The topic my group got given was: 5 A Day
To understand the
topic ‘5 a Day’ better, we researched into the origin of the phrase, as well as
seeing if it is a cultural or universal rule. We also wanted to see if the
government set it up, and if other countries follow it or if they have their
own rules:
-5 A Day is
used in the UK, USA and Germany. It was introduced aftr a recommendation from
the World Health Organisation, who have calculated that we should eat a minimum
of 400 grams of fruit and vegetables a day, in order to stay healthy.
- It was
introduced in late 2002 in the UK. After over ten years of the programme being
in place, research indicates that the number of people who achieve this is very
little.
- The “5 A Day”
scheme seems to not be marketed much, but strangely, everyone knows of it.
Initial Spider Diagrams:
A list of social communication methods, mainly networking sites. We also listed how you can communicate with others on each website
eg. Facebook - Uploading photos, status', comments, tagging, sharing, poking, groups, events and likes.
Chosen Idea / Concept : An app that counts how often you use Facebook, and possibly controls it.
The focus of the app relies on our given topic: "5 A Day": Either push people to use Facebook 5 times a day, or use the social network 5 times less a day. We chose to use the latter, as we thought it would be much more realistic.
App Development:
This sheet shows the navigation of the app, with our chosen name of "5 Less".
Adam and I produced this:
Working from this sheet Adam and I came up with as a reference, Emily produced these mock ups:
iPhone App:
iPad Format:
Colour Variations:
Start up Page:
Menu Page:
To use the app, you would set up the account initially, signing in through Facebook. For the next week, the app would monitor how many times you check your Facebook. It would do this through counting how many times the user logs into Facebook through the app.
An average for daily usage would made, and when a week has passed, you would receive a notification on your phone when it has been completed and the app can be put to it's use:
A mock up of the notification you would receive:
Having received this, your goal would be to reduce your count by 5 that week.
Punishment: We considered what would happen if you do not stick to the reduction, and came up with the idea of posting an embarrassing photo (that you had chosen from a selection of tagged Facebook photos) as your Facebook status.
Mock up:
Website:
We intended to have a website, where you could track your progress using a calendar, as well as possible social networking with others, to see how they're doing with their reduction, as well as how far they are into the project.
Promotion:
Guerilla Advertising: In order to make our app known, we liked the extreme of Guerrilla advertising. Sticking to the "5 a Day" theme, we planned to stick adverts to do with our app/ a twitter page on fruit and veg in supermarkets. We would compose a video of us doing it, then promote it on youtube.
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Crit:
For the crit, we had to come up with a concept, a context and a method of delivery:
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Examples of our inspirational tweets:
2.
2.
Quotes Tweet5 Put on:
As a group, we produced variations of stickers to place around Leeds strategically, in places where people are most likely to tweet.
We used my original logo design, as well as variations that Grace and Adam came up with:
Stickers Ready For Print:
Clear Stickers:
A list of social communication methods, mainly networking sites. We also listed how you can communicate with others on each website
eg. Facebook - Uploading photos, status', comments, tagging, sharing, poking, groups, events and likes.
We took '5 A Day' as a more of an overall theme of doing 5 positive things a day that make you healthier. As "Communication is a Virus", social networking could be seen as unhealthy, so maybe 5 steps a day could be taken to cure it.
Positives and Negatives of Facebook:
We came to the conclusion that Facebook's negatives out-weigh it's positives.
Negatives:
- Invasion of Privacy - Strangers can find out information about you that you may not realise you have posted, such as your address or your friends/ family.
- False acceptance of friends - Your Facebook "friends' do not reflect your true friends. You communicate with people on Facebook that you may not in person, so is there any point to it?
- Anti Social - Despite being a "social network", people often spend too long actually on Facebook, as oppose to physically socialising. I have often seen people in public not interacting, due to constantly scrolling through Facebook.
- Peer Pressure - People feel that they're "out of the loop" if they do not have Facebook - such as Ant in my group. Events are often organised on Facebook, and if you do not have it, then you can often miss out on actual social events.
- Addiction / Obsession - There is now a growing problem where people become obsessed with how they look online. They build up a false profile of their personality/ looks, and try to maintain it.
