In our project, we developed a tangible tool designed to facilitate collaborative magazine design. My primary role in the team was to create Figma animations and UI workflows, as well as to design the tangible aspects of the tool. At the outset of the project, I proposed several constructive ideas, such as utilizing props to help the manager assigns tasks efficiently. Our four-member team pooled our ideas to design the final product, and through numerous iterations using prototypes, I focused on the practicality of the design tool, often advocating for modifications to enhance usability over technological appeal.
The goal of our assignment was to transform typical small-screen interactions into a more engaging, large-scale tool, while learning about key design principles such as affordances, signifiers, constraints, and feedback. This project significantly improved our ability to create more compelling prototypes.
Effective collaboration in a team setting often requires continuous communication and the refinement of each other’s ideas. Working solely on individual computers can be inefficient for such dynamic interaction. Therefore, a "large tool" that allows team members to input their ideas and communicate through it can lead to more efficient and unified work processes. Based on this, our team chose the commonly collaborative task of "designing a magazine" as our challenge, believing it to be a familiar yet demanding teamwork scenario that would benefit greatly from our tool.
Hiveos: The Future of Tangible, Collaborative Design Tools.
Video link: https://youtu.be/E-EWwky0eec
Music used in the video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pdbp0P5b3ZY
In order to make the magazine design process as realistic and reliable as possible, at the beginning of our research, we first searched online for the necessary steps and key processes required for designing a magazine. Simultaneously, we consulted a friend who had internship experience in magazine design and sought some advice. From this, we realized that the most important aspects of magazine design are not just about design or aesthetics, but more importantly, how to make a magazine appeal to its readers. Thus, this requires not only designers but also someone responsible for gathering current popular materials and trends, a person to make the final publishing decisions, and they need to work together. Therefore, we categorized these roles into three: designer, researcher, and manager.
We interviewed Rod Lemaire, a teacher of visual design in interaction design, who has experience in magazine design and extensive team collaboration. Below is a list of all the questions we prepared:
After answering all the above questions, we summarized the answers: