Since we started studying and discussing about the architecture and interior design, I have gradually learned to observe many things from a new lens or a designer’s eye. When I’m walking in to a building, an office or a classroom, I always like to look at things around and assess what experience a design intends to create or actually creates. How about this color of the carpet? How about that lighting on the ceiling? What is the relationship between objects in a lunge? Why this piece of music is playing in the store? I rarely thought about these issues before but now, these questions often pop up in my mind when I talk in a building or step in a mall.
Take a look at this picture now. Do you think this is a shopping mall or a museum? It is actually a new Health and Human Services building on our campus. The building has offices, labs and classrooms. Unlike conventional campus buildings that are either square- or rectangle-shaped, this new building has curved walls and high glass windows. It is certainly a contemporary style. I asked a few students what they feel staying in the lunge area. Someone said it is relaxing and someone said feeling like in an indoor garden; all are comfortable with the interior design. As we has discussed, a quality of design often lead to some kind of user experience.
As for imaginative bridges between the work of art of this module’s theme and the work of art of teaching, I think the most important idea is probably that, when we design a lecture or a homework assignment, we need keep in mind if any “quality of design” can help lead to any “quality of experience” among students. While shape, light, space in interior design may not be borrowable directly to teaching, I think the principle applies. That is, any quality should be unique, interesting, and thought-provoking.
I enjoyed reading Sarah Susanka's article "Home by Design." It's not because she used her experiences to transform a house into home but also because interior design is one of my favored subjects in my life. I often say to our college interior design teachers that I would take a class when I had time. It will be fun as I like it. I have such a sense of feeling for home interior design when we had our house built over ten years ago. I walked through every single detail with the house and when the house was done, I became a half-designer. The implication of this for teaching is, doing is better form of learning. For students to learn something really well, they will have to do it and experience it personally.
I feel proud when friends in our house compliment on many features of our home interior, including the arch, open kitchen, and other qualities of design. For example, at a party, people may chat in small groups but everyone can see everyone else at the same time. It makes a hostess’s job to serve everyone much easier, too. Maybe this is also a "particular feature" had a big impact on the "particular quality" too.
Thursday, February 18, 2010
I designed an arch to separate the living and dinning room when our house was built over ten years ago. I did not like the regular wall on the blueprints so I came up with this design. Since an arch was not easy to build and also time consuming, we had to pay extra for the builder to make it happen. Now the arch becomes part of our home and part of our life. We enjoy it every moment when we are home. Friends who visit our house all like the design—they agree that just a change in the wall shape adds to the artistic style of the rooms. It certainly can simulate a feeling of enjoyment. I like to decorate the rooms differently when there is a holiday or visitors are coming. Different decorations transform our feeling of the room, too. Through reading Susanka, I have learned the concepts of interior design and now can better understand the relationship of features of design and qualities of our experience. I am especially impressed with Susanka’s discussion of the role of shape and light. The reading has deepened my understanding of the role of my own design.
Wednesday, February 17, 2010
The idea of this video is to tell a story that can simulate a compelling experience. I choose to a slice of life on the celebration of the Chinese new year, which falls on the same day as Valentine's Day this year. I am invited to attend a party at a friend's house. I need to bring some good dishes to share wit other party goers. I like cooking so I decide to make a video of food making in a festival atmosphere.
I take pictures and video clips during food preparation and recording phone conversations. I also searched online for some pictures and music, for which I gave due credit for copyright consideration. Many pictures have been taken from which I choose the typical ones that can best tell the story. I use only a small segment of video as I find it is slow for video to demonstrate a process.
A story must have a tone, either sadness or happiness or just neutral. Because my story is the celebration of the New Year, the tone is naturally a cheerful one. This tone affects several aspects of the video making. For example, I choose red, the Chinese traditional festival color, as the theme color for the title pages. I also use colorful ingredients to make a dish for the story—the scenes are enjoyable when I show the disk making step by step. At the end, I present a set of colorful dishes also out of this tone consideration.
Although sound is not the focus of the project, I find a good use of sound can add a great deal to the entertaining nature of the story telling. I choose a high-beat Chinese festival song as the background music. Adding my happy tone of phone conversations, the sound effect certainly helps create a pleasant mood among the viewing audience. As we discussed, a happy feeling can enhance a compelling experience. I use phone conversation recording, instead of a more “realistic” video clip. To create the climax effect at the end of the video, I use a picture of fireworks and a sound track to maximize a visual and audio effect. I hope that, by the time they reach this point of viewing, the happy viewers can feel excited to join our celebration!
I create this video project using iMovie. Several skills I have learned from other MAET courses are very helpful. I am still new to iMovie, so it takes me a lot of time to put all pictures and frames together, adjust the background music and add fade-in and fade-out effect, overlay it with my own phone conversation recording and tweak the transition effects. Overall, the video project, in and of itself, is a compelling learning experience for me, too.
