Thursday, October 02, 2008
Buttons Mania

Our next assignment was to investigate the use of buttons. The buttons that we are referring to are those operating buttons of machinery/equipment, and the interesting thing to note about them is that these buttons comprises of pressing, pushing, pulling, rotating, flipping etc. So at the end of the day, how one of my tutors put it across quite clearly, what is a button?

Initially, our team had selected the piano key as one of our buttons. It was interesting to note that different piano keys create a different tune when being pressed. However, we were dismayed when our tutor rejected it as a lever instead of a button. So going back to the drawing board, a brilliant idea of using the PEZ sweet was created. In fact, it was way more interesting to work with than the piano keys. We set about selecting it as our model to work on.

Preparations were made before the presentation day. HK and Sean went out to find the actual PEZ sweet. Surprisingly, the sweet has declined in its popularity, making it available only at Toys-R-Us. Other preparations were made as well, such as the sketching of the exploded view of the toy, the discovery of the ergonomic (mechanical function) and the sourcing of pictures to xrepresent the looks of it. I was solely in charge of the layout and presentation of the project.

It was an impressive piece.. Perhaps too impressive for the likings of the tutors. The background was mainly eye distracting, pushing the focus away from the people looking at it. Too much of everything good sometimes would result in something bad.

In the end, I had to redo the layout, making it simpler and easier to read. At the end of it, space management was a lot better and it was
clearer to read.

Lesson learnt : Do not be too elaborate with the background. A simple background should do the trick, and let the content speak for itself