeatable visual or pictorial statements. Far from being minor works of art, prints are among the most important and powerful tools of modern life and thought. Through the mastery of replicable materials, design went from playing a strictly utilitarian role to being at the forefront of creative endeavors. The expectations from the public audience also changed, from passively receiving information to the expectation of being entertained. Communication is now associated with providing an experience. The computer game has emerged as the prime vehicle for this medium. The computer game is an art form because it presents its audience with reality and fantasy experiences that stimulate emotion.

The artist has a tool that is more subtly indirect than traditional art. In printmaking, the artist directly creates every single element on the page that the audience will encounter. Since this experience is carefully planned and executed, the audience must somehow be prevented from disturbing it; hence, non participation. With a game, the artist creates not the experience itself but the conditions and rules under which the audience will create its own individualized experience. The demand on the artist is greater, for he must plan the experience indirectly, taking into account the probable and possible actions and reactions of the audience. The return is far greater, for participation increases attention and heightens the intensity of the experience. When we passively observe someone else’s artistic presentation, we derive some emotional benefit, but when we actively participate in a game, we invest a portion of our own ego into the fantasy world of the game. This more sizable investment of participation yields a commensurately greater return of emotional satisfaction. Indeed, the role of participation is so important that many people derive greater satisfaction from participating in an amateur artistic effort than from observing a professional effort. Hence, games, being intrinsically participatory, present the artist with a fantastic opportunity for reaching people in new ways. The technology behind modern games may make them appear miles away from that of a printing press. However, both old and new processes are based around the same primitive ability to easily replicate information for the intention of communicating to a broad audience.

Design methods and process changed with technology as time progressed, but the core of visual design has always remained the same- communication. The way of communicating has evolved from being informative to engaging and entertaining. Technology and design go hand in hand one cannot advance with out other. Without design technology is just a tool with no purpose. Design with out technology is primitive and limited.

Insight into game design

By

Sundeep Bharthepudi

Building games is one of the most challenging and rewarding experiences. Taking pure imagination and making it come alive is a creative process so immersive and consuming. People think the fun is in playing the game, but, In comparison for game designer, it is creating and building the environments in which other people play. Designing your game is the first step on your journey toward bringing your dream to life. Games are about wish fulfillment. When you play a game, you’re putting yourself into a fictional scenario that you wish you could experience in real life, at least in general terms. When you design a game, you want to immerse the player in a role that he thinks is fun and cool. As they say about writing good fiction: “Take me to a place I’ve never been, make me something I could never be, and let me do things I could never do.”

Games are about one thing: entertaining people. This is he first and most important thing to think about when you’re making any kind of game. In making a game, you become an entertainer, not a puppet master. As such your primary concern should be the happiness of your audience. You have to make you game fun. Fun is the first thing people think about when they hear the word “game.” Fun is a simple word, easy to spell, and everyone agrees on what it means. However, the things that people consider fun are as individual as Thoughts. Although two people might agree that something is fun, if you get a group of 10 people together, you’ll start having problems. Games are supposed to be fun. People expect them to be sources of entertainment and delight, a source of diversion to distract them from a less-than-perfect existence. So far, no one has really narrowed it down enough to create a magical “fun” formula that guarantees success time after time. As a designer, you’ll want to make your levels fun. Although you might not be able to please everybody, there are some ways to hedge your bets. People will have definite opinions as to what is and isn’t fun, and they’ll completely pass you over if you don’t consider those opinions when making your game. Knowing your audience can be an easy task if you’re making a game that isn’t exceptionally innovative. The further you get from the accepted genres, the harder it will be to find your audience.

To know your audience, you have to find them. Again, it can be pretty simple to find your audience if you’re making a game that belongs to an established genre. You can frequent Internet message boards and chat rooms dedicated to games similar to the type of game you want to design to see the opinions of people who play the games like the one you want to create. Another good place to find people talking about what they like and dislike about games are game review sites and magazines. You’ll be able to find as many opinions on what’s good and what’s bad as you can handle. Once you find your audience, pay attention to what they like and what they don’t like. This will give you tremendous insight into what to do and what not to do when designing your game.

Just as it’s important to know who your audience is, you need to know the games that your own game will be competing with. It’s important to know your genre, and what that genre has given its fans so far. You should also know your genre well enough to know what sorts of things it could do better. If you can find and improve the things that need improving, or change the things that won’t alienate the player, you’re on the way to making a great game.

