25.04.15 — Travel

Sunny Leeds, Sunny London

As you may have guessed, I have now returned to Leeds as Easter draws to a close, and have just finished my first week back – and what a week it’s been! It was lovely to see everyone again, and we kicked things off with a feedback session on our briefs.

My tutor suggested that I refine my target audience for my cookbook design brief, and I thought that the best way to do this was to pay the client’s restaurant a visit – which meant a trip down to London! I got straight onto National Express and booked myself a ticket for Thursday – but more on that in just a sec…

After the feedback session I had forgotten my laptop charger, but the glorious sunshine outside made the round trip back home less daunting, and also allowed me the chance to take a quick wander round campus snapping some photos.

Sassy red boots and some springtime flowers

On Monday, after talks from returning students on their year in industry placement experiences (which included a free lunch, which had no bearing on my decision to attend at all), I had signed up to a one-off workshop on Wednesday with Bruce Usher. It was a refreshing and enjoyable workshop, where we were set a day-long brief of developing General Election political posters, a welcome break from the same two briefs I have been working on since the new year.

After the workshop I had to be sure to get an early night in, ready for a 5:30am start to grab a cab down to Leeds Coach Station for the 4½ hour trip down to Victoria Coach Station. After taking the opportunity to read some design literature, and after an hour stuck in stationary London rush hour traffic, I finally found myself wandering the streets of our surprisingly sunny capital.

I first headed to the location where I wanted to do some visual research, and spent a while looking around the area and snapping as many photos as I could. Then, after getting lost on the tube, I managed to find my way down to the Tower Of London, whereby I decided to make like a tourist and grab an ice cream and sit by Tower Bridge for a while.

I then made my way over Tower Bridge, snapping plenty of photos on the way. Wandering round London alone was admittedly quite strange, but it was good to get the research done and then allowed me to wander round at my own pace and do what I want. Izzy’s local knowledge wouldn’t have gone amiss though, as once I found myself on the other side of the Thames I managed to get lost again…

All quiet by this section of the Tower of London

A lovely clear sky and the cyan of Tower Bridge

After I found my bearings, I headed off to Camden for a snoop around the markets, and grabbed myself some poffertjes (delicious Dutch style baby pancakes) smothered in Nutella. Needless to say they didn’t last long, and I was soon back on the tube to Victoria to kill an hour or so before I had to head back to the coach station.

And so what to do? For me, no trip to London is complete without a trip to Buckingham Palace, so I wandered down the aptly named Buckingham Palace Road and sat on the Queen Victoria Memorial for half an hour or so, soaking up the last rays of the rare English sun, sipping on some Oasis and offering to take photos for tourists passing through.

After a while though, it was time to head back and board the coach back to Leeds. After a huge holdup on the M1 and locking myself out of the coach toilet (don’t ask), I landed back in Leeds just after 1am, when needless to say I hailed the first cab home and crashed straight into bed.

So all in all quite an action-packed first week back, with no sign of giving up with our hand-in deadlines fast approaching. My summer is looking pretty packed too – with a trip with Rhea lined up to visit Luisa and co. in Germany for a week, the family holiday booked to Lagos in Portugal, more scholarship work to complete, and plenty of placement searching to be done.

19.04.15 — Design

Privacy & Anticipatory Design

An article recently posted in Fast Co. Design recently caught my attention, as it was entitled “The Next Big Thing in Design? Less Choice.” As the title of this post may suggest, it was indeed talking about anticipatory design.

This concept is not wholly new, and for those unacquainted with the term, I shall now attempt to summarise the concept as succinctly as possible. Anticipatory design, as suggested by it’s blatant nomenclature, is design which utilises a given knowledge base to anticipate decisions and choices so that a user has to merely approve decisions that a given system has made for them. Sometimes this may even mean that the user is wholly detached from the decision making process – leaving the systems to equate and decide instead.

As the article says, anticipatory design has been around for some time already now, albeit in less automated forms. Think about YouTube’s suggested video section which suggests videos for you to watch based on your viewing history, or Amazon’s recommended items which curates a selection of items which are frequently bought with products you have recently ordered.

