Finished Product

Through the last month I have struggled with the formal language this app will be. The biggest problem, is not going to what I feel is comfortable with, but tailoring the visual language towards my directed audience. A few weeks ago I created an in depth persona that was just like my target audience. However, when flushing out my sceneriors, with the content the idea of my app was to create a personalized id. and open to all skin issues. This starts to widen my audience a bit. I've also balanced between fashion- medical. I moved away from medical and tried to focus on enhancing beauty. Wanting the look to be gentle& friendly, and promenade with its information, I tried drawing patterns from skin diagrams, and it didn't work. Then I started to think of victorian vanity's with lavish swirls, also dealing with the idea of mirrors. Reflecting your habits, I tried to keep soaking equal, but not I'm thinking too much, and spacing was getting cluttered.jjohnsrud_fdgree

Week 11

Rough Draft Final

With the deadline coming up Complexion is on its way to the finishing touches. There is still a lot of issues that I am having formally and with the function of the app. On Monday’s critique I got some great feed back on how to push the iPads abilities even further. Like having a grid system when the user takes a picture of their skin. This will help for the user to only take an image of their face and then be able to high light or zoom in on features they are having problems with. Even though before Monday there is still a lot of work to be done, I have come up with solutions to issues that I have been battling since midterms. Like how to enter in information, receive, and have a somewhat dialog going on between user and iPad. One of the main problems and biggest features to this app is how it is very detailed in knowing the users personal information, but to make the process for the user not to long for them to update their profile. I also want this “system” to be fun for the user to do, and not to seem redundant/ boring. I have come up with a side bar that they can freely check what they have issues with, routine, products they use. I also want to include an emergency search, or ask a question section in this side navigation. I also need to move my “favorites” list into the profile section. I also want to work on what the home page of the profile will look like. I’m thinking it will be an over view of what that person should expect from their skin that day as well as what they should be doing, much like a horoscope or looking at the weather. I know that is a little vague but it will be great. The next part of the app would be the way it formally looks like right now. It was brought up that it looks very similar to my Dainty Hankie, and Simpatico site and to give it a little nudge or personality to it. I plan to change the typeface to something bolder like Rockwell and to punch up the colors so that it is something exciting to look at. Reading magazines like Cosmo, Elle, and Vogue they have a direct contract in hierarchy and fun colors to get the reader excited, and I plan to take this nit bit and apply it to Complexion. I think that up til now I have just been scared to make the formal aesthetics bold because the subject is pretty fragile and I wanted to reflect that. Now that I am looking at how my scenarios and the formal details I am reevaluating what the point of the app is. The subject skin is fragile and delicate but the information I am supplying the user is straight forward, informative, and bold. This is what my app should be visually speaking, and come Monday it will. It seems like I have had to bounce around to finally come to these “obvious “conclusions. However just like in past classes, when designing you have to try and think of different ways to execute one idea.

Week 09- Getting close

This week was a little difficult with my degree project. I spent all night one night working on what I thought was a great design for my skin app. But I spent too much time playing around with typefaces, and colors and not flushing out one whole scenario. Given that we have exactly one week before these are due I am a little pressed for time. I have started to flush out my first scenario and will be hopefully done with all 3 by Monday. Through this whole experience I have realized that it is good to have a schedule and outline of how you plan for things to pan out, however you need to be able to flex that schedule while also getting the main parts finished. I think my first thought was is that if I get the branding down first it will be easy to flush out the scenarios and have everything perfected. The truth is that I need to see how they will be placed upon the composition and from there the branding will be flushed out. I have also started to research or take noticed to fashion graphics. To create more of a refined elegant app, I will need to see how other fashion designers accomplish this. What I am afraid of is that this is due in one week, and many fashion graphics include photography, and I don’t have any photography so far within my app. I wanted to plan on info graphs, and typography to really guide the app. Perhaps a few images I can try and fit in but I really would like to focus on the content, and I feel like imagery would just be for aesthetic use. I also realized this week why its important to show the whole scenario, and it might be pretty obvious but easy to make this mistake. If you don’t have it all the way flushed out it is hard to explain everything that is going on, therefore the feedback you get in class becomes less.

Brand Vision: Complexion’s vision is to improve the quality of your skin. Our skin is the biggest organ on our body; it helps to indicate how our bodies are working on the inside. We want to help correct any imperfections that your skin may have right now. Our goal is for your skin to be at its healthiest and prevent future problems that can impair your overall health. We promise to aid you to a fresh, radiate, and healthier skin.

Brand Mission: Complexion’s mission is to look at different aspects of your lifestyle and determine what goals you have set in for your skin. Our goal is to identify the issues you are having with your skin, and from their find the best solutions fit for you. By examining aspects like diet, routine, location, and past medical health we can help to find a solution for your skin issues. We want to show you many ways in achieving great looking skin as well as preventing your skin from any skin future diseases.

Brand Essence: educational, informative, feminine, elegant, sophisticated, healthy, comfortable, fresh, flawless, pure, polished, concise, and orderly

Target Market: Women from 24-32 years of age. Probably with a good job or a little wealthy if they have the iPad. Have had skin issues for a long time and want to be educated on how to improve their skin using more natural methods.

Week 08 Great!