As we explore the ways of creating a compelling experience in movies, we can certainly learn a great deal by watching Super Bowl ads. At $2.5 million an ad of 30 seconds long, the Super Bowl advertising is probably the most expensive advertising in the world. So, advertisers cannot afford to not to make each ad outstanding. I have watched most ads this year and found several elements that may make an ad attractive, enjoyable and memorable. The first element is dramatic acts. An example is Budweiser’s human bridge ad, in which Bud lovers make a bridge with their bodies to let the Bud truck pass the fallen bridge. Another one is Audi’s green ad, showing people were arrested because of their “environmentally unfriendly” behavior. The second element is the use of animals. For example, Monster’s violin playing beaver, Budweiser’s Clydesdale-pulling wagon, and Denny’s roosters are very interesting and memorable. The third element is youngsters, as in the E-Trade and Doritos’ ads; what they say and act make us laugh. Is there anything that is common among all these compelling ads? I think storytelling is probably the common character of all the appealing ads. As Groh said in an article, a good storytelling should have an “absurd” idea, entertaining, and “voice in the head.” All of this certainly helps create a compelling experience.
Thursday, February 4, 2010
Have you watched the movie “My Best Friend’s Wedding”? It was an interesting movie featuring Julia Roberts and was nominated for Oscar awards. A scene from that movie is the subject of discussion for our class on how movies can create a compelling experience. Here is my thinking about one of the scenes from the movie. It did offer me a compelling experience, and I think the scene was helpful in creating such an experience for several reasons. It was a wedding rehearsal dinner, with a lot of people in a large dinning hall. The background music at the beginning and noise of chatting added a cheerful atmosphere for the event. While not all people were formally dressed, two young ladies with pretty hats did give the dinner a sense of festival. The crowd later joining the singing with George and others, that really helped move the show to the climax. So, the setting, props, people, and sound effects were all well arranged to make a suitable environment for the play to take place.
The plot is the telling of a made-up romantic story between George and Julianne. Everyone at the table was eager to hear the story and the curiosity introduced a great deal of involvement. However, George did not tell the whole story all out immediately. Instead, he paused and again, and that generated even stronger interest. The story telling was accompanies with singing and cheering by others at the table and eventually all the people in the dinning hall. Close up shots of Kim, Michael, Kim’s folks, and the two young ladies with hats, and other people, Kim’s joyful acts, and Micheal’s suspicious and jealous look all helped in simulating a compelling experience. I was thrilled when I was watching all people in the hall singing – emotions are contagious.
Overall, this episode was well designed and orchestrated in terms of the setting, props, plot, actors and actresses and mass actors, use of montage, and sound effects. The implication is that all elements of a play must work well to create a compelling experience.
How to create a compelling experience using photography? That is the topic of my course this week. Let me show you two pictures and see what you think. The first picture is a bar table with its surroundings and the second one is the bar table with two glasses of wine on it. Which picture would you feel is more compelling or gives you more room for imagination?
The bar-table-only picture seems pretty but it is no more than a piece of furniture. When people see this picture, people may feel it is nicely decorated and well lit but probably rarely think about anything else. The bar-table-with-glasses picture may convey something quite different. It's telling stories and meaning a lot of things. It may trigger some thought among the people who see the picture -- who are the guests? The glasses could be for old friends who haven’t met for a long time, for a couple who wants some casual drinking before dinner, or for two people who are to meet for the first time.
I think a good picture should be able to create a feel of "social presence," which means the feeling of the virtual existence of other intelligence in your imagination. For example, when people see a picture of the Eiffel Tower in France or Great Wall in China, they are often amazed by the creativity or ambition of the designers and builders of these great works. That is, we often think about people behind these pictured things. With this idea in mind I have created this set of pictures. In the process, I have pounded on the concepts of creativity and compelling experience and realized that creativity should be not only original but also imaginative, inspiring and thrilling.
Actually, I took two dozens of pictures from which the two used were chosen. I used one glass at the beginning but felt it was a bit lonely implying one person drinking alone. So I added another glass for a couple, which made I feel happier. I only thought about setting the glasses ready for two people to start, so I made sure the levels of wine were even. When my classmate suggested if the levels of wine were uneven, that would suggest a different story. That made me think. I did not come to think one glass had more than the other but upon reading your comment, I realize that it could suggest a different story. Implications of the detail of a photo could tell so much. It is really amazing!
I posted a picture of the Heaven Lake on Facebook (above), and many of my classmates liked it. So I would like to share a video of the Lake that was taped on the same day (below). That day, the wind was strong and the clouds were thick. The luck was the clouds were floating rapidly because of strong winds. As a result, we had a rare window to see the real face of the Heave Lake. As you can see in this video, the clouds moved to cover the Lake in 20 seconds. I bet viewers may experience a thrill viewing this video clip as I had that feeling taping it -- a video often serves as a conduit of emotion between the author and readers.
I have enjoyed looking at the photos by my classmates and reading associated stories. Each photo has a story and all are very interesting. I have to say life is such a wonderful thing! I also realize the meanings of some photos are more universal (e.g., sunset, mountains, and desert) whereas those of some other photos are more personal (e.g., baseball glove, a piece of bread) -- without reading the story behind a photo, guessing often tends to inaccurate. This is not say personal meanings of a photo is not as attractive as universal meanings; many photos that bear personal memories are highly valuable because of their uniqueness. On the other hand, photos of universal meanings often leave more room for imagination. From an experiential perspective, both types of photos have their distinct roles in inspiring us.
