MMD1133 | Digital Media | Hasif Mustafa: 2010

Task:
To design and develop an interactive digital media application

Theme:
Art and Lifestyle (Using art to express a lifestyle )

Brief:
• This is an individual project.
• Screen size: 800 x 600 pixels or full screen format.
• Applying and using persuasive design and strategies is a major requirement for this project.
• Specify your target audience as it will determine your design style and approach (persona).
• You are required to use multimedia components/elements and apply knowledge you have
learn in beta year such as; visual hierarchy, grids and alignment system, type contrast, type
play, motion graphics etc. in designing your interactive screen design.
• The usable and clear navigation flow should be use in this project.
• All idea development and design process must be submitted in an A4 Sketchbook.

Objective:
• To use and apply persuasive factors in screen design
• To provide a clear understanding on digital media design process and planning
• To provide solution to interactive design problems
• To provide and fulfill user's needs in communicating information

Proposal:

Title: Introducing character of DOTA ( Defense OF The Ancient ) to target audience

Objective:

-To inform at audience that DOTA have many character that also can change their mood feeling when they use it in this game

-To show that this game also has their own art design and style via playing.

Target audience:

Teenagers ( 13-25 years old )

KIDS:

ABSTRACT

Children seek information in order to complete school projects on a wide variety of topics, as well as to support their various leisure activities. Such information can be found in print documents, but increasingly young people are turning to the Web to meet their information needs. In order to exploit this resource, however, children must be able to search or browse digital information through the intermediation of an interface. In particular, they must use Web-based portals that in most cases have been designed for adult users. Guidelines for interface design are not hard to find, but typically they also postulate adult rather than juvenile users. The authors discuss their own research work that has focused upon what young people themselves have to say about the design of portal interfaces. They conclude that specific interface design guidelines are required for young users rather than simply relying upon general design guidelines, and that in order to formulate such guidelines it is necessary to actively include the young people themselves in this process.

INTRODUCTION

Children do not think in the same ways as adults (Bjorklund, 2000; Siegler, 1996). This has been recognized, for example, by the publishers of specialized reference books for children and in the separation of the children's library from the adult's library. Children now are using the Web widely as an information source for both learning and leisure, yet overwhelmingly they are using not specialized portals designed for children but rather adults' search engines or portals such as Google and MSN (Large, Beheshti, & Moukdad, 1999; Large, Beheshti, & Rahman, 2002; Bilal, 2000, 2001, 2002a; Large, Beheshti, Nesset, & Bowler, 2004). In some cases this might be because young people are unaware that children's Web portals exist, but even when they have encountered such portals, typically they do not use them. Is it possible to design Web portal interfaces in such a way that they appeal to young users and become their preferred entry point to Web-based information?

The interface to any digital information system--the means by which the user issues search and browse instructions and through which retrieved information is displayed--can be a major determinant in the success or failure of an information-seeking task as well as a mechanism through which assistance can be offered to the user. This article elaborates guidelines for the successful design of Web portal interfaces to be used by children when seeking information in an educational (rather than a leisure) context. Although it draws upon support from other researchers, it primarily is based upon our own research, in which we have worked with children in various ways in order to understand how they use interfaces, what problems they encounter in so doing, and what suggestions they themselves have for overcoming such problems. In particular, it will focus upon our work with students in the sixth grade of public elementary school (students of eleven or twelve years of age). Nielsen (2002), in his work with children and usability, has commented on the keen awareness that children have about their age relative to those even slightly younger or older than themselves. Our own studies support this observation. Caution therefore must be exercised in extending the following discussion either to much younger children or to older teenagers.

We shall not discuss in this article the equally important topic of Web site (in contrast to Web portal) interface design for children. Nielsen (2002) reminds us that very little is known about how children actually use Web sites or how to design sites that will be easy for them to use. He says that most Web site designs are "based on pure folklore about how kids supposedly behave--or, at best, by insights gleaned when designers observe their own children." Harbeck and Sherman (1999) propose seven principles that should be followed when designing Web sites for young children, and Agosto (2002) has developed a model of the criteria used by young people to evaluate individual Web sites.

