Context
In this module, we have a chance to work in a group of interactive designers and animators.
It gave us the opportunity to undertake a collaborative, live brief to creatively engage with issues relating to the designer and animator’s widening role in society, culture and technology.
It gave us the opportunity to undertake a collaborative, live brief to creatively engage with issues relating to the designer and animator’s widening role in society, culture and technology.
We worked alongside Sporting Chance to help develop ideas related to encouraging better mental health and emotional wellbeing for sportspeople. This involves designing a prototype or animation that promotes mental health services to professional athletes, helping sportspeople to identify mental health problems, and encouraging them to take action addressing the problem through different support that is provided by Sporting Chance.
Teammate -
William Hawkswell
Harry Wright
Huw Fenny
William Hawkswell
Harry Wright
Huw Fenny
Challenge
1/ The current method of communication is limited, which leads to poor promotion of their service. Due to COVID-19, this situation has gotten worse.
2/ The concern of career disruption, and the stigma of obtaining professional help for mental health issues.
2/ The concern of career disruption, and the stigma of obtaining professional help for mental health issues.
Solution
The solution we have come up with is to create an animation short as we think that something eye-catching will be helpful to create attention and draw awareness. We believe that our outcome would include the following elements:
1/ Promoting Sporting Chance.
2/ Encouraging athletes to seek help.
3/ Rectification of the right of seeking help for mental health.
1/ Promoting Sporting Chance.
2/ Encouraging athletes to seek help.
3/ Rectification of the right of seeking help for mental health.
Animation Concept
A young athlete being beaten down by the sports they play represented as the equipment they use in these sports. However, in the end, a person comes along and reaches out to help the athlete to show they are not alone, and that help is always available, which will be Sporting Chance.
S.C.A.M.P.E.R
S.C.A.M.P.E.R map helps to come up with further developments for the animations. This helped us look at different uses for the projects and explore different topics and uses for the animations.
Animation Research
We have looked at a range of different animations to help come up with our projects idea. For example we looked at animations from Hannah Grace and Headspace. This research was a great insight into what style we would like to use as well as how these animators have discussed and shown the difficult topic of mental health. All this research helped us develop and solidify our ideas.
Gamification Research
We have decided to adapt the idea to a short gamification video idea as we want the idea to be interactive with our users so that they can get the help that suits their needs.
Flowchart
We have created a timeline for the interaction of this concept, this shows how the options you pick will affect the outcome of the animation.
Idea Development
The figure is originally concept 2. As a group, we decided to combine concept 1 & 2 together as we believe that concept 2 would work well as a continuation of concept 1. The combination also achieves the 3 goals that we mentioned earlier.
After sketches we started to develop some higher quality screenshots and worked on character design. This would help us scope out the process and make the development as efficient as possible.
Final Outcome
We have decided to use this animation on different electronic devices to replace the traditional promoting material like leaflet/poster, as they aren’t as effective and noticeable compared to the methods nowadays. The mockups demonstrate how this interactive advertisement can be used on.
Learnings
Working as a team with students from different majors and profession makes it difficult for me to work effectively as they did not have any experience working on a design document with this amount of detail, which leads to me and Harry constantly explaining what is needed to be done and slowing down the paces. It was understandable as different courses have different working standards and understanding of how works should be done, not to mention that some design methods were new to them. However, it is a valuable lesson for me to experience working with people from different fields.
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