Final - Rejected and Redo

So my abstract artwork is being rejected by lecturer. The reason is my abstract fail to evoke the feeling of stress to my audience. My abstract is more to happy/positive emotion. The reason that cause this is because....(which i think...) My colorful tiles which represent positive emotion is too much. If I were to make an abstract artwork of stress, my positive emotion should be less than the stress emotion. That's why it made my artwork more like a positive emotion abstract. Other than that, i use green color as the color of stress. This is a big mistake as green is the color of nature, color of recycle, forest, etc etc.

Abstract (old)

So I think all over again and make a new abstract artwork.

Artwork Description (Abstract): This is my abstract artwork which showed the feeling of “stress”. This abstract is also based on the caption, “stress is poison”. I use black color as the main color of this artwork as it could give a strong “stress” feeling. The black stroke color occupies the artwork and the negative space show up the caption, “stress is poison “. I choose rough stroke to represent the stress feeling. The stroke goes in a random manner also show the stress kind of feel. The outside black stroke is like spreading towards outside which mean like poison is spreading. I use noise as the background as it could give a stressful feeling too.

Idea Development: Final

Finally, both of the artworks had done. Both also based on the caption, "Stress is Poison".

Illustrative -

Artwork Description (Illustrative): My chosen caption is “stress is poison”. And the feeling that I want to evoke to my audience which is definitely stress. I choose the stress of having exam as my concept because exam seems to be the most stressful thing to my target audience based on my research. I use a very high stack of book to represent “exam” and also “stress”. Those books (stress) turn into poison and drop on the student. This showed my message of the artwork “stress is poison”. The student inside the artwork had no facial expression because showing emotion through the face is normal, so I used the environment and color to bring out the “stress” feeling. An environment which full of books to be revised for exam is stressful to the student. And besides that, I use a dark blue tone for the artwork because dark black color represent “stress” according to my survey. The background color around the book and student is bright which create contrast to the whole artwork. And so my audience will focus on the stack of book first, slowly to the poison/typo and then the student.

Abstract -

Artwork Description (Abstract): This is my abstract artwork which showed the feeling of “stress”. This abstract is also based on the caption, “stress is poison”. The colorful tiles represent those positive emotions and the green color represents the poisonous stress. My concept is about
the poisonous stress is “eating” away the positive emotions. As in real life, when we are stress, all those positive emotions will be gone. So my artwork is showing how stress can replace all other emotion, which acts like a poison spreading. The artwork focal point is the “gather point” at the top left part. I used dark green to show the “poisonous stress” and it is contrast to the colorful tiles.

Idea Development : Sketches ( ideas )

This is the sketches of my idea development.

Illustrative -

Abstract -

(try to make myself in stress emotion while sketching this abstract)

Idea Development : Caption

My selected caption is "Stress is Poison" by Agave Powers. I'm going to make two artworks based on this caption. One is illustration and another one is abstract. The emotion that I am going to evoke to my target audience is stress. Beside just stress, my message to the audience is "Stress is Poison" . People at different age face different kind of stress, so my artworks need to show the stress that face by 18-25 years old. (Which based on the survey i had done.)

Idea Development : Summary

Summary Based on Research

Emotion is a behavior, an express of feeling, or a changes of mind/ body state. It is something very personal and it seems to be simple. But it could appear to be complicated sometimes. There are a lot of kinds of emotion in this world. There are primary emotion such as happy, sad, angry, surprise etc. From the primary, it will develop into the secondary emotion which are more detail and better to explain that person feeling. Like happy, it can be relief type of happy or satisfaction kind of happy. Robert Plutchik said that there are 8 basic types of emotion which oppose to one another in pairs.

Joy versus Sadness

Acceptance versus Disgust

Anger versus Fear

Surprise versus Anticipation

Emotion are strongly related to designs,artworks and media. All the basic elements of design contain emotion. They had "feelings". Take lines for example. A line which is thick and go in zig-zag pattern, it showed anger. For twirly line, it showed the emotion of joy. Another example, a study had been carried out to study about these ( / / ) two lines. Participants view these two lines as the line that leaning towards another is "bossy" , while the other leaning away is "submissive" If line could have characteristic, so they would have emotion. The same thing happen to Shape. Shapes have emotion too. A stable shape tend to show more happy emotion, which an unstable shape will evoke feeling of fear and suffer. So there was a significant negative correlation between joy and the degree of rotation from vertical: the more vertical, the more joyous the shape appeared to be.

Colors contained emotion too. Colors does not just have some symbolism or meaning of something. It have its own emotion as well. When we want choose color for a design, beside deciding which variation looks best, we should also concern about the emotion that colors bring to the audience. Let's take a simple example.

Two angry smiley faces. One is yellow in color, another one which is red color. Which one tend to show more angry feelings?

As usual, people will choose the red one. So if lines,shapes and colors all have emotion, these would clearly explain about those abstract artwork. Those abstract art might be just some random shapes,lines and colors, but it could evoke common feeling to the viewers.

Emotion not just using in artworks or any visual arts, it is now use in interface design. Interface designer now believe that if they could catch the user emotion, then they can passionate the user. Interface designer now make the application or software, not just a simple boring software. They make use of the emotion in it. They either make something on the interface design to catch the users' emotion or they make the software itself have emotion. People would like to interact more with a software which has emotion than a simple software. By showing personality on the apps, website, etc can attract more users since people like to connect with real people, not dead thing.