The problem I found with anticipatory design when I first read the article was the one that Aaron Shapiro addresses within the article itself, that of whether the user should allow automated systems to make decisions for them, or whether a sense of more granular control is preferable.

Just today I was editing photos for my previous lifestyle blog post and found myself hitting Apple’s auto-enhance button in the iOS Photos app, which enhanced my photos beautifully as I’d have liked – but even then I felt the need to go and adjust each granular colour and brightness setting manually, just so that I could be sure I had the image exactly the way I wanted to.

But I do, of course, see the attraction in having a one-click enhance function. It’s perfect for people like my sister who want to take and upload good-looking photos on the fly.

Maybe, then, anticipatory design just needs to adjust itself to suit different user groups. Light users want quick and simple options, they want the systems to sweat the small stuff and do the hard work. Pro users, however, want access to every little option and setting that they can. What does this mean for UX? I could write a whole new post about it – and maybe I will – but for now let’s tackle an issue that came to me as I was clambering into bed the other night and which spurred the writing of this blog post: privacy.

In today’s connected world privacy is now very much at the forefront of public awareness, especially given recent events such as Snowden’s NSA leaks – even if the revelation of the existence of such widespread recording/monitoring activities came as no surprise to myself. People talk a lot about personal data and privacy, and web users are becoming increasingly aware of how their personal details can be used and abused.

So then, when we know that anticipatory design works on a system of analysing personal data, how can this invaluable privacy and the future of convenient design comfortably coexist? Surely if we allow such systems to amass such huge reserves of personal data, then we are effectively sacrificing our privacy and exposing ourselves to the risks associated with allowing the storage of such details?

Take Google for example, a company who’s interconnected network of services (YouTube, Gmail, Google Calendar etc.) are already pushing anticipatory design forward. These services share a user’s data between each other to both make a user’s life easier (and yes, also to deliver tailored advertising), however when people realise that their data is being used in this manner, there’s uproar.

So we may be able to anticipate people’s decisions before they make them, but will they want us to? Having an algorithm work out the best adjustments to your image is one thing, having it know what you want to say and to whom before you do is definitely another.

The data to make such decisions is probably, in most cases, already collected and ready to be put to use. But if we do, will we scare users away? Will anticipatory design’s unintentional (and possibly catastrophic) secondary function be to reveal the true extent of data collection and how very little privacy we all really have?

And if it does, then we must really must ask: is the world ready for anticipatory design?

— Journal

Our Mini Heatwave

Over the past few days the sun over Burnley has done the unthinkable, and emerged from its hideout above the dark valley clouds to bless us with a few days of weather which is good enough that we may emerge from our homes and breathe some actual fresh air.

Dramatic as this statement may seem, it belies not the sentiment of us Burnley folk, for it is rare that such days occur. Anyway, making the most of this temporarily lapse in the usually constant downpour, I decided to go on a few little trips…

The first was not all that adventurous, I merely stepped out of my house and took an hour’s walk around my local reservoir, but it was nice enough. I took my new camera out and snapped what I could along the way, including the looming electrical lines and a funky looking tree that my mother clambered into.

Today the weather was even so nice as to warrant a trip to my favourite ice cream parlour, Slater’s Ices in Nelson, and so my dad bravely let me drive there. I ordered my favourite bubblegum ice cream, and somehow managed to get the majority of it in my hair. I really have no idea how.

Hell yeah bubblegum and hundreds & thousands

On the drive back my dad suggested that we make a quick detour and stop off at Reedley Marina, a local marina sitting on the Leeds Liverpool canal which runs through Burnley. Camera still in tow, I took the opportunity to take even more photos. I have never been down on such a nice day, and it was very nice to be able to sit by the waterside for a while and enjoy the views of Pendle Hill, for once not shrouded in a grey fog.

On the way out I found this strange mirror just left perched up against a fence, so I went in and snapped a photo. It reminded me of my friend Hannah Whitlow‘s artwork which uses mirrors and other media to explore spaces. You should go check it out.

In other news I once again plundered Lush for more bath bombs and other goodies, and finally picked up a “Granny Takes A Dip” bath bomb – and what fabulous colours it made! I ran to grab my camera and take some snaps.

