najla, P 1.1 Brainstorming A+ Research,

P 1.1 Brainstorming A+ Research+Comprehensive sketches

at first i wanted to lay the year according to the planets, so i wanted to start the months according to the horoscopes months not the regular months.
i did try to do that but it didnt work after all.

i went and research more horoscopes calenders, and looked at the horoscopes in general and landed on the luck of a horoscope during a year.










after all i choose one horoscope to map it's luck in 2009, which is the aquarius (my sign), so i researched the horoscope, when does it start, ends, what is his best months for the: love, money, and health areas. and started to map these informations.

P1.1 research/a

1 year-12 months 

1 month 28,29,30,31 days

1 month 4 weeks

1 week 7 days 

1 day 24 hours

1 hour 60 min

A hospital-is an institution for health care providing patient treatment by special stuff and equipment and offer.

Process 1.2

Ok.
So this is part two of my process, its a little bit confusing.
I am not used to writing my process and people reading or seeing it.
But i mean what the heck.something new right.
Anyway, again i might have a little changes in my concept.
More like a conversion to what I had before.
Because I had a talk with peter. and he told me that my idea only would work if I was making a Product so that the users can use, but instead, I am making a system.
A designer who is experimenting and creating a system to tell information.
To Inform the readers something about my topic.
So I am back to previous concept, which was about children.
I am making a study of children's most important events.
They're growth stages. for example, when they get their first tooth, or when they have their first birthday, when they say they're first words, and have their first hairs :).

P1.1 research/a

 Research about children hospital. What they are interested at and what most children hospitals look like.

Mario, P1.1 Research/a

Choosing an audience and a theme

i found the whole process of coming up with a theme and choosing an audience for my calendar to be very challenging. the first thing i did was going online and take a look at different calendars to get an idea of what i needed to include in mine. then, i brainstormed with some of my classmates in order to come up with ideas about what we needed to include in our calendars. my first idea for this project was to elaborate a calendar based on the movement of the sun and the moon, a system that was used by the incas in south america. then, I thought of doing something more functional, something that everyone could use.

I started brainstorming about other possibilities and started thinking about reasons why people use calendars. one of the main reasons i came up with was that people use calendars so they can keep track of birthdays. to elaborate on this idea, i thought about what do people need to know about birthdays? how would the calendar work? what information can people add to it? ease of use, size, how to show it is a calendar just to write down birthdays and not other information?

now, i am developing a system that can show which month of the year it is and that let the user know where to write down the names. my main priority right now is to make the calendar as functional as possible so the user can easily access and add information to it.

P1.1 Research/a

Ok...so I have a definite target audience...Pregnant women! My friend is newly pregnant, so as her shopping companion, I feel like I am involved in her growth process too!

I didn't just want to map any days of the year, but tried to think of an event that was directly related to time, and what better than 9 months of pregnancy? I know that pregnant women have a lot of appointments to go to, and have to keep really organized, so a calendar is a necessity. I also thought it would be nice for parents-to-be to keep this calendar as a memento as their child is growing up.

The only problem is that pregnancy has a lot of cliche visuals linked to it and avoiding them is going to be tricky...plus fetus images are so cute!!












I have an option to use a metaphor like a cupcake that grows in the oven...or i could use completely abstract visualisations such as shapes.

i did research on the available calendars in the market and there isn't much variety at all, so then i moved on fetal charts which are more pragmatic. this type of chart applies more to my project because it contains more information about the fetus; such as length, weight and development stages.

i tried to ask myself: what information do pregnant women need? my constants would be:
time (perhaps a count down till due date would be nice)
estimated weight,
length,
and size of fetus.

there are many facts about pregnancy which would be nice to include, but without using icons, images or text, it might be tricky. but here's on for general knowledge:

Did you know:
by week 6 its heart starts to beat
by week 10 all vital organs are formed
by week 13 it sucks its thumb
by week 25 it can hear your voice
by week 32 it can survive outside of the womb

when do you think life begins?

anyway, i digress...back to the subject...as i said earlier i did some research on medical charts so i came up with a load of boring looking graphs. i am interested in the wheel type charts that the viewer can interact with depending on which stage of her pregnancy she is in. here is one i found which measures nuclear isotopes and decay...it is so boring though that i would rather be decay. maybe i can jazz it up though??












so generally, i am at a more pragmatic point of research as i think if i get all the information down in a logical way and then think about design, it is a good tactic.