OUGD504 - Studio brief 02 - Evaluation

"At this stage of my practice digital design isn't something that interests me" this was my was initial thoughts towards digital design at the beginning of this brief, and i'm glad to say thanks to this brief my mind has been swayed. I was hesitant to begin this brief, mulling over how to write my own brief and what my digital solution could achieve in a oversaturated market such as app design where an app has been made for everything possible. I had to dig deeper and think of issues that I'd encountered that could be resolved or enhanced with a digital solution, in the end I decided to focus on the creating a web app for the Baltic; as I believe visits to art galleries can become more engaging through a digital experience.

During research I started to fully consider the target audience, in depth research into who, what and why made me realise that you find the best solutions to a problem when you broaden your research. Especially for digital design when you have to understand the audience and its user, just from this brief alone I have noticed everything is a lot more examined and thought through in digital design as it is design that can actively make a difference without people even knowing. A helpful part of this brief was having award winning studio Only visit us for a talk, this was helpful not just for the brief but also personally. They talked us through their processes and how digital designers can often be misrepresented, stating that 'You don't have to know code to be a digital designer'. This was encouraging as before this I always assumed that you'd have to know how to code or have some basic html knowledge to be a digital designer. This led onto the relationship between a designer and a developer which I looked into during research and made me realise what is actually required to be a digital designer.

When it came to producing the digital solution to my set problem, I learnt a new skill in Adobe XD which is a prototype software and through using this software I was able to design and prototype the web app within the same software which is incredibly useful. Using this software was another factor which swayed my opinion on digital design, the opportunity to easily see your designs in real scale made me enthusiastic throughout production and it helped me review my work better as I was constantly testing the designs on my phone.

Overall I'm rather happy with my final piece as I believe it responds to the set brief and fulfils the aims, what I enjoyed most about putting the final piece together was referring back to the target audience research and whether the designs were suitable for such a wide range audience. In the coming weeks I'll be contacting Founded studio who produce all the graphic design for the Baltic (Both print and digital) to see what they think of the web app, it will be interesting to see if I get a reply and what feedback I will receive from a studio who would possibly design a solution similar to mine if the Baltic decided to opt for a digital experience inside the building.