OUGD601: Context of Practice 3 - Dissertation Ideas

I think that the topic of my dissertation should reflect my interests - obviously, but I also want to use my dissertation as the foundation for the rest of my career. I think that this will be one of the last opportunities to properly spend a large amount of time researching something that interests me, so I want to make it count. Over the past two years I have discovered the types of design that I am interested in and I want to take the time over the third year to understand these areas in more detail.

I am drawn to digital design because I think it has a long and successful future but I also like the fact that it is constantly being developed. I want to focus my third year on this area of design so I need a full understanding of how digital design is created and the different stages that design goes through to ensure that it is successful. Having completed a placement at Numiko over the summer break I was introduced to UX and UI. These two titles form a significant sector of digital design as it allows designers to have an understanding of what the audience need to get from a digital experience. I also attended the Northern User Experience convention at Simple Usability in Leeds where I was introduced to Alex from gov.uk, this was an incredibly beneficial experience as it allowed me some insight into the business of usability within the world wide web. I plan to focus my dissertation on these two areas of development and gain an understanding of the different methods and stages researchers go through to propose a functional and successful design outcome. I will do primary and secondary reading research whilst also using my new contacts to gain more insight into the world of UX and UI as it is happening. I also plan to try and test some psychological studies on people around me, to enable to me to gain a more detailed understanding of the science behind digital design.

As the practical aspect of my dissertation is somewhat more important than my written response I want to create a brand with a digital output which has a wide age range when it comes to audience. I will brainstorm many different options for this brand and will test out any design experiments that I come up with in the mean time. I suspect that my idea will change when I have crits and one-on-one progress tutorials with my assigned tutor and I hope that at the end of my third year I will have a project that has developed to suit an audience.