For research on this, please look at my Design Context post, here.
Chosen Route - Addiction to Facebook
Primary Research
In order to study Facebook addiction, we wanted to see how often we used Facebook ourselves. We all made a tally of how often we used social networking on a certain day:
My tally:
Facebook: 36 times
Twtitter: 22 times
Instagram: 14 times
Buzzfeed: twice
Overal time spent on social networking sites physically looking: Roughly an hour and half.
Overal time spent logged into social networking sites but minimised: 10 hours.
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The next day, we attempted to avoid using every form of social network and record the results:
Negatives:
- I found that I felt bored more often, and unsure as to how to spend my time.
- I felt out of touch, and scared I was missing out on anything socially.
Positives:
- I was much more sociable. I spent less time scrolling through my phone, and more time physically socialising with my friends. I felt much more satisfaction communicating with people I am genuinely friends with in person, as oppose to small comments to people who more often than not, I would not consider to be my best of friends in person.
- I've learnt a lot about the value of Facebook. When I finished the experiment, and reverted back to using Facebook, I realised that a lot of the things I was posting were worthless.
Initial Ideas
Chosen Idea / Concept : An app that counts how often you use Facebook, and possibly controls it.
The focus of the app relies on our given topic: "5 A Day": Either push people to use Facebook 5 times a day, or use the social network 5 times less a day. We chose to use the latter, as we thought it would be much more realistic.
App Development:
This sheet shows the navigation of the app, with our chosen name of "5 Less".
Adam and I produced this:
Working from this sheet Adam and I came up with as a reference, Emily produced these mock ups:
iPhone App:
iPad Format:
Colour Variations:
Start up Page:
Menu Page:
To use the app, you would set up the account initially, signing in through Facebook. For the next week, the app would monitor how many times you check your Facebook. It would do this through counting how many times the user logs into Facebook through the app.
An average for daily usage would made, and when a week has passed, you would receive a notification on your phone when it has been completed and the app can be put to it's use:
A mock up of the notification you would receive:
Having received this, your goal would be to reduce your count by 5 that week.
Punishment: We considered what would happen if you do not stick to the reduction, and came up with the idea of posting an embarrassing photo (that you had chosen from a selection of tagged Facebook photos) as your Facebook status.
Mock up:
Website:
We intended to have a website, where you could track your progress using a calendar, as well as possible social networking with others, to see how they're doing with their reduction, as well as how far they are into the project.
Promotion:
Guerilla Advertising: In order to make our app known, we liked the extreme of Guerrilla advertising. Sticking to the "5 a Day" theme, we planned to stick adverts to do with our app/ a twitter page on fruit and veg in supermarkets. We would compose a video of us doing it, then promote it on youtube.
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Crit:
For the crit, we had to come up with a concept, a context and a method of delivery:
Concept – 5 Less
An
app & website to reduce social media addiction within the student
community. It will work as a counter on how often you use social media, and
intend to reduce it by 5 a day (for the first week).
Context
Website
/App
Method of Delivery
App/
Advertisement on Facebook
We also presented a PDF, with our ideas pages & the design sheet with the app intial designs.
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Crit Feedback / Change of Ideas
Positives
- Unique concept - Our tutor told us that she did not think of using the brief "Communication is a Virus" as treating social networking as a bad thing, just the idea of spreading information through it. She liked that we had taken a different approach to the rest of the groups in the class.
Negatives
- We were hoping that producing a concept for an app would still fit the brief, but unfortunately were told otherwise. Our tutor informed us that if we want to work with an app, it has to be made. We know how to produce a prototype app, but no one in the group holds capabilities of producing an app with a Facebook log in.
Suggestions
- Instead of reducing the amount people use Facebook, cut it down to ONLY 5 a day.
- Change the idea so it involves Twitter - only 5 tweets a day.
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Adapted Response to Brief with a Similar Concept:
- Removal of App & Facebook - Focus on Twitter - We will now focus the idea to Twitter, and changing the way people tweet. More often than not, people use Twitter as a public diary, which is frustrating.
We see the network as an opportunity to communicate useful information, and linking it our further using "retweets" and "replies".
