As unit 4 is about getting the results of all the research and interventions together and understanding what was the knowledge gained, I started to think about how I can get all my evidence together, I decided to look at all the results of my interventions and surveys and analyse them while looking at it closely.

Intervention1: In detail

After observing the filled worksheets from my participants, I noticed quite a few things that I learnt from them when I examined them closely, such as the fundamentals of art which were drawn/ understood the most accurately by the age group, I noticed that the drawings were drawn in way which also spoke their occupations. Many people associated the words on the worksheet with drawings of things and icons, even though there were no instructions provided for that, and the references also do not indicate towards any drawings except patterns. Several patterns such as bricks, swirls, and triangles were the most common. Despite there being a column specifically for color, color was used consistently throughout the worksheet. Indian cultural references can also be seen with Mehendi (Henna) patterns.

Intervention 2: In detail

To do a more technical intervention, I decided to mix in concepts of card sorting and solitaire, all the terms were generated by AI when asked about the most important terms in interface design, I wanted to gage which were the things which the users preferred the most when it came to apps in general, the features they wanted to did not want. The priority sorting really helped me in understanding which features were more important than the others, and I examined everyones responses together, it became every clear as to which were the features which were commonly more preferred, as highlighted in the image above, such as Naviation Items, Color choices, Readability, Feedback Option, Graphs and charts etc.

Intervention 3: In detail

This intervention helped me specifically nail down why certain interfaces features where more suited to this age groups’s needs, such as the preferences, space, unity and emphasis, and as this exercise required the participants to tell me why they chose “this” specific option, and did not choose the others, and gave me incite into particular preferences of the participants. Overall I believe that there are several takeaways from each of the interventions, from the first intervention I believe I explore fundamentals of art from a more subjective lense, which gave me insight into which fundamentals of art did the participants understand, and responded better to, as it was quite subjective and open ended, I was able to know more about their preferences on a surface level. The second intervention was built on the basis of secondary research and delved directly into interface design, and pointed out the preferred features in levels of priority, and ruled out the design features which did not seems important. After seeing both these interventions I decided to to do a third intervention which was a blend of both art and ui. Each option of the questions was linked to a fundamental of art, based on their meaning and defination as seen in intervention 2, and was able to point the specifics that made which design was better over the others and why. I believe throught these interventions, I will be able to specifically point out design guidelines when it comes to the 55-70 age group. More can be explored in this area moving forward

After the wednesday presentation session with Sasha, i decided to do an activity which he had suggested when it came to choosing what parts of your project to include in your presentation and which to not, he had suggested us to write the flow of our project in post it notes and then keep and remove as required when it came to presenting, and keep stuff which was relevant and necessary and remove stuff which was not as important when it comes to looking at the project from a summary point of view.

Dragons Den Feedback:

For dragons den my dragons were Ralph Barker and Kumbirai Makumbe. Their feedback made me think a little about my question and my project in general I few thoughts I had after the session were:

Whether I should still keep the question same or change it, as inclusive and accessible have different meanings? There are principles like scale, contrast and color taken in mind when designing an interface so where does the art element come into play? Is it more concepts of art or subjective and personal art? Maybe the problem lies in the constant change, where apps and websites are continously being updated and new features are being added, thus people cannot keep up with them? Does the project have to do more to do with the fundamentals of art or more to do with inclusivity and accessibility?

Hence I will be taking these questions forward in my project and maybe tweak my understanding of the concepts a little.

Tutorial + Progress: Unit 4 requires us to get external verification of our research question. At my first meeting with Sasha, we discussed about the progress of my project till now, whereas both of my previous interventions done over the summer addressed both the parts of my question which were to do with Fundamentals of Art and Interface design, I still wanted to conduct at least 1-2 more interventions to help me get further insight from the user group. Sasha suggested as even though there is one intervention around art, there is more to be explored around that, and that I should plan on researching more about getting that the art element into my interventions, as that is the subject that gives my project a little bit of an edge over other researches into user experience design.

I do believe that there is more I could do ahead to bring art into the project. When it comes to stakeholders, whereas I have spoken to 2 of them, which happens to be UX design professionals and the user age group of 55+, but a third group which I wanted to look ahead to were businesses, services or companies, which specifically catered to the age group of 55+, I had attempted to do so over the break, but I was not able get any response, which is also an area I would like to think about as I go ahead into this project.

Looking Ahead: As I researched a little bit more about what I should do ahead to bring the art element into the project, I decided to look at other research projects which had used art as a method of research, and how that was done.

I looked at a paper which delves into this, ” Defining arts engagement for population-based health research: Art forms, activities and level of engagement” by Davies, Pikora, Slatter, 2012, which looked into understanding engagement with art and health via 5 art forms, such as (1) performing arts; (2) visual arts, design and craft; (3) community/cultural festivals, fairs and events; (4) literature; and (5) online, digital and electronic arts. This made me think about my project that maybe going ahead I should look at different art forms instead of just visual arts.

Another article, I looked at was “The Aesthetic Experience with Visual Art: At First Glance” by Locher, 2015, which talked about generating a “painting gist”, which generates the viewers personal context and reflections of an artwork that they are seeing, and helps in understanding their cognitive structures. This work reminded me of another paper I had looked over the summer, which used “Thinking Aloud” and “Retrospective Review” methodologies in research, the thing that interested me most about both these works was that, they has used very out of the ordinary testing methods, almost like MAAI interventions, and gave me a little insight into how I can bring that into my own research ahead, and how I should look at unconventional ways of research using art as the main factor.

References:

The Painting gist article: https://library.oapen.org/bitstream/handle/20.500.12657/23119/1007037.pdf?sequence=1#page=79

Engagment through different art forms: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/17533015.2012.656201