In order to make a fun game, you truly need to know yourself. Or at least you need to know what you think is fun about games. You’ll never truly know your audience enough to predict what every single one of them will think is fun. However, you do know what you think is fun. When playing a game, try to notice when you are having a good time. If you can pause, do so and ask yourself what you just did that caused that big smile on your face. The next step is figuring out why what happened was so fun. If you can do this, you’re ahead of the pack. Many people can’t tell why they’re having fun, and if you quiz them about it, they’ll give you fairly vague answers that can change each time you ask them. Knowing yourself, and being able to objectively identify the core reason why you feel that a game feature is or isn’t fun, is essential to making games fun for other people.

Finally, the last thing to remember you can’t make a worthwhile game unless you’re having fun doing it. If you dread working on your game, it probably won’t be very fun. Even if you do manage to finish it, what’s the point?. People tend to be more creative when there’s laughter involved. Fun helps spark creativity, and creativity helps sell your game.

Service Design

by

Sundeep Bharthepudi

The world is changing and peoples buying trends are changing, products and services are evolving, and technology is growing more efficient every day. What can businesses do to keep up with these changing trends? They must innovate their own company from the inside out. This may seem like an impossible task to complete, however there is a new discipline of business, service design, which has simplified the process of innovation with in companies.

A service, is an intangible product, such as accounting, banking, cleaning, education, medical treatments, and transportation. When dealing with a service, unlike a product, there is no transfer of possession or ownership when a service is sold. If you look closer into the matter, one can see that the product of a service is the process in which the consumers experience. For instance, when you purchase a plane ticket, you are purchasing the service of the flight, not the plane itself; you leave only with the sense of satisfaction or disappointment of the flight you took. Services cannot be separated from their manufacturer either, seeing that there is no actual product being produced; instead the customers interact and are given an experience when purchasing a service.

The word design can come with much confusion because it has many different meanings and usages, however in the world of service design, Raymond Turner describes design best: “Design acts as an interface between company and customer, ensuring that the company delivers what the customer wants in a way that adds value to both.” Design needs to help bring out these experiences, to better satisfy end-users. As the concept of product broadens and the demands on understanding the context escalates, more knowledge of various fields is called for, to be associated with the object of design and to be worked out further. This is one reason why design has changed so much in past decades.

The world of service design has sprouted from the realization that the needs of customers are increasing, at at an ever-growing rapid pace. What happens to a company that cannot provide their existing clients with what they want, when they want it? The clients look elsewhere for what they want. Service design is a holistic segment of business, which is about rethinking how a company works, through planning and organizing employees, infrastructure, communication and material components of a service, but also by utilizing the human factor of emotion. In essence, some services (take for example, a cellular service) can be of great quality and innovation now, but five years from now this service can become outdated if it hasn’t changed to the growing needs of the customers.

Service Design is the design of the overall experience of a service as well as the design of the process and strategy to provide that service. Service Design is a process across the four D’s – Discover, Define, Develop and Deliver. It is about understanding client needs, developing ideas, translating them into feasible solutions and to help implement them. Service design and innovation uses many different tools and methods originating  from various disciplines. The way they should be used and assembled depends on each projects specified anatomy.

Design thinking is a non-linear creative process and not an exact science. It rather is a state of mind associated with specific human centered design and innovation tools & methods. Therefore, these tools & methods can be used at different degrees of detail and scope and bundled according to each project’s specific anatomy and budget. They can also be used and reused in different phases of a typical project: user research, ideation and co-design, prototyping, implementation & documentation, each time with a slightly different focus. In addition to service management and service marketing frameworks and more common business tools and analytic, service design employs innovation methods that are also used in product design, the design of product/service ecologies, user experience design, interaction design as well as for business models and social innovation. These tools and methods are at the core of the design thinking management framework. Creating useful and usable services and product offerings requires a deep knowledge and understanding of customer needs, desires, goals, fears values & behaviors Many of these tools are thus used to unveil customers and users context.

