Design Exercise 2 - Interaction Design

For our second project to introduce us to the BA side of Multimedia, we have been asked to create a Flash piece based on the safety of fireworks. I'm currently putting alot of time into my other project on the Fashion website, so this side project has shook me up slightly. But I suppose in the world of Multimedia nothings simple and easy, and work is money. Lets try and have abit of fun with this and gain some further experience using Flash AS3. Below are my intial ideas on the projects content as well as what I plan to achieeve from working on the project.



(interesting to base my designs upon).

Who will the audience be?

I have decided to aim my banner at either Adult's keeping their children safe at Firework displays, specifically garden displays. This will be if I decided to go for my first design idea, of creating a small child character and using movement of objects such as gloves to place on the JPEG image as if protecting the character. This will include sparkler safety.

If I decide to do one aimed at teens then I will take a different approach to design perhaps more harshly orientated through video or images. This will appeal more to this type of audience as it will show the concequaences of not using fireworks safely.

It is important throughout to be aware of how the content will affect different audiences and so I will need to outline and concentrate on just one of these.

What are the designs for the visual appearance?

1) Design one is aimed at children and their parents. It will basically be a child character in the centre of the screen, and use a range of different protective objects, such as a bucket for putting out spparklers or gloves for using them. This design will be easy to impliment to the project, because of its similarity to the last project and how it uses identical aspects. I'd like to go on and try this idea as an experiment, due to its game like approach to teaching children important rules in using fireworks.

2 Variations will be used for this design.



2) The second idea takes a different approach due to the differece in audiences. This time I will create a piece aimed at teens, so the content will have to be different and more harsh due to the fact teens are more likely to use fireworks irresponsibly. My idea is to show a video, created by myself, of teenagers buying fireworks, using them, and a negative result of irresponsibly using fireworks. This way will allow more freedom for content such as language and text, due to the fact I am aiming it at a more mature audience. The design will use narrative and move through a day of a teenager before his life is ruined by using fireworks stupidly.

2 Variations will be used for this design.



3) The final design idea is to use a slideshow of images for adult viewers, showing injuries and deaths resulting from inproper use of fireworks. The images will be combined with text to inform the user about events (I will make them up or perhaps research them if I get time), that have resulted from firework displays gone wrong. The images will not be suitable for children under the age of 18, so I will need to figure out a way to stop users under age looking at the content.

2 Variations will be used for this design.



By designing ideas for three seperate audiences and giving two variations for each, I will be able to meet Davids requirements of 6 individual designs. This will also allow me a range of different interaction ideas. All designs will also be linked to the "safer-fireworks" website, so that the user can gain more information from other sources, if needed.