Iteration of Final Design

Another iteration of the final design I came up with in the last day or so, just trying to clean things up and place the users focus where it should be - the scoreboard and icons - rather than where it seemed to stray before - the hard-colour border, which proved very distracting. Below are mockups in the Corbett colours (which has become my default test environment), as well as the Donald and Graham colours. Overall, this design also moodier, befitting of the medieval clan-warfare theme.

Corbett colours

Donald colours

Graham colours

Finalising Design and Layout

Prior to developing the example section of the app, I finalised some of the principle design elements. These are shown below, along with the final mockup of the main "page," from which graphical elements were drawn for the functional example. Note in the examples that I've decided to pare down the number of clans from six to five - this was as much a visual design decision as it was functional. Six was beginning to feel a little too unwieldy, both visually and mechanically. Five feels like a better, more streamlined number, and ensures colour schemes don't get repeated - each remains clear and distinct from the others.

another sketch of the main page layout

exploring clan colours and imagery - figuring out emblems and heraldry

design for the icon linking to the mountains page

mockup of main "page" using the Corbett colours - these design elements made their way into the functional example

Exploratory Design Sketches

Some sketches exploring possible aesthetics for the app, along the lines of medieval illuminated manuscripts and elaborate picture frames / plaques.

Idea for main screen / interface - framing things, reducing things to imagery and decoration rather than raw blocks of text

Frame detail - possible edge decoration for design

Trying to represent points in a different manner - banners, battle standards

Further banner exploration concerning main interface - this is a dead end though, I think, obscures interface too much, overwhelms it.

Preliminary Page Layouts / Colour Scheme Tests

The main page in all six clan-specific colour schemes, the one each user will see for the clan they are part of. Overall design, use of typefaces etc. is merely preliminary, needs extra medieval-ing, just trying to distill things down to look as uncomplicated as possible for this iteration (measurements are based on the iPhone 5c display area).

The following are the rest of my sketched designs for the app's layout/general appearance, including notes on where scrolling or specific kinds of selection occurs:

App Layout / Flow Notes

Collected Notes

A collection of my longhand notes from the past week, in order (note: you may need to enlarge them to see anything. Also, my handwriting may be pretty illegible in places)

Aim and core idea (?)

The aim of the project is the bring awareness to one of the main aspects of International Mountain Day - the idea of mountains as important to life.

One idea I had for this is as follows (pasted directly from notes, so forgive fragmentation):
Interactive landscape - game-like - participants can change details at will - put a mountain here, take away a mountain there, put a volcano there - and see how that change effects everything else - climate, habitability, desertification, all that stuff. Brings awareness to importance of mountains to life by showing what mountains do in terms of climate, wind-direction, fertility, water, etc. and how their appearance or disappearance could have disastrous or beneficial effects over a long period.

One way of implementing this could involve something similar to the interactive tabletop video I embedded earlier on this blog.