Reference

http://stefan-moritz.com/_files/Practical%20Access%20to%20Service%20Design.pdf

https://publications.theseus.fi/bitstream/handle/10024/24688/Fritsche_Kristin.pdf?sequence=2

http://www.sbs.ox.ac.uk/d4s/essayArchive/D4S_Publication.pdf

http://www.designcouncil.org.uk/sites/default/files/asset/document/Design%20methods%20for%20developing%20services.pdf

http://www.ijdesign.org/ojs/index.php/IJDesign/article/viewFile/994/340

http://www.exhibitionsinternational.org/extra/9789063692797_01.pdf

Ethnographic a qualitative research

by

Sundeep Bharthepudi

The ethnographic approach to qualitative research comes largely from the field of anthropology that involves trying to understand how people live their lives. The emphasis in ethnography is on studying an entire culture. The ethnographer becomes immersed in the culture as an active participant and records extensive field notes. Unlike traditional market research, anthropological research visits consumers in their homes or office to observe and listen in a non-directed way. The goal is to see people’s behavior on their terms, not the designers.

Ethnography is an extremely broad area with a great variety of practitioners and methods. However, the most common ethnographic approach is participant observation as a part of field research. The relationship a researcher shares with the world he or she is investigating is a central element of ethnographic work, owing to the relationship the ethnographer shares with participants and the ethical issues that flow from this close relationship. Within research reports, reflection is presented in the form of a description of the ethnographers ideas and experiences, which can be used by readers to judge the possible impact of these influences on a study.

During their observations, ethnographers routinely use informal or conversational interviews, which allow them to discuss, probe emerging issues, or ask questions about unusual events in a naturalistic manner. Because of the “casual” nature of this type of interview technique it can be useful in eliciting highly candid accounts from individuals. Ethnographers also gather formal in-depth interviews and documentary data such as minutes of meetings, diaries, and photographs. Participants or situations are sampled on an opportunistic basis. Analysis of ethnographic data tends to be undertaken in an inductive thematic manner: data is examined to identify and to categorize themes and key issues that emerge from the data. Through a careful analysis of their data, using this inductive process, ethnographers generate tentative theoretical explanations from their empirical work. Ethnographic work commonly uses methodological triangulation—a technique designed to compare and contrast different types of methods to help provide more comprehensive insights into the phenomenon under study. This type of triangulation can be very useful, as sometimes what people say about their actions can contrast with their actual behavior.

Ethnographic research offers several advantages. For example, the use of participant observation enables ethnographers to immerse themselves in a setting, thereby generating a rich understanding of social action and its subtleties in different contexts. Participant observation also gives ethnographers opportunities to gather empirical insights into social practices that are normally hidden from the public gaze. As in grounded theory, there is no preset limitation of what can be observed and no real ending point in an ethnographic study. While this observational method may appear inefficient, it enlightens about the context in which customers would use a new product and the meaning that product might hold in their lives. Additionally, since it aims to generate holistic social accounts, ethnographic research can identify, explore, and link social phenomena which, on the surface, has little connection with one another. Newer developments in ethnographic inquiries include auto-ethnography, in which researchers’ own thoughts and perspectives from their social interactions form the central element of a study ; meta-ethnography, in which qualitative research texts are analyzed and synthesized to empirically create new insights and knowledge; and online (or virtual) ethnography, which extends traditional notions of ethnographic study from situated observation and face to face researcher-participant interaction to technologically mediated interactions in online networks and communities.

Behavioral Game Design

By Sundeep Bharthepudi

The article I chose is from gamasutra dot com titled “Behavioral Game Design” by john hopson, who holds a PhD in Behavioral and Brain Sciences from Duke University and is currently the chairman of the IGDA Games User Research SIG. The article focuses on using behavioral psychology as a framework and vocabulary to experiment and understand contingencies that needed to be incorporated into a game while building it.The author explains contingencies which is providing rewards after a series of events or circumstances in a game which would drive the player to play the game more and more without being boring at the same time. According to human psychology we perform tasks because we have to and we want to. The article focuses on driving people to play by providing different patterns of rewards to help the player want to play more.

He categorizes contingencies using ratios and intervals. Ratio schedules provide rewards after a certain number of actions have been completed. For example, a player might gain an extra life after killing 20 opponents. On the other side of the coin there are interval schedules. Instead of providing a reward after a certain number of actions, interval schedules provide a reward after a certain amount of time has passed. For example a player might be required to shoot down approximately 20 enemy fighters to gain an extra ship, but the precise number is randomly generated each time. It’s important to note that the player does not know how many actions are required this time, just the average number from previous experience. At the end he concludes that there are numerous other things that influence players, but the basic patterns of consequences and rewards form the framework which enable all the rest. By understanding the fundamental patterns that underlie how players respond to what we ask of them, we can design games to bring out the kind of player we want.

