FV: Crazy 8s

The crazy 8s, Googles’ method of wireframing its’ designs is what I used with this project.

Here are the two crazy 8’s I did.

The homepage;

Customising the frog;

Breaking down what the different sections do;

The homepage section is the most important as it where the user will be greeted with content. This page should define the look and feel of the rest of the site, so therefore should reflect all of my research thus far.

HOMEPAGE

HOMEPAGE 1 (above): This homepage sets out the view of the world map for the user to select certain countries that they can visit, this homepage has an icon in the top which contains the profile data of the user. Additional links can be added along the top of this design.

HOMEPAGE 2 (above): This homepage has a much more defined structure as it lists the flags in a grid view for the user but maintains large menu along the top which can contain user data and additional links.

HOMEPAGE 3 (above): This homepage takes the setting of a frogs natural habitat, a pond in which it would live. The frog can sit atop lily pads while signs in the bakcground contain the navigation of the site, and addition content.

HOMEPAGE 4 (above): This homepage is similar to the 3rd one but instead it offers a much more zoomed in version of the frog that allows for a top navigation.

HOMEPAGE 5 (above): This homepage is a lot cleaner, with a black bakcground and frog resting on a branch, it means that the navigation can become the center of attention for the user.

HOMEPAGE 6 (above): This homepage is like homepage 4 but is again zoomed in more. The main difference with this one is that the content portrayed behind the frog can change in a more 3d enviroment, making the homepage much more interactive.

HOMEPAGE 7 (above): This homepage is a standout design where the page is an intereactive game while it also serves as the function of the main menu too. It gives a new breathe of life to something that is otherwise potentially boring for my target audience.

HOMEPAGE 8 (above): This homepage is very simple as it portrays the frog sitting on a frog in a pond, the menu is tucked away in a side navigation, to allow the homepage just be the main visual of the site.

CUSTOMISING THE FROG

CUSTOMISING THE FROG 1 (above): This frog customisation page features the frog on his lily pad with the customisable items kept in a fixed sidebar that the user can scroll through.

CUSTOMISING THE FROG 2 (above): This frog customisation page features much more importance on the character and how it looks with the items, in this version the user can look the the catalog and select items they want to wear.

CUSTOMISING THE FROG 3 (above): This frog customisation page is like the second where it focuses on the character but this time instead of selecting a catalog to look through the user is presented with the flags and the items categorised by their country.

CUSTOMISING THE FROG 4 (above): This frog customisation page puts a lot more attention on the specific items being changed as it zooms on the relevant area of the frog of which the item of clothing is being chamnged. As the user browses the items the flag in the corner changes to be relevant to the item.

CUSTOMISING THE FROG 5 (above): This frog customisation page allows the user a lot mor customisation as it allows them to drag and drop the specific items from a side store of the items.

CUSTOMISING THE FROG 6 (above): This frog customisation page puts much more importanceon the items as the frog is much smaller while the items are much bigger allowing the user to scroll through them.

CUSTOMISING THE FROG 7 (above): This frog customisation page allows for the frog and items to be seen equally,  the frog is shown in a spotlight while the items can be displayed by flag.

CUSTOMISING THE FROG 8 (above): This frog customisation page is the same as the one shown above with just the simple change of showing the frog on a lily pad rather than in a spotlight.

TESTING ON USERS

Once i had complied these designs the testing on the user was soon to begin, what I doscovered was the following;

The homepages were all relevant to the design so picking one was difficult but the homepage being a world map was most popular as it was highly visual and relevant.

The audience thought it would be too much choice to select a country at this section, so here the user should choose just the contininent, then choose the country they wish to visit within that continent. This is done using the two screens above.

The next wireframe to be chosen by the target audience was the 5th customisation screen;

The reason for this as it looks like a really simple layout which is easy to use, with a drag and drop ability for the user.

Other wireframes were less important and relied so heavily on the digital artwork that it made more sense to create digital wireframes, these can be seen here for the digital experience mockup.

 

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Wireframes

The wireframes are a vital stage within the design process. I started with the list of vital information created from my research and set about creating a design that held of that information. It is vital to remember that the entire experience was streamlined as much as possible to create an easy to use website but also to allow the animations to work.

HOME

Starting in the top centre image you are presented with three updates, these are anything to do with the festival itself, new announcments or news of artists. Along with this information, there is a timer until the festival starts, videos and images of the previous years festival. This means new or returning visitors will have something interesting to see.

MAP

This is a great function that I will not fully be able to represent fully in my design itself because of it’s complicated and techincally difficult nature. There is a map of the entire site, with iconography and key to link up with to allow the user to see where the different items are on a map. This is good for users to get to grips with the location before they arrive, but it really would come into it’s own league when the user arrives at the festival and uses the mobile version of the site. It would allow the users to be able to pinpoint their location on the festival site, so that then they could see where they need to go to find toilets, the nearest food or bar stand. This is great, but another feature would be that the users could find their friends on the map. This means that the biggest problem of loosing friends is easily resolved!

LINEUP

This is my wireframe really shines, compared to the artist profiles there is a lot more information about the artist and a much nicer experience. Instead of a list of names, there’s an entire page dedicated to the images of the artist and their name. When on their profile  you will find a themed page with the artist details and songs playing in the background!

