Dissertation Plan

Illustration List

Illustration 1

Found: http://abduzeedo.com/uiux-works-virgil-pana

Accessed: 27 September 2016

Description: This is the hamburger icon, the web ideology that to make things neater, the menu is hidden behind this icon. Some professionals argue that the menu becomes “out of sight, out of mind”

Illustration 2

Found: http://www.bluebell.com/

Accessed: 27 September 2016

Description: This image shows how messy mystery meat navigation is to the user. In the image, you are unable to decide whereabouts you should hover and it means the user is forced to hover to discover. This is really bad from a user experience point of view, and surprisingly this trend is still being used occasionally.

Illustration 3

Found: http://noisey.vice.com/blog/keshas-myspace-profile-from-2008-is-better-than-dj-khaleds-snapchat

Accessed: 27 September 2016

Description: This image shows what MySpace profiles used to look like when the user was able to control the design of their own profile. It is quite important to note how the user didn’t care about how they were perceived in this era, while nowadays, on Facebook, the current social media site, people only upload things that make them look as good as possible.

With particular reference to the public consumer, what are the significant trends and subsequent developments in web design in the western world over the last twenty-five years, and how have they impacted on society today?

Intro – 1,000 Words

– Basic history of the web

– Historic perspective

– Real world transformed, digitalised and utilised as electronic communication

– Trends till 1996

Economics – 1,000 Words

– Bidding

– Gambling

– Pornography

– Shopping

– Wholesaling

Gaming – 1,000 Words

– Technological advancements

– Connected players

– Gaming addiction

Privacy – 1,000 Words

– Consumer Awareness

– Encrypted messaging

Conferencing – 1,000 Words

– Removing limitations of distance

– From governments to the consumer

– The drone movement

Search – 1,000 Words

– The mighty web

– Yellow Pages

– Data Analysis

Evaluation – 1,000 Words

The dissertation should start by introducing what the web is and how it started, then continue to go on to make connections to the relevance of the service in relation to other services available at the time such as the television and telephone. Next it should explain that the web is a continuance of real life products and services then give an insight into the trends that had already started occurring by the webs’ 5th birthday.

In the Economics section, it will explore how the web has been taken advantage of in the aim of making money and how the different subsections all created and now partake in an online mass marketplace.

The gaming section will include information about how technology has limited the capacity of the games available to the consumer and that with ever improving technology, the games continue to improve. It can be mentioned that graphics and consoles are two major parts within this subsection. I can discuss how the internet has been able to bring players together to create online communities, and also mention how this has created a new addiction to online gaming.

Privacy needs to be considered when many people store personal information online, discussing how awareness of online privacy and the spying on the consumer by the government is important, it allows discussion of how many corporations have followed this trend by offering encrypted messaging services.

In the conferencing section discussion should note how mail evolved into email, which evolved into instant messaging, which in turn evolved into video chat services. It would be important to consider at this point that the web was built originally for government officials to contact each other during the war, and how the service was later made available for consumer use. A great way to back this point up would be to talk about the current drone movement, where yet another secret government product has been made public and then made available for consumer use.

Without search engines the web could be a large list of pages, just like the yellow pages for example. It means comparisons can be made on how the web has developed the trend of listing available services. It also means analysis can be made on how powerful of an income source the web can be by looking at how by tracking searches providers can provide more successful ad campaigns. The dissertation will also look at Google who have had huge success from being an online search engine to the point of being one of NASDAQs’ top valued companies’.

Books to offer support to essay

Luppicini, R. (2008). Handbook of conversation design for instructional applications. Hershey, PA: Information Science Reference;

This book can be vital part of my essay as it will allow me to understand how the function of the web has been paved by design

Fortune 500 homepages: design trends

SL Jones, D DeGrow – IEEE transactions on Professional Communication, 2011;

This book allows me to follow the trends as they developed, and how they were used by five hundred of the worlds biggest organisations.

The democratisation of design and design learning: How do we educate the next-generation designer, Katja Fleischmann, James Cook University, Australia;

This book helps me to understand how design and trends develop over time with the process of design being taught to a new generation that will bring a new perspective to the web.

