I tried to find out information that I could use to inform my research in to how blackboard is used specifically in Lincoln University and how each separate school might use it differently. I emailed Kerry Pinny who is the University of Lincoln Digital Education Developer.

Unfortunately the information I needed wasn’t accessible as there were certain privacy restrictions and the data isn’t tracked by individual school’s.

This process wasn’t a waste of time however as the email conversation allowed me to refine my idea and force me to carry out extra research regarding focus groups.

Click Image to Enlarge to See Email Chain

For this project I created a week by week schedule that has what needs to be done week by week and also a predicted plan using a Gantt chart. In addition to this there is also a a percentage factor of how much of one aspect is done or not.

I feel that by having a schedule it will keep me on track and highlight if i begin to slip behind or not.

Dashboard Design is going to be a large factor in my design process as the concept of my project is to create a central source of  information that students would need to carryout their studies.

Most Dashboard designs consist of a very modular style with a limited colour palette built up of complimentary colours and which tend to also be in pastel shade.

Example of existing websites that use dashboard design are a website called Tweetdeck, this was service that took people twitter feed and streamlined it into a constantly updating interface. Tweet deck is commonly used by individual that live stream events or activities such as video game as the interface allows for viewer interaction. The other existing product that uses dashboard design is blackboard. Education portal are commonly designed with dashboard design as alot of information is needed to be provided with out tonnes of link to other pages.

Sources

https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/736x/b2/9c/a9/b29ca96e67856186367d372511b348b3.jpg

http://assets.materialup.com/uploads/ff8c4e30-39ba-40d1-a51a-d9cc57bc054f/colorize-small.png

http://www.fastvue.co/tmgreporter/wp-content/uploads/2011/12/Dashboard1.png

https://forrstlive.s3.amazonaws.com/multiposts/images/59775/original.png?1381902139

http://www.contentfac.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/05/tweetdeck-dashboard7.gif

Further Development

After a break over christmas i came back to looking at my proposal with a fresh new mindset and realised that by limiting my self to lectures alone i had potentially reduced my final concept by a large amount. So it was at this point i decided to look at seminars and out of contact hour support.

My Research developed further as i began to look into more detail about the use of E-learning being used in education such as sites like Adobe Education Exchange and student portals like Blackboard which is targeted towards university students and then sites such as Frog whose audience are middle to upper school students.

In todays workshop we looked at the content covered in the lecture on Monday which was how the use of of: focus, depth, balance and structure is used on a compositional level.

The theme we had to follow was that the image had to convey the narrative of an epic adventure. I began by looking at a genre that I love which is the post apocalyptic genre of Films. The image below is my final image i created.

I feel that my image portrays the idea of a epic journey as it follows the conventions of basic compositional guidelines. For example the size of the figure in comparison to the size of the city in the background especially to the left highlights how the use of depth can generate meaning by showing how small the figure would be against a city. Depth is also created by the multiple layers that seems to fade as into the atmosphere as the further they get back.

I also considered the use of structure when composing this image as i took balance into consideration by have an asymmetrical balance which once again helps create the illusion of depth and focus. In addition to this my image also follows the intersecting thirds grid which means that it allows narrative to develop and just like the asymmetrical balance it creates focus.

I found this seminar really interesting as it not only taught me new skills of composition that can be used to creates images like the one above, but this knowledge of the basic rules will help me in my final work and in the work to come. I  especially enjoyed this work as i am a huge fan of this art style commonly seen on posters for video games or films such as the ones below designed for star wars by Olly Moss in 2010. 

Source

Olly Moss – http://io9.gizmodo.com/of-course-these-excellent-new-spaceballs-posters-spoof-1746873165