SNOW!!

It has snowed a large amount around Edinburgh and my home and I could not resist but get out and take some photos.

Here are some of them and Ill put some more on the photos page.

If you wish to buy high quality prints of any of these please contact me for details.

Wobes

Thanks to all those that have attempted my Wobes so far.

I have been continually tweaking them and now hopefully they are now easy to understand and respond to. I have only had a small number of responses so far so any feedback would be very much appreciated! The information you give me will go towards my final prototype, so this is your chance to shape it to something that would be great for you.

To take part in my Wobes research click here

Tea Party Research findings

The main things we found out about people were:

1. Clutter

- People aim for a tidy and clean looking home, but that they find it difficult to get that ideal mainly due to a build up of clutter.

- Clutter happens either due to laziness, or from things that people don't know what to do with at that particular time, or from just collecting too many things and not having enough space for it.

- Something that everyone I spoke to had a problem with was clothes that end up not going away incase they are needed tomorrow.

- Other things included papers and magazines.

- Some people admitted that they were hoarders and didn't throw anything away, as these things provided as a physical map of their life.

2. Organisation

- This is necessary especially for those things that are important.

- Objects that have sentimental value, or that represent a large amount of time are most treasured.

- Sharing spaces with people can lead to disorder


3. Social interaction

- Homes are a place to connect with people:

- Family members and friends

- Connecting with people should be actively engaging - television can often cut people off from each other

- People tidy up to make for a more relaxed environment with more space to socialise, and so that others don't judge them.

- Too much mess and clutter are seen as bad, however peoples limits are different. Generally a bit of clutter makes a home look lived in.

- People often socialise away from the home in a more mutual location, free from home stresses or embarrassment.


4. Ideal Workspaces

- solitary

- alone but connected with others - like sitting, working in a cafe

- Some vary their environment depending on their mood.

- workspace should have atmosphere (which makes you feel contained within your environment) and should not be over lit.



How does your life compare to these points? Tell me by leaving a comment

Interactive Tea Party

So now its Christmas and yes I am still alive and well.

Wow its been very busy these last few weeks! My Dissertation on 'to what extent home interiors magazines portray domesticity,' which has taken up a great deal of time, is finally in and finished. So now its just Adaptive Spaces from here on! Im very exited to get my teeth stuck in, and I will aim to keep you updated as much as I can.

I have done some interesting group work with other members of my course this term. Between the six members of our team we came up with the idea of an interactive tea party as a method to engage people and get information to build on for our separate projects. We held two of these, the first of which was on the top of Arther's Seat, the hill in the centre of Edinburgh.

We provided free tea and biscuits for any who were willing to take part in a quick game and a discussion, which was most people as the walk is reasonably steep.

We got there at about twelve and set up camp, displaying posters at various points on the journey up to the top. Soon we were overrun with people!



The game was based around a set of cards displaying pictures relating to different areas of the home, work or activities for leisure or travel which we named 'play'. We asked the participants to choose a number of cards that reflected certain aspects of their lives, and then used this as an ice breaker and a method of further discussion.

We repeated this in an indoor location in the newly opened Ephemeris Tea Room, on Marchmont Crescent. This was also successful and allowed us to speak to a range of people, including those who would be unlikely to venture up Arther's Seat.

Finding

I have been back at Edinburgh College of Art (ECA) for four weeks now. We, here in the Product Design department, have been working on methods of research for our projects. The course is set up so that we are all doing similar things throughout the different years so that we can see what other people are doing and learn from them.

I am in my final year at ECA and for this year we have had to come up with an 'area of interest' to pursue for the entire year. My area of interest, I have named Adaptive Spaces. This is about adapting space to best suit our needs. The course is broken down into four sections: Find, Play, Make and Talk. Find is basically research, this is the area that I am currently working on. Play is about coming up with concepts and making models. Make is producing the final prototype. Talk is about getting people involved and convinced about your idea.

To find out more about my project go to 'CURRENT'.

The main method of research we are covering at the moment is 'Cultural Probes' or to avoid possible innuendo, 'Cultural Stimuli'. This is a strategy that has come about in recent years in order to get the user much more involved in the design process, with the hopeful outcome, to produce products that are actually needed and useful. An example of a really useful cultural probe is a camera used by the market to take photographs showing aspects of their lives. This allows researchers to unintrusively enter into peoples homes, work etc and see what are the real areas for improvement, not just those that they assume are.

'What I really want is to design for you.'

My project is based around adapting to spaces, or creating spaces which adapt to the needs of the user, however what I really want is to design for you. I have set up a number of simple web based probes to try and target the different areas of your lives that I think relate to my project. I understand as much as anyone how busy our lives can be, but also that although we may not think so there is time in the day to do things if we just do them. I have constructed the web probes in sections so that they can be slotted in to your daily lives, perhaps one a day. You can answer them in several ways:
- Answer the questions and do the tasks as and when you find them, there and then.
- Or else write the questions down the night before, or first thing in the morning and make note of things through the day when you come across them. This is the preferred method as it will almost certainly bring up things that you wouldn't think of if you simply sat down and did it.

If you complete a web probe (or perhaps I should say Wobe in todays ocean of digital abbreviations,) and you think of something else that you didn't add, please just go back onto the wobe you were thinking of and fill in the section again with your new findings. As long as you put the same name and email address I can recognise it as you and keep all your info together.

Help me design for you. Look around you, everything you see has been designed to some extent. This is your chance to help me change the world for the better.

Go to Wobes - Click Here.

Welcome to my New Website

Hello

After days of toiling relentlessly over my computer like a stranded troglodyte I am proud to present to you my new website. www.willhalldesign.co.uk
As you can see it is still unfinished but stay with it and see it get better and better.

I have been using a number of programs in the construction of this site. Namely: Dreamweaver for the code, Rapidweaver for the content and Photoshop for the images.

For those of you that don’t know, Dreamweaver and Photoshop are part of the Adobe Creative Suite, and are industry standard programs. Dreamweaver is a program for building websites from scratch but is also very useful for editing code. Rapidweaver is a template based web design program whereby you can choose your template and then simply add your content into the content area of your screen. Using Rapidweaver you can build websites with no knowledge of code especially using the YourHead plugins such as Blocks, which gives you a What You See Is What You Get (WYSIWYG) interface. However some knowledge of code gives you much more freedom for getting the website you want.

Photoshop is a pixel based program, as opposed to vector based, whereby it is possible to do almost anything imaginable visually. Check out Concept Art to see some of the extents you can go with Photoshop - especially if you are interested in art!

Let me know what you think about the website, what to improve. Do you like the layout? Is it visually interesting enough?

Thanks for reading.

Will :)