Team: Sylvester Liu/ Alex Newson/ Sebastian Ervi/ Zhaolu Song
Brief: Design an experience that reveals what happens when we read
Research Methods: Literature Review & Prototyping
Time: 11.12.2020-17.12.2020
Low-fidelity Prototype
We chose the poem “When you are old” as our text and discussed the meaning and the objects which could convey the meaning of the poem.
Reading Design. Storyboard by Sylvester.
Low-fidelity prototypes. Photos by Sebastian.
We designed six reading scenarios, for example, setting mirror and grey wig for the first sentence “When you are old and grey and full of sleep”, hanging stars for the last sentence “And hid his face amid a crowd of stars”.
Testing
We invited Binru and Tiana to test. They both thought the poem was too abstract to understand for non-native speakers and even native speakers. Besides, there lacked some connections between these sentences, so they thought these were just separate sentences, not a poem.
Low-fidelity prototypes test. Photos by me.
Improvement
From the feedback we got, we decided to simplify the poem by changing some words without changing the meaning to make it more understandable. Besides, we enhanced the connections between these sentences by setting these scenes in a line and connecting them with arrows.
Poem by William Butler Yeats. Simplified by Alex.
Final Presentation
Everyone experienced our reading journey in turns. They read the poem in six settings, for example looking at the old version of themselves in the mirror, taking down a book, reading the texts on the medicine bottle, and finding lighting ball in the dark.
People’s reading journey. Photos by Sebastian.
Feedback
Our classmates enjoyed this reading process and thought it is good to externalize a poem into physical scenes. They all thought it helps them to understand the poem better. Some said the motion words, for instance, “take down this book…bending down beside…”, indicated what they need to do next, which made the sentences cohesive.
These scenes are just our team's subjective interpretation of this poem, but everyone also had their own interpretations in their mind after this journey.
What I’ve learned
Literature Review is quite useful in the first stage when designers don’t have inspirations. I got some ideations from the articles I read and summarized some similarities which make my mind clearer. Besides, prototyping and testing are effective ways to test design quickly and get useful feedback.
At the End
I have to say It’s quite an intense week to finish this design from ideation, making prototypes, testing, making improvements to the final design and our team put great effort into it. It’s our final project for this term and I really enjoyed it! Thanks, everyone!
References
Yeats, W. (1989). When You Are Old. Available at: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/43283/when-you-are-old. (Accessed: 14 December 2020)
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