http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/131494/behavioral_game_design.php

Fun: An Exploration in its Relevance to Interaction Design

When you are having fun and creating something you love, it shows in the product. So when a woman is sifting through a rack of clothes, somehow that piece of clothing that you had so much fun designing speaks to her; she responds to it and buys it. I believe you can actually transfer that energy to material things as you’re creating them- Tom Ford

The graduate design thesis I chose to review is called “Fun: An Exploration in its Relevance to Interaction Design” by Elise M. Woolley, B.S. from the University of Ohio. In the paper the author provided designers with a relevant definition of fun through her research. The basis for which was “funtinuum,” a qualitative scale of the dimensions of fun. A series of surveys, case studies and discussions were also conducted in the process. I like the authors point that “We can create fun by design and not by chance.” What was intriguing in the paper was how the author addressed fun- a human emotion which is not quantifiable and varies from person to person.

I think her research paper postulated funtinumm in a simple and effective way. I like the way the author used the results from her research methods, previous research methods and placed them in the funtinumm graph. That made the funtinumm graph more self explanatory and interesting. Also the way she explained at places where fun cannot be used. I think the author knew that it was broad subject matter but she did a very good job in defining, explaining and articulating funtinumm.

Research – Stock of Knowledge

Coming from a non art background my journey in art started through exploration and discovery through research. I used research for learning the theories, fundamental processes, techniques and tools in the filed of digital arts. Research has always helped me widen my knowledge and skills. Thanks to technology, information is available at a click of a button and research methods help us narrow our search from a broader scope. Research helps a lot in the initial phases of design processes but it brings out a side of influence after a period of time. Like anything else research has its advantages and disadvantages.

“If you steal from one author it’s plagiarism; if you steal from many it’s research”- Wilson Mizner

IMMINENT FATE OF VISION

In the imminent future, with advanced scientific knowledge and technological development there will be a great evolution in the human phenomenology. We humans use our senses that provide data to perceive things and the most vital one is our visual sense. We use our vision to experience and perceive the reality and existence of objects in a medium called space.

Space is a medium in which we observe an object based on its dimensions height, width, depth and we take time into consideration when the object is moving. Every object we perceive has two dimensions (height, width) unless we see it from an angle this is when the third dimensions (depth) comes into existence. At present human eye is capable of perceiving objects in only in three dimensions of space.

According to String and M-theory proposed by modern theoretical physicist an object exists in ten/eleven dimensions of space. Atom is the tiniest visible particle in the nature that makes up a matter. Atom consists of electrons, protons and neutrons. String theory states that the there exists an even tiniest particle inside atom with in electrons, protons and neutrons which looks like a string. This sting is in a constant vibrating motion. Due to its vibrating motion the visual existence of the object could not be explained using the three dimensions of space. This is where the ten/eleven dimensions come into the picture. It’s hard to visualize these dimensions because they are overlapping inside our bigger dimensions. The below image on the left is an assumed example of that. Consider the yellow grid as our bigger dimensions and the overlapping strings revolving are our extra dimensions. At present our brain and eyes are incapable of processing these dimensions. The image on the right is example of an object in five different dimensions of space.

       

At present our brain and eyes are incapable of perceiving these dimensions. We can only process the bigger dimensions. I believe over a period of time with the help scientific and technological development we can process our brains to perceive these extra dimensions. The best example would be the movie “Lucy” where the main character with the help of a drug is able to have phenomenological experience beyond human brain processing power. Once we attain that state, our experience of looking at objects will change because we are able to look in-depth of an object. It will have a lot of impact on design, designers and consumers. It will be a great help in sustainability because consumer can have a in-depth vision and knowledge of their products, so that they hold onto it for a longer time. Designers will have better opportunities to design, promote and advertise their product. The visual experience of movies and games will change.

Reference

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/phenomenology/
http://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/intriguing-science-art-from-the-university-of-wisconsin-26859088/
http://www.nature.com/news/theoretical-physics-the-origins-of-space-and-time-1.13613
http://education-portal.com/academy/lesson/what-are-3d-shapes-definition-examples-quiz.html#lesson
http://www.superstringtheory.com/experm/exper5.html
https://www.iusb.edu/currents/a-unified-theory-of-everything/
http://www.particlecentral.com/strings_page.html
http://patternizer.wordpress.com/2010/11/12/how-many-dimensions-is-your-world/