The Internet of Things—A survey of topics and trends, Andrew Whitmore, Anurag Agarwal;

This book allows me to understand what trends are most popular and why. It also allows me to look at the theory of a connected world with the internet of things, an idea that all appliances should connect to the user wirelessly to allow greater control.

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Apple iPhone Essay

This essay looks at the developing phone market and where the future lies for the Apple iPhone. Apple has seen 13 years of financial growth, but as of April 2016, they announced their first revenue decline since 2003 (Thielman, Neate and Hern, 2016). This could suggest that the phone has reached maximum capability and upgrades are no longer required. The following looks at area where apple could develop it’s phone to enable continued capital growth.

Google has invested in R&D of a modular phone, which are now commercially viable in an increasingly environmentally conscious world. The LG G5, the first commercially available modular phone has just been released. This is paving the way for a new type of phone, a more customisable phone. Apple have always been known for not giving users the ability to customise their phones, their computers and phones are sealed to stop users from upgrading parts inside. This is proven by the fact they have a recycle system with a machine that takes apart the phone and deconstructs it part by part so that Apple can use the parts again in new phones, or sell them to external companies to be used in other products. Since Apple offers it’s customers payment plans for the iPhone itself without the data, so they can pay a monthly fee and upgrade to the next one comes out, this makes perfect sense.

iOT (Internet of Things) is an idea that everything should be connected to the web for the user to be able to control more easily. HomeKit is a prime example of where Apple could build more function within its’ iPhone. “HomeKit is a framework for communicating with and controlling connected accessories in a user’s home.”. This framework Apple has produced is the beginning of something huge, the IoT (Internet of Things) are a collection of devices that are designed and developed to connect with each other on a network. McKinsey & Company estimate that the industry will be worth between $200-$300 Billion by 2025 (McKinsey & Company, 2015). This technology paves the way for a truly connected home that is able to combine all of the data about the person who lives there to be able to create a much better and easier life for the homeowner. When all the devices in the home talk to each other they are able to create schedules for temperature, lighting, cooking, locks and so much much more in relation to any of the residents schedules. This can mean opening the curtains, switching on the radio, preparing a coffee and ensuring a warm temperature all before you’ve even woken up.

Siri, the personal assistant accessed by voice with “Hey Siri”, is already a very useful tool and can accomplish many tasks like setting an alarm, reminding you to do something when you leave home or make a call for you. While Siri is already very useful, imagine the potential when the iPhone has built in everything I have discussed in this essay. Statements like “Hey Siri, I’m going on holiday, give me directions to Leeds airport, Shut down the house and send Mike access my garage for next Tuesday”.

The current iPhone has the ability to track Parkinson’s disease progress, help diagnose autism and predict seizures when paired with an Apple watch. When the iPhone is able to track the data of it’s user, that data can also be shown to a doctor for feedback. Imagine a world where the phone extends life and even prevents death.

An important addition to this is that the phone is not only a powerful tool, but it has become a symbol of status. The phone now comes in three different sizes and four different colours with a range of accessories that come with it, ranging from wireless headphones, cases and a bluetooth watch branded as the Apple watch with prices reaching as high as £13,500 for the most expensive model. Apple markets its products within music videos, films and tv and in2014 it was the worlds biggest spender on product placement. (Yoshida, 2015)

The original telephone (from the Ancient Greek τῆλε (têle, “afar”) + φωνή (phōnḗ, “voice, sound”) was a means of voice communication over distance. Telephones were static, and in the early days public phone boxes requiring the insertion of coins were the commonplace means of speaking with someone at a distance, often connected by means of a switchboard operator.

The advent of cell phones or mobiles radically changed the face of communication. The other great communication imperative was the Internet. The combination of features of both into the iPhone (Steve Jobs, co-founder and CEO of Apple, stated at the debut of the iMac that the name derived from the excitement of the Internet combined with the simplicity of Macintosh, and the use of the lower case i has subsequently been taken to imply the Internet connection on other devices) has created a powerful instrument which is much more than a simple “voice to voice” machine.