And so I end my colourful blog post looking forward to my return to Leeds tomorrow. It’ll be a busy final run up to summer, with internship applications and project deadlines looming, but it should be lots of fun. Seeing as I’m looking forward to summer, you should check out my friend Emma’s blog, “The Simplest of Things”. She posts a beautiful mix of recipes, stunning photos and uplifting playlists which are sure to bring a smile to your face. Do check it out.

11.04.15 — Journal

Working With Sky Sports

It’s the weekend, and I’ve just finished my internship with Sky Sports, and what a busy time it has been! Upon my arrival I was presented with a brief, and then for the duration of my stay I was labelled as the ‘internet of things’ intern.

I started by researching what the new trend of the ‘internet of things’ may have in store for us consumers over the next few years, exploring devices which are just entering the market such as the Apple Watch and connected home appliances (see Amazon’s recent announcement of the Amazon Dash).

The ‘internet of things’, for those who may be unfamiliar with the term, describes the recent trend of having everyday appliances and electronics connected to the internet in order to imbue them with more functionality: think a fridge that could text you to say you’re running out of milk or a plant pot which will email you to water the plants. It sounds like science fiction, but those familiar will be well aware that the internet of things and home automation are rapidly taking off. Just this morning I ordered the Apple Watch, a device which will tap me on my wrist to let me know when there’s something that needs my attention.

Over the week I wound up designing a whole new live sports experience, integrating with a range of Sky’s existing products and services. I have to digress now, however, as I am bound to secrecy – but some of the work will make its way on to my portfolio once I have collated it and it has been green-lit by the Sky Sports team.

And so in other news I am writing this as I sit on a (very delayed) train back to the green land that is Worsthorne, where I captured this adorable little lamb on my new camera as I went a-wandering a few days ago.

Over the coming week, before I return back to Leeds, I shall be completing my latest brief: designing a cookbook for an undisclosed client…

I apologise that this post doesn’t say all that much about anything, but I wanted to keep you as up to date as I could whilst sinking ever deeper into pool of non-disclosure agreements. Ahh – the joys of work!

03.04.15 — Travel

A Camera in Liverpool

So after years of being possibly the only graphic designer in the world ever who operates without owning an actual camera, I took the plunge the other day and ordered myself a DSLR, which promptly arrived on my doorstep with a user manual as thick as a bible. Defiant in my ability to work it out as I go, I joined my parents and sister on a trip to Liverpool the very next day…

We visited many of the same places as the last time I visited the city, which you can read about here, but I was sure to explore Bold Street (an independent district) much more thoroughly this time!

For those interested, I got myself a Canon 700D, and all the photos in this post were taken with it.

We ventured around Wellington Column and St. George’s Hall before heading down to St. John’s Garden, and then we headed into the city centre for a spot of shopping. I found a little art shop and had a field day in their bountiful pen section, spending £20+ on some new white finalisers and calligraphy pens for some hand type experimentation. I also picked up a few lovely prints, including a card that I have posted off to somebody…

Me and my dad then headed for a spot of lunch in the lovely little Falafel & Cocktail shop, Malay. Ordering four small dishes between the two of us, we enjoyed a section of vegetarian and meat dishes, which were delicious!

We then left Bold Street, headed for The Bluecoat for a nosey round their photography exhibitions and a coffee break. It was a welcome break from the rain that had begun to dampen my exploratory spirit, and – rather worryingly – my camera, and provided an opportunity to import my photos via SD Card on to my iPad. This gave me the chance to edit some of my favourites so far, just using iOS’s inbuilt photos app, which I used to quickly edit down all the photos in this post.

We then, of course, headed further down to the docks, where I got a bit shutter happy, but also found a lovely book entitled “Read This Book If You Want To Take Great Photographs” which I promptly purchased.

Upon my return to good ol’Burnley, I emptied my bag and set about editing the camera photos (the fruits of which you have just been scrolling through) and also my very first attempt at some hand typography, which I shall post soon as a separate post!

Now I’m gearing up for my week working with Sky Sports, whilst organising my laptop and pulling together some more blog posts for you all. I haven’t forgot about my Paul Rand post, I shall be hopefully posting that later today! Until then…

Monthly Archives: April 2015