P1 Personal Utility

There is a longstanding debate about how we should perceive the popular internet-based products that mediate our lives. Are the products that underlie our everyday actions, from checking the weather, to reading the news, to connecting with friends and beyond, unbiased conduits for information, or are they responsible and guiding how we live our lives and interact with each other? Is Facebook a social network or a public utility? Is X (formerly Twitter) a vehicle for personal expression or a pillar of Western democratic society?

Flight Simulator, by Laurel Schwulst and Soft

While the tensions between utility and luxury (or frivolity?) are apparent in social media, how do we consider the functional apps we use everyday? Does Google/Kakao/Naver maps tracking and analyazing our movement to improve their products complicate the traditional understanding of a map as simply a navigation tool? Should we be compensated for using our apps instead rather than paying for them? And how do the profit motives of the companies behind these tools comprimise or manipulate our experiences? Furthermore, how do notions of scale, accessibility, and wide appeal, which undoubdetly offer benefits in many ways, create products that are generic or otherwise impersonal?

Prayer Place, by Omar Mohammad

In this project we will explore what we consider digital "utilities", and how freed from practical constraints, we can make them more personal. To do this we will architect, design, and prototype a "Personal Utility" that is based on your own interest, experience, and/or goals. The outcomes are open-ended – and could range from a messenger service, to recipe website, weather application. And can be designed for any screen – from a phone, to website, to smartwatch, to digital picture frame. However, the application proposal needs to be specific and unique.

Learning Outcomes

Requirements

Proposal for a personal utility made up of:

Shrub, by Linked by Air

Project

Project Kickoff: Mon Mar 4
Discuss project brief

Step 1: Due Mon Mar 11
What are digital utilities you use everyday? What about every hour? Consider their pros and cons, limitations and potential, and create 3 proposals for alternative personal utilities you would like to use.

If you were to design your own weather app, would you also like to see how the weather has behaved historically on the same day over the past decade? Do you want to make a timer with presets for the various types of tea you brew regularly? Does your music player have too many options and you miss the experience of an Ipod Shuffle?

Your proposals should include sample imagery you collect describing your idea, and help us imagine how the project may take shape formatted as screens/slides in Figma or Google Slides.

Step 2: Due Mon Mar 18
Choose a concept and create a site architecture, as well as wireframe sketches of 3 representative screens, describing your utility.

Your wireframe sketches should be simple enough not to distract us from their proposed interaction, but visually descriptive enough for us to imagine how it may take form in a final design.

Step 3: Due Mon Mar 25
Refine your wireframes into high-fidelity design using Figma. Your designs should have a visual identity, "interaction model", and "design system" at the their core. Create 2 visual directions and add simple interactions to them in Figma.

Step 4: Final Crit Mon April 22
Select one visual and interaction direction and refine your prototype using Figma/Protopie/etc. developing one full interaction across a minimum of 3 screens.

Share your final utility concept, sitemap, static design and prototype with the class in a presentation format (I'd suggest screen recording your prototype to present, as well as sharing a link where we can interact with it).

Calendar

Week 1
Project kickoff

Week 2
Concepts
Step 1 Due

Week 3
Site Map
Step 2 Due

Week 4
Comps + Rough Prototype
Step 3 Due

Week 5 & 6 
Fine Tune Designs and Interactions

Week 7
1:1 Zoom or Async Meetings / No Class 

Week 8
Step 4 Due / Final Crit

Resources

References