Monthly Archives: October 2014

Digital Magazine- Weeks 3 & 4

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For our next of workshops we were tasked to design and create a digital magazine that would be suitable for an ipad app. Our group originally decided to design an app based on Sci-fi but after some initial research we found that there were already several of these available on the app store. We therefore decided to go for a more niche topic in the Sci-fi genre and decided to design a digital magazine on the Star Wars franchise.

I was tasked to create the article page for the upcoming Star Wars Battlefront game

Page 1  Page 1 video play

The first article is about introducing some of the history of the previous games and some information about what fans can expect from the new game set to be released next year.
As this is a digital magazine I wanted to make use of some of the more interactive features that the digital platform has to offer. For this article I embedded the E3 announcement trailer for the game along side the article. This makes good use of the digital platform as it enables the user to access extra content that would not be possible in a print magazine.
I added the play button to the thumbnail of the video to make it clear to the user that it is a video rather than just a picture, the icon is set to disappear once the video begins playing.

 

Page 2.1  Page 2.2 Page 2.3

The second article is about the development of the game, because of this I included several pictures of the development of the game that can be swiped through or play automatically as a slideshow. This too makes good use of the unique features that are available to the digital magazine platform.

Interface Design- Week 2

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I have now moved on to designing the interface for my app. I began by sketching a rough design on paper to get an initial idea about what I wanted.

image

Once I had my initial design I then moved into Illustrator to recreate my design digitally.

Icon screen

 

Here I have created a mock up of how the icon logo would look on the iOS interface. The logo is simple enough to fit well into the small space required whilst also giving a good idea what the app is about.

Main screen

 

This is my final design for the main interface of the app. I believe it is a successful design as it has many features that make it simple and as easy to use as possible:

The main body of the app taken up by the map that is used to report the location of the crime. I felt that it is the most important part of the design and so I allocated the most space possible. The map will also make use of the pinch to zoom feature that has become common place across most applications that require the user to zoom. However there is also a zoom slider at the top left of he screen for users that are unfamiliar with pinch to zoom.

In order to keep the app as simple and easy to use as possible the main screen contains just four main buttons:

  • Report: when the user spots something that they want to report they press the report button, this will then take them to the application camera for them to take a picture. Once the picture has been taken the thumbnail of their picture will appear on the map and can be dragged to the location that the user took the picture. All the user has to do is press send and the report will be sent to the appropriate authority.
  • Location: The location feature makes use of the GPS function built in to most modern devices. If the user is having difficulty finding their location on the map they can use the location function automatically find where they are on the map
  • Account: The account button takes the user to their personal account where they can view previous crimes that they have reported. from here they can also view notifications that authorities will send once the report has been dealt with. This is one of the most important features of the app as it allows for a greater level of communication between the authorities and the public and lets the public know that the council is acting on reports from the app users.
  • Settings: Allows the user to change the general settings of the app.

I feel that this design is effective in achieving the main goals of the app and successfully allows the general public a simple to use, better platform for reporting minor crimes in their local area as well as creating a better channel of communication between the the public and the local authorities.