Exploration A has been interesting. If you don’t know what exploration A is, jump to www.rachidmrad.com and behold the mess.
Before I elaborate any further, let me remind you that I am the ultimate pragmatist. I also have a crocodile’s metabolism, meaning: My natural state of existence is one of minimal effort interspersed with bursts of incredible energy and creativity.
I am a sprinter, not a marathoner. A Ferrari, not a Toyota.
It’s hard for me to sustain a continuous high RPM of 16 hour days (between work and school). So I go into a highly efficient mode to survive.
What I hate about such situations is the ensuing lack of sleep – of course, Ferraris need a lot of maintenance -, and the necessity to compromise on the quality of the work I produce so I start resenting any and all that make demands on my time.
Back to exploration A; it’s one of those school projects (sorry about the dirty words… It’s true though, it IS a school project) that produces an idea with enough weight to survive beyond the scope of the classroom. I’m at a point where regardless of the grade this ‘thing’ earns and whether I will use it in my half-point review, reworking the prototype into some kind of polished version is on my to do list.
The process was interesting but not new to me. It’s a process that I learned in undergrad but seldom got a chance to use (I was never able to command the kind of compensation something like that warrants. So screw it).
It was a combination of collaboration and of finding patterns and making unusual associations. The concept map was a nice touch. These were the succsessful parts of the process.
The major shortcoming was what I would call ‘design quicksand’. I love working in a messy, non-linear method but I hate the housekeeping that comes with it: Organizing ideas, files, graphics, the need to flippin document everything, the constant going back on my steps and the resulting tedious grunt work. I just wish I had an assistant to do the menial stuff so that I could focus on the ‘meaningful’ parts.
The time spent on the Exploration is one third productive result-oriented work, two thirds clerical paraphernalia.
That sums up the process.
The actual website succeeds on a core level (my opinion). Testers who got passed the first puzzles (or who were shown how to) had a genuine ‘coool’ reaction to what was happening onscreen. Testers also showed a tendency to peruse the content looking for clues and to share the concept with friends/family.
The website also fails in so many ways. The design is underwhelming, the content is incomplete, the ‘grab’ factor is still low losing a huge number of potential users.
Time to go back to the “drawing board”…