MA Individual Practice Intention

Ive already laid out what my intention is; 

The aim of my project is to research and understand key areas of digital design. With analysis, field-testing designs and review, I hope to create a digital design piece that has been informed by my findings.

The areas I hope to research are:

Web designs advancement from traditional print structure and why certain graphical design conventions have transferred over?

The technological and subject orientated influences/restrictions that have shaped web site and mobile design e.g. interfaces restriction, legacy systems influence, and content regulated design.

The human element. How people interact with digital space, how they search and find content, what they like and don’t like about web design, how people’s preconceptions influence digital design.

Research

I have 6 books to read and I am getting through them, taking notes as I go.

Don’t Make Me Think,

Designing for the Web,

Grid Systems in Graphic Design,

Ordering Disorder,

Seductive Interaction,

Universal Principles of Design

I've also started looking at articles around the evolution of the web:

http://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/look-back-20-years-website-design

http://www.dawnvista.co.uk/website-design/learning-from-web-design-trends-through-the-years/

http://www.vanseodesign.com/web-design/swiss-design/

http://www.vanseodesign.com/series/the-7-components-of-design/

http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2009/07/17/lessons-from-swiss-style-graphic-design/

http://shortiedesigns.com/2014/03/10-top-principles-effective-web-design/

http://www.nngroup.com/articles/differences-between-print-design-and-web-design/

http://www.creativebloq.com/web-design/how-design-screen-guide-print-designers-1131786

http://alistapart.com/article/how-we-read

The idea behind amercing myself in all of these different rules and concepts of web design is to figure out what elements are necessary/unnecessary, what distracts and adds when designing for the web and how the elements we choose to use in our design are actually perceived by the user.

Methodology 

I have to take this beyond research to something tangible, I would like to generate a design based on 4 times in web history; pre web, early web, desktop web, responsive web. By doing this I hope to see what elements are actually needed in order to convey the same message and what is adding to it and subtracting from it?

I would also like to generate a number of design experiments to see how we interact with certain ket areas of web design; hierarchy, typography, navigation.

I hope by creating these designs and testing them on people, I can generate a web design solution that uses the principles found to inform the design.