Introduction
For this assignment i will expand on the technical and visual communication tactics from prior DES240 Assignments for your final DES240 Assignment. Working in groups of two, create a basic interactive experience that aims to inform the 'user' on how they can help change the status quo of my statistic. As a team, we'll go through an iterative design process, this time experimenting with various interface design ideas.
Team : Saving Glaciers
Art Director : Nora Zheng
Technical Lead : Tom Moloney
SDG: climate change
statistics：Glacier ice volume decreased 25 percent from 1977 to 2016. - (Stats NZ, 01.2018)
Mood board
Painting style reference and inspiration collection ( climate issues illustrations).
Initial sketches
we sketched some possible ideas to visualise solutions. and selected two best solutions and combined them to make the next version of the sketch.
created by Nora Zheng
created by Tom Moloney
Sketches 1: In front of the picture are buildings with lights on, and in the background is a melting glacier. Interaction is to turn off the lights by clicking on the windows of the building to save energy and slow down the melting of glaciers.
Sketches 2: The main body of sketch 2 is an island. The viewer can trigger different changes by clicking the button at the bottom of the screen. These options are harmful or beneficial factors that will affect glacier melting.
We decided to make the improvement based on sketch 2 and add the idea of melting glacier in the background of sketch 1.
The first sketch iteration
Viewers will trigger beneficial or harmful changes by clicking a different option button at the bottom of the screen. The glacier in the background is melting from the beginning. When the viewer clicks the harmful option, the glacier will melt faster, when clicking the beneficial option, the glacier melting speed will slow down. In this way, we hope to let the public know how to reduce the carbon footprint.
Final design
We changed the way of interaction. The viewer will Interact with the environment to slow down the melting glacier. In this way they need to find changeable objects themselves, which will be more interesting and challenging.
In addition, we added start and two end interfaces, fail and win (both link to the original start screen).
Start interface
Interactive prompt, melting glacier image, start button
End interfaces
Failed interface: tips for interaction, melted glacier image, chosen statistics, restart button
Succeed interface: glacier image, chosen statistics, restart button
The final iteration
Presentation
Statement of Intent
The goal of this GIF is to improve the viewer's comprehension of how they may help change the current state of glacier melting.
The first is the start interface, which displays a prompt of the interaction method. After clicking the start button, the viewer will go to the next scene. The glacier in the background is melting (falling) from the beginning. When the viewer clicks on the object in the scene, it will help to slow down the melting speed of the glacier, and the viewer needs to trigger all changes before the glacier completely melts. If they succeed, a congratulations interface will appear. If they are too slow to trigger all objects before the glacier completely melts, a failure interface will appear. There will be a prompt about the triggered object in the failure interface. And in both interfaces, there is the statistics we choose and the restart button.
According to Luke Wing (n.d.), 'New Zealand is home to over 3,000 glaciers', therefore glacier melting is a serious problem for New Zealand. Meanwhile, melting will affect creatures all over the world, including us. The melting of glaciers will be accompanied by the rise of sea level, which will lead to the loss of homes and extinction of the creatures living in the glacier. This is not just a problem for New Zealand but also for the whole world.
Reflection
Team reflection
We believe we have successfully created an interactive experience to help make the user think about and possibly change their actions to decrease their carbon footprint. We think this creates an opportunity for people to realise what activities are occurring in the world currently and how they can be changed to positively.
Personal reflection
As an art director, making assets is not difficult for me. The process is relatively smooth. The focus is on creating harmonious and unified images. As for coding, the code for this assignment is much more complex than before, but I didn't provide help with the code because I'm not good at it and my role is art director. I appreciate Tom's efforts and I know he spent a lot of time dealing with our GIF animation code.
References
- Annual glacier ice volumes by Stats NZ (30 January 2018, 10:45am) https://www.stats.govt.nz/indicators/annual-glacier-ice-volumes
- 10 Facts You Did Not Know About New Zealand’s Glaciers by NZ pocket guide (n.d.)