Writing Dissertation
Much of this week was spent writing my dissertation and finishing up whatever I could. I actually thought I needed to incorporate in another user-testing of my website before I executed it again, so I rapidly prototyped on Figma, which in hindsight was just poor planning and rushing and doing something for the sake of doing it. But I did kind of plan the copywriting and how I want the mood to be. But definitely a more elaborate planning and decision making is needed.
Rapid Prototyping Not Using
Digital Magnetism
Andreas recommended this video to me, titled 'Websites worth waking up to: Forging a future of beautiful digital environments | Base Design' and presented by Mirek Nisenbaum, and I felt that it was quite similar to the project that I'm working on. On critiquing user-friendliness, he mentioned that websites, especially those catered to e-commerce "touch no emotions, they leave no memories, they don't really give people any reasons to come back except for the very functional ones." User-friendliness, making everything familiar become a mantra, and became the objective of what websites should be. He asks: "Can we imagine the web not as it is, but as it might be?"
Common Traits Identified
Some of the common traits that were identified by Nisenbaum was that these websites have a 'personality', a sense of self, and a distinct personality.
It has confidence and push standards rather than the generic portfolios. Extraordinary sites are distinct in form and in function. They have passion,
charisma, energy and authenticity.
I don't know exactly if I'm able to place such high standards on whatever that I am doing in this project, especially when I have to learn a lot of
website development and coding stuff but one thing I do like is
that I'm starting to question what a website could be (Laurel Schwulst's essay on websites), and gaining exposure as to the state of the digital internet,
and also philosophies that a designer can adopt. And these can stick with me for a long time!! This project is a lifelong learning process!