Over the past few weeks there has been a lot that has been going on with my app. I was able to wireframe and really concentrate on the essentials of what I want my app to do. When creating my detailed wireframes I realized that I wanted to accomplish too much within 3 scenarios. I started had to back track and think about what the top three things that are most important that I can see my app doing. From there it was easy to delicate how the app should function as a whole. Before spring break I had one major concern from the feedback. That was going into two different directions for my app. One being tailored towards medical care and doctor patient relationship as the other was based more on complexion and more of the “pretty” aspect. I have decided to go in the more complexion direction because most of my research is based around improving the quality with natural methods. The next aspect is obviously designing and putting together the app. I know it has taken me a long time to get to this point but planning this app out was more difficult that I thought. I am also discovering that as a designer this is the part of designing that I love to do, the research, finding the solution, planning a system out for a person. I am discovering that as a designer this is what I truly love to do, and it is what I find comfortable about designing. What I need to push more towards is spending more time on the aesthetics of this app so that it will be able to reflect all that research and field studies.

Mid-Term

mid term

Story time!

This is Beth! She is 28 years old and lives in Kansas City Missouri. She works downtown as a Marketing Agent, and lives with her boyfriend. In her spare time she likes to take her German Shepard “Hubs” for runs, and to the dog park. On an average night she gets anyway from 5-8 hours of sleep per night. She goes out to eat about twice a week. When she eats at home her boyfriend will make them meals. She says he makes excellent burgers. Although she is not overweight she claims that she does not include a lot of fruits and vegetables in her diet. During the weekends she likes to also go out for drinks with her girlfriends for Happy Hour.

Ever since her teen years Beth has been battling acne. She has fair skin that burns easily, and very sensitive. She says that as the years have gone on it has gotten a little bit better but still has issues with embedded blackheads. Her skin ritual right now is wash her face before she goes to bed and will put moisturizer on her face. She also recently got diagnosed with Psoriasis. Her dermatologist said it is not a severe case but she still gets embarrassed about the red patches on her skin. She also says it makes her feel insecure because her skin will be dry especially when it becomes colder, no matter how much lotion she puts on her skin. Another skin issue she is starting to notice is sunspots that are making her a look a bit older.

Beth wants to know how to improve her skin overall. She is willing to change her diet and sleeping habits. She wants to start to improve the quality of her skin so that later in life she won’t have any serious issues. She wants to feel more confident and wear less makeup. She also does not have a ton of money to splurge at the local spa so she is looking for more natural ways of improving her skin. She also desires a system that will allow her to document what she is doing so that if she needs to go to back to the dermatologist she can send this information to her doctor and he can evaluate what she has been doing to her skin.

For Beth to see improvements she will need to dedicate at least six weeks to see results in her skin. Examining things like how much alcohol she drinks, or if she is using sunscreen all the time. She will need to update her “app”at least once a week to show what is working for her and what is not.

All scenarios dealing with Beth:

1. Beth signs up for the app and taps in what she wants to improve, like blackheads and sun spots

2. Her psoriasis isn’t getting better so she wants to see her progress and send it into her doctor to see what else she can do

3. To help her sunspots Beth wants to know what foods and vitamins will help her skin give a natural glow. ­

Over the past few weeks I have been gathering information about skin. There is a huge amount of information and when I went to go start my wireframes it was a little difficult to execute them. I have made a site map and scenarios, but I am realizing that I need to be more specific with my scenarios; perhaps I need to think of specific personas that would download the app. I am having issues with understanding what the most important aspects of the app. Kidwell pointed out today that I should make attributes about the app and it will help to unravel what the design will be like. I am also unsure if just an iPhone app is the best choice. In one of my scenarios the user will say that they have problems with acne, blackheads in particular. To enter in the information and to reveal information about what to do next is much more of a challenge than I thought. I need to think of ways that when the user signs on, they can update how their progress is, and with that feed back if the information that I provided, if it worked. In many of the projects we have had talked about the importance of user feedback. However, I am unsure on how the user will put information in, get results, and then put feedback if (the information that I provided) was helpful. From there should be, okay this did not work for you, then try this. One of the issues with my topic is that skin does not get better within a couple of days. With the correct amount of sleep, diet, and products then the user should have healthier skin. However, just like any other medicine, it takes time to let these factors take place and see if they are working for the user. With especially an app the user will want to see results fast, and I hope that the information that I provide is effective more than quick. I think my next step is to make a persona- to help narrow down the audience, and will help to identify the brand attributes. From there I want to pick out the strengths in this app that can help people.

Another problem that I am having is if this should be an iPhone app. One of the other issues that I am having is that there is so much information that I want to get across to the user, but is it the correct area to be doing that within an iPhone app, based on scale. Perhaps a hub that people can sign onto and that can upload to an iPhone, or an iPad. Based on MX last semester, I found that as designers we can push the content from playing angry birds to educational based. Perhaps this iPad app could help people to realize that the iPad can offer more useful information and interactive work than playing games or reading the New York Times. This is an idea that I think would be useful to introduce to other people. I think that having an app that is educationally useful that can help a person out in a time frame would be useful.

Apart of my audience that I am realizing that I am targeting towards would be people with real skin issues. Many people will claim they have problems with their skin, but in reality their skin is probably just fine. My main target audience will not be the Katie Perry’s of Proactive, but (with my targeted age) people, probably women, who have been dealing with skin issues for a long time.

So I really need to get on the ball with my persona. I already know her values, and needs, but to direct her interest more in depth will help me. This will also help me to re-evaluate if my scenarios are the best. So, not trying to be behind schedule, I’m going to push for the next week to finalize the analog/ perhaps move onto the digital wireframes. I want to prefect my wireframes before I move onto the branding and asthenic qualities. I think by flushing out the rest of the wireframes, getting that more step-by-step process of what my “app”is I will determine what formal qualities this mini brand will have. Also help to come up with a better title than “skin deep” not too key on it yet.

These were some brain storming ideas I came up with a couple weeks ago that I forgot to post