Many authors have discussed interface design, and in such discussions it is not unusual to find an emphasis on the user. For example, Shneiderman (1998) argued that any design should be based upon an understanding of its intended users, and he includes age as one user characteristic alongside gender, physical abilities, education, cultural or ethnic background, training, motivation, goals, and personality. It is less common, however, to find in practice that interface design guidelines explicitly have taken into account youthfulness as a user characteristic, and even more unusual to involve the young users themselves in the design process.

Stevenson (2001) discusses several educational portals and assesses them in the light of eleven main categories that she considers critical for a children's portal. Broch (2000) examines Yahooligans! and Ask Jeeves for Kids in terms of children's cognitive and mechanical skills. McDermott (2002) reviews a variety of specialized subject portals that are relevant to students with homework assignments. Haycock, Dobor, and Edwards (2003) provide detailed evaluations of the twenty "most highly recommended and popular" portals designed explicitly for children's use on the Web, as well as short annotations on eleven others. Kuntz (2000), then manager of one children's portal, KidsClick (http://www.kidsclick.org), identifies five broad criteria that can be applied to evaluate children's search tools: database size, accountability, categorization, search access methods, and other features (like help, spell checking, and layout). Najjar (1998), in discussing educational multimedia user interface design, makes it clear that the guidelines were almost entirely based upon the opinions of (adult) experts rather than on the results of empirical research.

DESIGNING FOR CHILDREN AND CHILDREN AS DESIGNERS

Not all interface designs, however, have excluded children from participation in the design process itself. For example, Druin (1996, 1999, 2002); Bilal (2000, 2002a); Hanna, Risden, and Alexander (1997); Hanna, Risden, Czerwinski, and Alexander (1999); Kafai (1999), Large, Beheshti, and Rahman (2002); Large, Beheshti, Nesset, and Bowler (2004); and Large, Nesset, Beheshti, and Bowler (in press) all have advocated a child-oriented approach to design. They argue that children have a lot to offer in the design process as a whole and that it is advisable to include them in it. Children can come up with ideas that adults might not think of (Druin, 1996; Scaife & Rogers, 1999), but the downside is that they may want things included in the design that are impossible to realize.

Bilal (1999) has compared the performance by grade seven students on three Web portals specifically designed for youthful users: Yahooligans!, AskJeeves for Kids, and Super Snooper. She concludes that, as novices, children should use the portals designed for them, but she also found that each of the three portals had its own strengths and weaknesses for information retrieval. In a later study of Yahooligans!, Bilal offers a number of suggestions to system designers, who "should develop search engines with powerful searching and browsing mechanisms that build on children's cognitive and physical behaviors to search, browse, navigate and explore information with certainty and positive affective behavior" (2000, p. 662). She proposes more instructions, search examples, a natural-language interface, output ranking, simple screen displays, context-sensitive help, spell checking, effective feedback, and an online tutorial.

In our work with children we have employed four methods to explore their thoughts and ideas relating to interface design: observation, interviewing, focus groups, and intergenerational design teams. These are not mutually exclusive, and in practice we have used more than one in a study.

"In general children are much more critical."

"[Children] have no patience. For example, they click before they listen and often (especially boys, we've noticed) need to come back to something a number of times before they really get it, not because they are unintelligent but because they are trigger happy."

"[Children] don't read (not counting if they are too young to read)."

"[Children] want clear responses and intelligent systems."

"[Children] need a lot of feedback and like to have a lot of interesting instruction and encouragement when there is a learning challenge."

"[Children] need reinforcement of their experience on the computer in the classroom or outside / beyond the computer; we make this a central part of the concepts we create since it also keeps the teachers happy!"
"Kids never ask why do I need this programme; adults are much more sceptical."

"The computer is a huge motivator for kids; our work with dyslexic kids showed they solved alot of learning and concentration problems through the computer simply because the dynamic is different and the computer is patient with them, day in day out."