- Proposed Idea - From Facebook to Twitter: A Twitter page that users can send 5 tweets a day to, that they find inspiring, witty, influential or just generally interesting. This is done to encourage them to tweet with more intelligence, not only to us, but hopefully on their account without us. As a reward of sending us tweets, the users can get retweets, meaning promotion of their Twitter.
- Still using Guerrilla Advertising - We chose to avoid sticking stickers in supermarkets, as we felt it could get us into trouble that would not help promote our cause. Instead, we hope to place stickers in areas of Leeds which people tweet the most in, which will be found through research.
- Change of overall theme - focus on Birds instead of Fruit- Originally, we intended to stick to a theme of groups of 5, and fruit and vegetables. We are now sticking to the usage of 5 with designing (eg 5. tweets a day, 5 variations etc..), but focusing on birds. This is in relation to Twitter, which is obviously focussed around birds. We feel that it will provide us with a vast selection of imagery, ideas and metaphors.
- More production methods - to promote our Twitter page, we intend to produce the following:
Leaflets explaining our cause - to hand out outside Leeds University/ inside Leeds College of Art
An E- Book - This will contain information about how to tweet with more intelligence, or how to be more ingenious with your tweets. It will also have the best quotes from our twitter users.
- A vast usage of different social networks:
Twitter - The main account where everything is linked from. Users tweet here for promotion.
Facebook - A page that informs people of our Twitter, with a link to it.
Youtube & Vimeo - Where our video of our Guerrilla advertising will be posted. These can both be embedded within other network sites.
Instagram - This will be used to post images of our Guerrilla advertising, as well as visuals for quotes people have posted on Twitter.
- The same audience - We are still working with the same audience of university/ school children, as they are the main abusers of Twitter content. This audience also works out with guerrilla advertising well in Leeds, as there is a large population of both during the day in the centre.
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Development of Idea
Due to working on different social networks and different methods of delivery, we needed to maintain a theme with our work, in order to make it recognisable.
Bird Imagery:
I produced some design sheets for a bird logo we could use:
The imagery needed to be simple, due to the fact that they need to work on a small scale of the stickers.
Owl Logo - I came up with the idea of using an Owl as our logo. Owls are known for being intelligent, which suits out theme of spreading intelligence on Twitter.
Image to develop:
I presented this sheet to the rest of my group, and they confirmed that it was their favourite. We decided that it was a good image to work with, but still too complicated.
Adam came up with these much simpler logo's, as he felt that my chosen logo would not work on a small scale:
I then came up with further ideas. Having decided on one, I then experimented with different colour schemes. It was important to supply the hex code, as it meant that as a group, we could work separately and still maintain the same colours.
Emily also came up with the typographic logo, so I designed the owl to fit with the aesthetic of her logo.
Chosen Colour Scheme:
We purposely chose colours that were nothing like popular social networking site colours, mainly rich blue's. We then changed the colour slightly, as we felt the orange wasn't quite rich enough to stand out. We wanted our "brand" to be associated with a certain colour, and felt that by using a bold colour, this could be achieved.
Original choice and adaptation:
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Spreading the Message
Both the Twitter and Instagram were set up and ongoing throughout the project.
Twitter:
We set up a Twitter account, which I was in charge of maintaining and promoting. In the "About Me", we explained our cause, and that people could possible be in our E-book and Instagram.
We chose to tweet more than 5 times a day, but only tweet a maximum of 5 inspiring tweets a day.
When people tweeted us, we would retweet them.
I posted tweets now and then to keep the account active, explaining to new followers what the process of tweeting us was, and what their reward could be. I also posted tweets with links to our Instagram, in order to get out Twitter followers to also follow us on Instagram.
Promotion:
Examples of our inspirational tweets:
The full page:
Instagram:
Similarly to the Twitter, I was in charge of promoting the Instagram, as well as producing all the designs for it.
The Instagram images were used as a reward for tweeting us something inspirational, as shown here:
A response to a Twitter user's tweet via Instagram:
1.
2.
Our tweets as a response on Instagram:
1.
2.
Difference in Images:
The two types of images had to maintain similarity, but also have difference between the tweets we post, and the tweets others had posted to us.
