Firth post, reflection o project

In this entry I will be writing about whole project and what I would do if I would continue updating it regularly.

Before I started this project I didn’t really understood why we going to do it as blog and what benefits us will get from this. To understand what benefits of writing blog can be for me I just needed to try writing it, I would as well highly recommend to try the same too. First I started to do a bit research to understand what people can improve while writing and discussing about different subjects. When I started doing research I came a long different explanations why we should do it, some of them were information and just friendly advice and others was explaining clearly in details why we should do it.

If I would continue this blog and update it weekly, I would include more topics. For example I would include topics not just related on history and theories about design and users. I would as well include section to the blog with tips on sketching and how everyone who want to be designer or have designer drawing style could practice to achieve what they want to achieve.

I been suggested to use different platform for blogging, but if I would continue blog I would stick with same blogging platform, except there would be few improvement to the website. Mina improvements would be in how website look like, to make it easier to view information for viewers.

I liked this project a lot, I think it helped me to understand what I need to improve in myself and how I’m capable of. I was happy doing this blog and I hope many students in the future will be able to enjoy the same project as I did. This project was extremely helpful for motivating to express myself more on project that I use can.

Bibliography
Joshua Becker (c.2014) 15 Reasons I think You Should Blog [Online] Available from: http://www.becomingminimalist.com/15-reasons-i-think-you-should-blog/

Jodi Dean (2010) Blog Theory: Feedback and Capture in the Circuits of Drive. Cambrige, Polity Press

Fourth post, design is global

In this entry I will be looking at how designing global affects development and marking of a product.

When designer or team of designers are designing product, they keep in mind that product will not just be sold in one country. Good scenario for this is IPhone, IPhone is designed in California, manufactured in China and sold wide.

When designing product or even just advert for different country to be used in which there is different culture, it’s needed to know how they would react to it. A good example is McDonald’s, every website in different language is suited for culture in which their restaurants are located. 

First I looked into McDonald’s website which is for United Kingdom;

 Second McDonald’s website which I decided to look at was for Germany:

Third website was for French users;

There is big difference between websites, layout of text and graphics and specially colors. Colours are so different, to suits visitors. Some cultures might prefer green over red, due to the meaning of colour in that country.  For example orange colour in Asia give positive, spiritually and physically enlightened felling’s while in United States orange is used for fast food restaurants, traffic delays and hazards (Mario, Jesús 2001).

When designing something to be used in different cultural environment, designer needs to understand culture much better and this can only be done through research. When designing product a lot of research should be done to ensure that product is designed well and will be accepted in different culture too. There a lot different resources anyone can obtain for learning differences in different cultures, one good website is “Geert-hofstede” (.The Hofstede Centre n.d.)

After research stage designer can start designing idea and then make prototypes which is as well important as research about different cultures. Prototypes could be given to people from different cultures to be tested to see how they interact with product. People from different cultures as well interact with products differently.

I found useful explanation of culture and how it interact with design;

In the image you can see that culture can be split into three layers which then can be associated with design features. This deiagram help to design product and not leave any cultural aspect out.

Bibliography

Fig. 1 McDonalds (c.2014) Print screen of McDonalds United Kingdom website. [Online image] Available from: http://www.mcdonalds.co.uk/ukhome.html [Accessed 12/12/2014]

Fig. 2 McDonalds (c.2014) Print screen of McDonalds German website. [Online image] Available from: http://www.mcdonalds.de/ [Accessed 12/12/2014]

Fig. 3 McDonalds (c.2014) Print screen of McDonalds United Kingdom website. [Online image] Available from: https://www.mcdonalds.fr/ [Accessed 12/12/2014]

Fig. 4 Rung-Tai Lin (2007) Three layers of cultural objects in relation to design features. [Online image] Available from: http://www.ijdesign.org/ojs/index.php/ijdesign/article/view/46/26

Mario De Bortoli, Jesús Maroto (2001) Context. Elicit 2001: Proceedings of the European Languages and the Implementation of Communication and Information Technologies (Elicit) conference, Vol. 1, pp. 4

The Hofstede Centre (n.d.) Homepage [Online] Available form http://geert-hofstede.com/index.php [Accessed 11/12/2014]

Third topic, Niche marketing

In this post I will be discussing about business using Google Adsence program to help target niche market more accurate and better. I will as well be looking at adverts and how it is aimed at someone who might find it interesting.

With increasing number of internet users like you and me, different business started putting their adverts online too and not just in the billboards, newspapers or billboards. Internet became very popular advertising place, because it allows to target specific niche market more accurate and easier. By targeting specific niche market it makes their sale of that products probability to increase much more than just advertising product on billboard where most people walking past will not even need it.

A good example of niche adverts is Google program called AdWords, business can join program to help place adverts in certain web pages for certain type of viewers to see. Website owners also would have to joint this program to allow adverts to be placed on their website. If the internet user is usually visiting websites related to their interest, for example mobile phones. User decides to visit different website related to different hobby or interest, website will be showing adverts related to what websites user visits the most. This is done through tracking their Google account, if they have one. If user doesn't have account, Google scans web pages of website in which advert is placed and tries to match adverts to the keywords of website. 

A good example of Google AdWords adverts is usually found on forums. Let’s say forum is related to woodworking, advert in that forum will most likely will be displayed related to wood working. If user was browsing through different websites, for example websites related to smartphones the advert in wood working forum will be about phones instead of woodworking.

To find out if this really works, I did experiment. I was visiting few different websites and looking to buy Iphone and then decided to visit Wood working forum in which there are Google Adwords adverts. Advert in the bottom of website, displayed advert relating phones. After browsing different websites related to wood working tools, came back to the same forum which is called UK Workshop to find adverts are mixed. Most of the adverts are about wood working tools, but still there is small amount of adverts about buying phones.

When we look at adverts, for example wood working tool advert which was on the right side of the website. We can see that advert is aimed at someone who is interested into buying tools. Adverts, has logo at the top, picture in the middle with text “Lower Prices on all Scrollsaws!” which makes advert to be click on more appealing. At lower section of advert, there is button which would navigate user to different website to buy the tool. At the bottom of advert there is slogan “A tradition of quality…” which would make user think that brand “HEGNER” is traditional brand and was established a long time ago.

When looking at phone advert, we can see that advert was designed towards people who would be looking for phones as I did in this experiment. Advert shows what most appealing, pictures of phones is so straight away without clicking on advert I can see how phone looks like. Next to phone picture there is name of the phone and memory capacity, bellow this I can see price.

BibliographyFig. 2 Buy mobiles (n.d.) Advert of mobile phones from buymobiles.net website [Online image] Taken from: http://www.ukworkshop.co.uk/forums [Accessed 11/12/2014]

Fig. 1 Hegner (n.d.)  Advert of Hegner wood working machine [Online image] Taken from: http://www.ukworkshop.co.uk/forums/ [Accessed 11/12/2014]