My digital media workshop tutor today critiqued my previous work, and suggested further developments on how I could improve upon what I already had. These are those improvements.
Icon
The first step I took was to re-design my previous application icon. The previous consisted of a single blue house on a white background. Upon being reviewed, it became clear that the icon didn’t really give the message I was trying to send – for starters, it was a single house, which doesn’t exactly re-enforce the idea of “community”. Second, it looked very similar to a lot of application “home” icons. My re-designed icon, as can be seen above, is not all that much a drastic change from my previous icon. It was simply a case of copying the house and moving it over; but already it looks a lot different. The fact there are two houses removes the connotations of homeliness, and instead re-enforces the idea of community.
Interface
My interface has had an extensive re-design; I did away with the swiping idea I had to instead focus on a more classic, user-friendly design based upon the previous “My Council” app. For this workshop, I wanted to focus on the icons, spacing and usability (I have not yet given the colour scheme much consideration). All the icons are supposed to be visually represent the text beneath them, although this is very difficult to do. “Jobs” could also easily be “news”. Nonetheless, I’m extremely pleased with how this turned out, and am looking forward to developing it further.