top of page
Search

Thrive

  • Writer: Emma
    Emma
  • Oct 27, 2021
  • 5 min read

Updated: Oct 28, 2021

For my final assignment in my designing for data class, we worked in pairs to create an interaction which showed how to change your given statistic. I had an awesome partner Rikka who took on the coding side of things, and I lead the art side. If you want to check out her blog post, and have a perspective from the technical side of things, check it out here! We continued to work on the statistic that I had been using:


90% of New Zealand seabirds are threatened or at risk of extinction.


From my previous research, we had a good foundation to start from and could get to work straight away coming up with ideas! If you want to check out my previous assignments in this course, and more to do with seabirds check out my other blogs, assignment 1 - a sequence of primitives here, and assignment 2 - looped state here.


Week 1

Planning

We started by creating a rough timeline of the project and key milestones, into a calendar. In hindsight, this hour we spent planning the project in the beginning really helped us to stay organized and on track for the assignment and definitely worth the time to plan it all out - even if you don't stick to it! To make sense of our sticky notes in the coming photos of our process, the pink sticky notes are me, green is for Rikka, and orange and blue are feedback from the teaching team, and purple is feedback from peers!


We started by brainstorming a bunch of ideas and then a few days later after thinking them over we sketched up some of our favourites (starred). We also sought after some technical and art precedents to gain inspiration and see what the possibilities are of what we could do, especially in terms of the coding as a lot of our ideas were quite ambitious.


Precedents and Ideation

Rikka's Ideation and technical precedents:


My ideation and art precedents:


Week 2


Once gaining some feedback from the teaching team, we realised that we needed to come up with some more sketches, we had a lot more to explore, and also wanted to get away from puzzle games and 'games' in general, strip it back to an interaction. This felt like a bit of a setback, and it was disappointing to have to go back to the drawing board so early, but we came up with much better ideas and it really paid off. We did some more brainstorming and sketching, and met with our lecturer again to go through the ideas. This was where we hit our first milestone: choosing an idea and storyboard.




First Milestone - choosing an idea

We decided to go with idea 1, which was to create a coastal environment and you can click to add and remove variables which affect the seabird population in that environment. Rikka and I both fresh minded and ready to start exploring, set off down our own paths, Rikka creating a coding plan and prototyping the idea using placeholder assets.

This is the coding prototype Rikka had made by the end of that week, using place holder assets:

Prototype GIF 1:


I worked on doing some research into 'what changes' in the interaction, for example how to people appear? How do houses appear? How do houses disppear? I also researched some bird protected areas near Auckland as that is most relevant and could find some familiar coastal areas to draw from for reference. I then looked back on the art styles we were interested in, and gathered some inspiration, exploring style options and sketching some background ideas from there.


Week 3

We got some feedback from the coding prototype that Rikka had made as well as my background iterations, and decided we wanted to go with a floating island background which gives it a 'god mode' perspective interaction, where the user gets to be in charge of this one section of Earth, and it's their responsibility to make it the best it can be, meaning they can leave the interaction realising they have some control over the world they live in, and actions they make. We also wanted it to look like a chunk of Earth ripped out as it's a sinister visual on the fact that we are destroying the world with our actions, metaphorically 'ripping the Earth apart'.


Asset Prototypes

I made yet another mood board now that I had really honed in on a specific water colour art style. I find making multiple mood boards helpful to look back on and gathering more inspiration is never a bad thing in my mind. I started by doing some water colour exploration drawing on my sketches, mood boards and reference photos. I then went on to use some of these explorations as prototype assets to gain feedback on, and I also created the base for our island.


Rikka implemented these assets, and got feedback from our peers.

Milestone 2 - majority of coding done and prototype assets in the chosen art style

Prototype GIF 2:


Week 4

We decided on this idea of '3 states', one in which the coast was over run with buildings with a looming smog covered city in the background, with no birds present. On the other extreme, an island over run with plants and birds, a 'birds paradise' we called it. Finally, a 'balanced' state in which birds and humans live in harmony with plants and houses.


Rikka worked on implementing feedback we had been given and polishing the code up.


After getting feedback from the previous assets, I worked on creating some more and polishing the ones I already liked.



Milestone 3 - finished and polished assets done, coding finished

Here is the final interaction!

And here is our presentation that we created alongside the interaction!


Concluding Remarks

Both Rikka and I are so proud of this piece, it became a bit of a passion project for us and we worked really hard to perfect it and nail the meaning of our interaction. I really enjoyed working with Rikka especially cause we both challenged ourselves in our roles and the entire piece was a group effort. Rikka stepped out of what she knew in terms of coding and I stepped out of the box of traditional art styles, and we both sought after something unique, and I believe we achieved that! If we could do it again, I would have loved to implement sound to create a more sensorial experience. We time managed ourselves really well, and it just worked out that we didn't have time to add it in.


References:

Buckman, B. (2015). Reef heron. Adult taking flight. Manukau Harbour. https://www.flickr.com/photos/brunonz/

Forest & Bird. (2018). Important Bird Areas for New Zealand Seabirds. Forest & Bird. https://www.forestandbird.org.nz/resources/important-bird-areas-new-zealand-seabirds

McCree, B. Muriwai, Auckland. 100% pure New Zealand. https://www.newzealand.com/ie/feature/muriwai-gannet-colony/

New Zealand Birds Online. https://nzbirdsonline.org.nz/

Stuff. (2020). Five of eight sites in the Manukau Harbour returned "poor" water quality readings. Stuff. https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/politics/local-democracy-reporting/119035805/aucklands-forgotten-harbour-manukau-ailing-as-advocates-reveal-funding-fight

Veitch, D. Godwits and oystercatchers, Manukau Harbour. Teara. https://teara.govt.nz/en/photograph/4638/godwits-and-oystercatchers-manukau-harbour

Whitehead, E., Adams, N., Baird, K., Bell, B., Borrelle, S., Dunphy, B., Gaskin, C., Landers, T., Rayner, T., & Russell, J. Threats to Seabirds of Northern Aotearoa New Zealand. https://1523901d-6124-4111-a0c3-51808943665d.filesusr.com/ugd/de29ab_de931d3693e64d0dbaeebfa453c569dc.pdf


Comentários

bottom of page