The telephone has developed from a static handset in a public phone booth (some remain, particularly near known suicide sites) to the brick-sized clumsy mobile and subsequently to elegant slim machines which are themselves status symbols. Perhaps the shape will see further development: already wrist phones may be seen; with the exponential increase in micro-surgery procedures it is not impossible to imagine mobile phone circuitry to be inserted under the skin at birth and apps and further modifications added as the owner learns control. Touch sensitivity is a growing issue nowadays: what about mental control of one’s internal phone? Use of the mind alone to operate computer systems is becoming an increasingly viable possibility (Falcon et al., 2016) and a brain-computer interface is already established. Last year, the Brown researchers reported testing a prototype of a fully implanted interface, with the electronics housed inside a titanium can that can be sealed under the scalp, though the device is not yet commercialised (MIT Technology Review, 2016).  At the moment, “display” is becoming increasingly sophisticated. Consider if the display were directly to the retina, the voice transmitted directly to the inner ear.

References;

Falcon, A., Irina, A., Pataki, D., Duvall, A., Jamaluddin, A., Jamaluddin, A., Duvall, A., Jamaluddin, A., Jamaluddin, A., Khaliq, A. and Jamaluddin, A. (2016). 8 Mind-blowing Gadgets You Can Control Just With Your Brain. [online] Hongkiat.com. Available at: http://www.hongkiat.com/blog/brain-controlled-gadgets/ [Accessed 16 May 2016].

McKinsey & Company. (2015). Unlocking the potential of the Internet of Things. [online] Available at: http://www.mckinsey.com/business-functions/business-technology/our-insights/the-internet-of-things-the-value-of-digitizing-the-physical-world [Accessed 16 May 2016].

MIT Technology Review. (2016). A Brain-Computer Interface That Works Wirelessly. [online] Available at: https://www.technologyreview.com/s/534206/a-brain-computer-interface-that-works-wirelessly/ [Accessed 16 May 2016].

Thielman, S., Neate, R. and Hern, A. (2016). Decline in iPhone sales leads to first revenue decline in 13 years for Apple. [online] the Guardian. Available at: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/apr/26/apple-iphone-first-revenue-decline-13-years [Accessed 16 May 2016].

Yoshida, E. (2015). Apple had the most product placement in the films of 2014. [online] The Verge. Available at: http://www.theverge.com/2015/3/4/8147063/apple-transformers-age-of-extinction-product-placement [Accessed 16 May 2016].

Semiotic Analysis of the new E-UP Electric Volkswagen advert.+

The advert is one that I found online while browsing for electric cars. It is for the purpose of advertising the new electric car made by Volkswagen. The advert is incredibly simple, with a flat blue background to represent the sky, two tower blocks, a gas pump sign, an electric plug, a picture of the car, the name of the product, a little phrase to add meaning to the ad and the company logo.

There are lots of signs in this advert, the iconic signs present in this advert, are of the gas pump and the electric plug which are not scaled directly in proportion the the iconic signs of the buildings.

Possible indexical signs could be the lights within the room and the fact that it means someone is inside the room but you can’t see them.

The symbolic sign is the fact that the gas pump represents the type of energy you use to fuel your car that has direct relation to the fact you can only afford one room on the bottom floor of a flat, whereas the people who uses electric to fuel their can save much more money and afford to live in a much better apartment on the top floor of the building, in a more spacious penthouse apartment with the best view. The apartments are somewhat iconic of urban living, the image shows that the transition from petrol to electric effectively means that you easily afford to have a much better style of living from living in a small apartment to the penthouse apartments

There is a caption on the bottom of the advert below the image, “Spend on everything else but gas” which essential gives the image more impact because it explains the fact that if you use an electric car rather than a petrol car you will save a lot of money, enough money to spend on things other than just fuel. On the left there is an image of the car with a shadow underneath that would almost appear as if there is a spotlight on the car, a small reflection under the car would indicate that the car is available in the showroom and ready for purchase (which it is, priced at £24,270).

Volk is people in english and Wagen is Wagon in English also. The full translation of Volkswagen to English would mean PeopleWagon, a vehicle for the masses. Connotations of blue are expertise and stability and connotations of white are innocence and perfection. This indicates cool urban living with a luxury penthouse if you purchase the green energy powered car, rather than the financial struggle should you opt for the fossil fuel powered car.

References:

http://www.color-wheel-pro.com/color-meaning.html

http://www.adeevee.com/2014/10/volkswagen-e-up-electric-new-e-up-print/

http://www.volkswagen.co.uk/buying-guide/offers/e-up-nf/special/278