Conclusion, emotion is important. Not just in the aspect of being a person, it also applied in design. Every artwork should evoke emotion to the viewers, either angry,joy,sad, surprise, suffer etc. If it can't brings out any feeling or emotion to the viewers, then it got no meaning. So beside being expressive when making an artwork, the emotion of all the elements and colors should all be taken in consideration.

Target Audience Analysis

I had conduct a survey for my target audience. Through this survey, i got to know more about my target audience. Here is the sample of the survey form.

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Why hello there! This survey is conducted for MMD1223 assignment. Thanks for spending your time. ^^

Name:
Age:
Gender:

1. What you do to release your stress?

2. When is the last time u felt stress?

3. Is stress needed in our life? Why?

4. “Stress is Poison” – Agave Power
Do you agree with the statement above? Why?

5. What is the color that best describe about stress? (Can list more than one)

6. Do you feel stress very often?

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The reason I asked those questions.

1. To understand how my target audience handle their stress.

2. To know that how frequently my target audience feel stress.

3. To understand the view of my target audience about stress.

4. To understand my target audience view about my selected caption and beside get to know their opinion.

5. To know that my target audience color choice on stress.

6. Same with question 2. To know that how frequently my target audience feel stress.

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Analysis

Most of my target audience release their stress by eating. They found that by eating the food they like, they would feel less stress. For others, they would choose to do things they like to release stress, such as exercise, sleeping, playing computer game and shopping. Based on my survey, I can conclude that my target audience will do something which maybe is their hobby to stay away or release their stress.

According to my survey, my target audience felt stress quite frequently. The last time they feel stress is usually just few days or hours ago. The main reason they felt stress is school pressure, which is exam. All my target audience is student, this showed that exam could really give stress to them.

Besides that, most of my target audience felt that stress is needed in our life. Most of them view stress as some kind of motivation. They believe that stress is the thing that make them improve. Their opinion is that stress is needed but it should not be over. Stress for them is not a poison, but if the stress is too much, then it will become a poison for them.

Other than this, the color which describe stress the best is black according to my survey. So I can assume that my target audience view stress as something which is powerful, mystery, death. (based on my research on emotion of colors.)

Emotional Interface Design: The Gateway to Passionate Users

Babies create bonds with their parents through an interesting feedback loop. When they cry their parents respond by soothing them, which releases calming neurotransmitters in their brains. As this cycle repeats, the baby begins to trust that their parents will respond when they need them.

A similar feedback loop happens in interface design. Positive emotional stimuli can build a sense of trust and engagement with your users. People will forgive your site or application’s shortcomings, follow your lead, and sing your praises if you reward them with positive emotion.

Aral Balkan’s Twitter iPhone app – Feathers – deftly combines usability and emotional design to create a pleasurable user experience. As you type a tweet, a cute birdy mascot starts to fill with color to indicate how many characters you have left of the 140 maximum (figure 6). If you exceed 140 characters, the bird changes red to indicate your error (figure 7). While satisfying a basic usability heuristic to provide feedback about system status, Balkan has also created an interaction with which his audience can fall in love.

“I really *LOVE* the singing bird when you send a tweet. Twitter is fun all of a sudden!” – @thetalldesigner

Figure 6: As you type a tweet into Feathers for iPhone, the mascot fills to give feedback on message length.

“Confession: sometimes I make too long Feathers-tweets just to watch the bird turn red.” – @evbjone

Figure 7: If your tweet is too long, the Feathers bird turns red giving feedback in a fun way.

The feathers bird creates a powerful connection with users because it’s a point of empathy. As @thetalldesigner states above, he doesn’t just like this app, he loves it. It’s not an application that’s providing feedback, it’s a fun little friend with personality, and personality is the platform for human emotion.

“Before your application can create an emotional relationship with the user it must get the basics right. The emotional relationship, the delight, is what you layer on top of this base usability and technical competency.” – Aral Balkan, designer/developer of Feathers

TapBots are following similar principles to create wildly successful utility apps that track your weight and do simple unit conversion. That’s no small feat. How do you get excited about tracking your weight loss (or gain)? The answer—create points of emotional connection.

“We did want our users to have an emotional connection to our apps. Most people don’t have a love/joy for software like geeks do.” – Mark Jardine, TapBots Designer

Figure 8: TapBots apps use personification to create a cute robot personality that almost seems human.

The movie Wall-e was the inspiration for Weightbot and Convertbot.

“Our concept for the first 2 apps was selling our apps as if they were physical robots. That’s why the icons resemble the interface. We also gave the icons eyes to humanize them a bit. But we use this idea as a selling point and not to distract the user in the actual app. We want our apps to be used seriously, but also give the sense that they are more than just a piece of software.” – Mark Jardine, TapBots Designer

It comes as no surprise, with the great care and attention Jardine has put into the relationship Tapbots have to the people that use them, that the feedback they’ve received confirms the emotional connection they sought to create.

“ I adore the way their apps look and sound.” – John Gruber, Daringfireball.net

The Risk of Emotion

As is true in real life, showing emotion in design has real risk. Some people won’t get it. Some people will even hate it. But that’s okay. Emotional response to your design is far better than indifference.

Showing personality in your app, website, or brand can be a very powerful way for your audience to identify and empathize with you. People want to connect with real people and too often we forget that businesses are just collections of people. So why not let that shine through?

Source: http://thinkvitamin.com/design/emotional-interface-design-the-gateway-to-passionate-users/