Quotes from Twitter Users:
Template:
Template:
Entire Set of Images That I produced for the Instagram:
Stickers:
As a group, we produced variations of stickers to place around Leeds strategically, in places where people are most likely to tweet.
We used my original logo design, as well as variations that Grace and Adam came up with:
Clear Stickers:
Opaque Stickers:
Video of Stickers Being Put Around Leeds:
Grace and I put the stickers up, whilst Ant filmed.
PRINT SCREEN OF AMALS RESPONSE
Crit and Feedback----------------------------
We presented our work in a crit, and I mentioned the one problem that we seem to be having with our project:
Problem: Our Twitter and Instagram have been successful follower wise, with well over a 100 followers on each. However, we were not gaining many inspirational tweets from Tweeters. People just seemed to like to read the tweets, and look at the Instagram images.
Solution as suggested by our peers: Be bolder in our communication methods. The stickers around Leeds were probably just looked at and liked as a design, but did not encourage people to tweet us.
We needed to produce something that held clarity of what our intentions were. Here is the problem, here's our solution, and here is where you post it.
The next step - my suggestion to the rest of the group:
- Target Leeds College of Art students, in both Blenheim Walk and Vernon Street.
- Produce HUGE posters - roughly A0/ A1 in size, which held clarity on what we wanted Twitter users to do.
Who to target tweets at:
I chose to study an extreme, "@Stephyizere" - Unfortunately, Stephy has now deleted here Twitter page, but her tweets can still be found HERE.
I also produced a sheet of her best tweets, whilst the account was available:
Poster Design Sheet:
QR Coding:
This idea was just to experiment with the system. I tried different designs and colours, in order to see how I could manipulate the code to make it more personal to our project. The ticks and crosses show if the code would actually or not. I learnt that the coding only seems to work with simple ideas, and a clear aesthetic combined with a QR code can't ever be achieved.
Posters - Location & Scale:
In order to show the scale I would intend to work with (and to visualize the posters better) , here I have quickly made a mock up image of two of the posters:
I presented these posters to my group, but unfortunately no one else seemed to like the idea, as they found it was "too generic" and "not clever enough". I agreed with them, but I found that from the crit and the previous way we had been working, we needed to be much more obvious. I communicated this to the rest of my group, but was out voted with posters A3 size, such as this:
Reasons why I didn't like this idea (which I communicated to the rest of my group):
- The colours are entirely different to the scheme we had been working with.
- There is no clarity as to what Tweet5 do, or intend to do (apart from the last sentence)
- The poster looks like two separate posters.
- The second half looks like the Twitter user has tweeted that message, as oppose to the idea of it being a suggestion.
- The second tweet is meant to be an intelligent solution to a bad tweet, but ironically makes no grammatical sense.
Due to democracy within the group (as well as myself not being in Uni on the day of print, due to a family emergency), the poster idea I disliked was put forward to print.
Other Methods of Communication We Used:
Emily's E - Book
We posted a link to the Twitter page, as a lot of the people we retweeted were featured in the E - Book:
The full E - Book:
Leaflets Emily produced:
My App Proposal-----------------------------
Obviously I did not have the full time to produce an app, as much as I would have liked to. However, Here I have produced a concept for an app, showing the navigation and aesthetic.
Navigation of the App:
Mockups Of the App:
I have focussed on designing for an iPhone 4/ 4s Format, as this is currently the most popular mobile phone platform. I also included a mockup for an iPhone 5, an iPad2, and also a quick mockup of a website.
Powerpoint Presentation:
Response / How Successful Were We? -----
Instagram:
Twitter:
- With over 200 followers, and with people constantly still following us more, I think in one sense the Twitter was successful.
- From the stickers, only one Twitter user replied. In a way, I still find some success in it, but I feel the stickers could have been confusing, and our cause was not clear enough.
- We received multiple quotes from people. However, I feel it was not quite enough. If the project was longer, I feel it may have generated more responses. The hardest thing about promoting and using the Twitter and Instagram was the fact that we would constantly have to check it, and tweet from it constantly, which is hard to do when you have lots of designing to do at the same time.
