HOW TO..//CONCEPT & IDEA:

As a group we were given a task to identify a certain problem and then resolve it.  The problem we chose was 'How to balance university life with social life?'  The things we had to take on board to resolve the brief are as followed:
-Who needs to know?
-What/why do they need to know?
-How will you tell them?
Obviously these are all important points to consider when trying to solve an issue, an audience must be addressed, an appropriate reason for the specific audience selected must be valid and the communication used to deliever our idea to the audience must be effective.


The group narrowed it down to four main ideas being:
-Designing a calender specifically made for students to use
-Alcohol vs Caffeine; taking detail in particular to branding, and concentrating specifically on typography to display the social aspect of university life vs the academic/working side of university life.
-An app used on a smart phone, which is designed to suit each individual student with reminders and alarms about deadlines, briefings, lectures etc.
-Voice recordings/reminders


In the end we chose to go with the app used on a smart phone, a suitable way to try and communicate with the targeted audience, as the younger generations rely more on technology, and with the advance on technology in recent years progressing, eventually most things will encoperate a similar level of digital technology.
The app would be designed in the form of a calender which students could easily access on their smart phones.  Different icons would appear on the screen with certain voice recorded reminders to help students stay on top of their work but also allowing them to have a social and healthy life style outside university.


As a group we investigated what research would need to be done in order to progress with making the app, the final areas that needed to be looked into are as follows:

- different calendar formats/layouts 

- existing phone icons/symbols

- current apps that link in with the same 'calendar' idea

- the college timetable

- interview housemates, proposing the idea and noting the response

- voice recordings

We then went onto think about various icon designs that would be relevant to our audience:

SOCIAL:

-drinking,seeing friends,going out,parties,coffees etc

COLLEGE:

-lecture, deadline, brief, 'fred mode', induction, study time, library

DOMESTIC:

-washing clothes, cleaning, paying bills etc.