Interaction Design

My sketches started out messy and on loose scraps of paper. I’m constantly forgetting where they are (sketchbook, notepad, buried on my desk?). Even so, I’ve gotten my act together to briefly represent this stage of my creative process.

During this first round of thumbnails, I mainly worked on trying to understand the content and how it ought to be organized. I made some subtle indications of style but nothing really inspiring.

Sketches: Round 1

After taking a break and having worked a little in Adobe Illustrator on the structure I noticed that my design was pretty boring and content heavy. So I went back to pen and paper to try and work some of those issues out. Here’s what I came up with:

Sketches: Round 2

I tightened up some of my better ideas to prepare for my wireframe and “gray box.” Here it is in all it’s glory (or lack thereof):

Sketches: Round 3

First of all, let me just say that I’ve enjoyed being reintroduced to 5th grade science. I think I understand it a little better this time around. ;)

I’ve chosen North Carolina’s 5th grade standard course of study. From their Science section I’ve choses Competency Goal 2 which reads, “The learner will make observations and conduct investigations to build an understanding of landforms.” In other words, my website will deal with how natural forces help to shape and create landforms.

For my first step, I set out to find understand the subject. Admittedly, I’m still in this process but I’ve found a lot of good information at ask.com, scholastic.com, and Wikipedia. I also scouted around for other websites that may be trying to teach the similar subjects or targeting a similar audience. I learned a lot here as well:

Scholastic’s Dirtmeister

Nova Kids: Climbing Denali

Discovery Kids

PBS: Design Squad

Perhaps most importantly, I’ve become familiar with the seven objectives associated with Competency Goal 2.  I’m think that by finding ways to tie these “objectives” to the content will be very important. Right now I need to ask myself how I can make this site fun and engaging for students while helping the teacher’s easily work it into their lesson plans.