One of the experiments undertaken during the Creative Studio module, and one that was inspired by the outcomes of the home studio workshop, blogs about this can be here and here, was taking the photography from that particular workshop and using the lines drawn over the photography in Adobe Illustrator to create unusual grid systems that could be used for user interface designs.
This method in this process involved taking the grid lines, scaling them and creating draft wireframe layouts for potential user interface layouts, with grey blocks indicating potential content holders and areas. Although this exploration did allow for an expansive view of the mobile device screen, it also gave me an insight into the limitations of the screen. Both of these views can be taken further and can be used to develop user interfaces and user experiences going forward into not only the final major project but also in the next stages of user interface experimentation. This process was slow and required more knowledge of the basics and intricacies of the field of user interface and user experience design.
As the module progressed and the workshops shared various processes and methods in an attempt to inspire and expand our thinking into new creative areas, the coding workshop began to inspire new ways of working and open new creative pathways. Over time, this new coding process began being more fruitful than the exploration of the natural grid systems. With my exploration for this Masters being rooted in not only expanding my creative skillset but also being in focusing on commercial skills and new fields such as branding and user interface design, the developing coding self-directed sessions allowed for further understanding of the field of digital design. An exploration of the field of digital product and design development that accompanies the field of user interface and user experience design.
Learning a new skill set and exploring a new field takes time, but so does creating new grid systems and experimenting with them on not only a canvas you are unfamiliar with (in this case the mobile phone screen) but also attempting to build new design grid systems and breaking the rules of user interface and user experience design that, at the time, are currently still being learnt. With a consciousness of the time scale for this module, a decision was made to focus on developing a coding skillset and focus on how these outcomes could aid the development of the final major project outcomes.
I believe that going forward as I continue to develop knowledge and skills in the digital design field, I will keep the natural grid systems in mind and potentially return to this experiment at a later date. It could be interesting to see how the process would be different once I acquire a strong skill set in the field and know the limitations and possibilities of digital screens of all sizes. It may be worth noting, that during the natural grid system experiment, I used Adobe Illustrator as this was the system that, at the time, I was the most comfortable using which allowed for more focus on the grids being created. As this Masters continues, this is changing thanks to developing skills in Adobe XD. How different would the process of creating nature-inspired grids, and breaking established grids be in XD?
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