TICKETS

I wanted to streamline this as much as possible, there are currently 36 ticket variations including add ons, and the ui is difficult to understand. I broke choosing the ticket down into 3 simple stages which makes the purchase much more straightforward.

Mockup of content management system

While using the couch content management system was reasonably simple to install and use, it is important to consider that a fully editable site would include its own content management system. Therefore this was the reasoning behind researching what good content management systems looked like. The influences of the interface design can be seen here;

After this stage I went on to create wireframes based upon my research, you can see these here;

Finally, I created actual designs of my content management system, you can see this here;

Wireframes

Wireframes are an integral part of the design stage, these are all of the wirefreames that I created for the php based site. Take into consideration that because the designs were created for a php based site, the functionality came before design, therefore the design is nice and simple to allow me to spend the majority of my time spent coding on the technical php.

Wireframes

The wireframe stage was most important as it allowed us as a group, to streamline our ideas, and get feedback on the designs we had created. The idea was that we would be able to create four wireframes each to begin with, two different designs for both desktop and mobile. We would then bring in both and discuss the benefits of each and the reasons for choosing certain elements of the wireframe. This was a good process as it then allowed us to com back with a better wireframe that combined the best parts of the first two. Once we were at this stage, we combined both mine and Aidan together to create wireframe that had the best parts of the previous wireframes. Since there were three completely separate stages within the design process of the wire framing it meant we were able to smoothen out any flaws within the design. Below you will see the process between the different wireframes.

Alistair Kenyon-Brodie First Desktop Design

Alistair Kenyon-Brodie Second Desktop Design

Alistair Kenyon-Brodie Combined Desktop Design

Alistair Kenyon-Brodie First Mobile Design

Alistair Kenyon-Brodie Second Mobile Design

Alistair Kenyon-Brodie Combined Mobile Design

Aidan Crow First Desktop Design

Aidan Crow Second Desktop Design

Aidan Crow Combined Desktop Design

Aidan Crow First Mobile Design

Aidan Crow Second Mobile Design

Aidan Crow Combined Mobile Design

Combined Mobile Design

Combined Desktop Design

As you can see the wireframes began with a very simple design, something worth noting from the offset is the way both of the designs contain an overlay on top of the welcome image. Aidan’s was the logo, mine was the greeting message, this is something we decided from the beginning that we should keep for the final version, and you can see in the final design that the images have an overlay that is specific to their state. Aidan and I had a similar idea when it came to the categories page, and how to present the different ones. Mine consisted of segments with images inside that represented the category while Aidan had a blank page which held icons for each category. This is again something we combined, so that the background image changed to something that related to the category when you hovered over the icon.

Design of Multipage website

The final design was mocked up taking the best parts from previous designs and creating wireframes to begin with to arrange everything in the best manner possible you can see these here:

  You see here I have been influenced by some design work on Apple’s website;

Next I created a visual design with every detail covered so that when it came to coding the site it would be as straightforward as possible. You can see every page here;

Wireframes & Designs.

A wireframe is like an architects ‘blueprint’ but instead of a building its of a webpage. It is the general hierarchy of the content, it excludes the images, buttons, colours, style, colour and graphics an focuses solely upon the functions, hierarchy of content and the different scenarios the site can be seen, desktop, tablet and mobile. Much like designing a logo for the first time, you must make sure it works in both black and white. The wireframe is drawn up in black and white, this can be done in multiple ways, there are many resources available for developers and designers on the web but you can also draw on paper, whiteboard or even a mockup within photoshop itself. Due to the simplicity of the concept of making wireframes, they are very quick therefore allows you to create many concepts in a small amount of time.

I also created physical designs with colour and images to help me visualise and decide which one would be best. I used colours that would best portray the business based upon the colour research, to provoke certain emotions in the user.

Here are my three wireframes & their physical design…

Number 1.

This wireframe gives the user something relate to, it tells the story of someone who comes home to discover their roof is leaking, then called acorn roofing to get it fixed. You get to see as as user the result of using the company, this tries to my brainstorm researching the sales techniques, having interested the user, now at the end of the page, a telephone number to contact the business. This method works in theory but comes across as cheesy, childish and unprofessional. I decided not to use this as my design.

Number 2.

The most professional and easy to follow wireframe, this is the one i decided to take through and actually design as a final website. It gives the user what it wants, a description of the company, confidence with using their services because of previous customer’s comments on the work that had been done and finally the contact details. This wireframe cuts to the chase and gives the user what it wants.

Number 3.

Very similar to wireframe number 2 in the sense that it is designed to cut out clutter and give the user what it wants, its style is also very similar. The drawbacks of this wireframe is that the ‘above the fold’ section of the site is simply an image with the logo and contact details which doesn’t particularly entice the user to scroll. The contact section of this page seems to be quite messy also.

References:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Website_wireframe

http://webdesign.tutsplus.com/articles/a-beginners-guide-to-wireframing–webdesign-7399

http://uxmovement.com/wireframes/the-importance-of-tying-personas-to-wireframes/

http://wireframes.linowski.ca/wp-content/themes/darwin/images/PersonaTemplate.pdf