MS Capstone

Life is a Highway

Posted by admin - 19/12/07 at 05:12:23 pm

After I made the decision to take a break from the metaphor “Time is an endless circle,” I decided to take a whack at the metaphor “Life is a Highway”.  This metaphor is much easier to work with.

The wheels are churning!

As I continue to work on this metaphor, a thought did cross my mind.

Do I want to make this metaphor actually look like a highway or have it resemble a highway?

Personally - I like minimalism and abstraction.  But who knows?  I’ll know more when I start flushing out the ideas.

Capstone Dinner

Posted by admin - 19/12/07 at 03:12:58 pm

Last night, a couple of my fellow capstone students and I had dinner at our professor’s house. It’s a way to keep us all in check and informed of our each other’s whereabouts during our Capstone process.

After giving my update to everyone, I talked to Andrew Luly who had first initially give me the idea of the metaphor “Life is a highway.” I wanted his idea and view of this metaphor. Somehow, the conversation led to some possible additional metaphors such as the nautilus from my professor Elouise Oyzon and the idea of monsters that would grow from an egg to an adult and would fly away to another planet.

As these two ideas were mentioned to me and thoughts of how I would utilize these metaphors for the calendar swarm in my head, I cannot help but be afraid.

I’m afraid that my application will turn into something that is incomprehensible and not usable in everyday life. My goal is to not only develop an application that is aesthetically beautiful and outside of the rigid grid-like appearance of current digital calendars, but to make it useful in everyday life.

In theory, I would like to build this application with full capabilities (once I receive my Master’s degree ).

Time is an endless circle

Posted by admin - 19/12/07 at 03:12:31 pm

I am currently working on my first metaphor - time is an endless circle. There are many ideas that can fit into this metaphor.

Some ideas are:

• Rings of the tree
  • the inner part of the ring is the oldest, while the outer part is the youngest
  • example website that my professor pointed me to
• Nautilus
• A pie chart
• Atoms/Molecules
• Clock

It has not been an easy task because I would start working on something that would flow as a clock and then as I start working with the idea I end up with the rings of a tree.

One of the ideas that I was working with ended up combining the ideas of the atom, clock, pie chart, and the tree ring. Who knew it would be so difficult? I think it’s time to rest the circle metaphor and start with something else. Hopefully, the next metaphor won’t be as tough. If I could just get the ball rolling, then the ideas will start flowing.

The hiatus and reading

Posted by admin - 16/12/07 at 07:12:11 pm

The past few days, I have been on hiatus with Christmas shopping and all.  Even though I didn’t do that much work on my capstone, I have been doing some.  I’ve been reading and figuring out what books to buy.  Why?  Well, they have to be returned to the library.  I’ve already received a request to return “Beautiful Evidence” by Edward Tufte by the end of the month.   So now I am currently reading the book.

Building an image library

Posted by admin - 11/12/07 at 04:12:38 pm

I’ve started to work on a couple of metaphors (Life is a Highway and Time has a circular motif).  As I was working on sketches- I realize I would need some images to represent the events so that I can move things around on paper.

Here is my list so far that I have come up with (any ideas is greatly appreciated!) (Please note: I will not necessarily use everything, it’s a list to get the brain going):

• birthday
• wedding
• funeral
• doctor
• appointments
• work
• movie
• concert
• coffee
• class
• trip
• grocery shopping
• shopping
• meeting
• anniversary
• holiday
• music
• dinner
• shows/entertainment
• workout/exercise
• games
• sports
• date as in romantic date
• clubbing
• bar
• class
• visit
• book club
• family-related??
• graduation
• conference
• vacation

Alright let’s break these into the 3 categories that I have come up with (time, all day, span/range):

Time

• appointment
• meeting
• wedding
• funeral
• doctor
• work
• movie
• concert
• coffee
• class
• grocery shopping
• shopping
• music
• dinner
• shows/entertainment
• workout/exercise
• games
• sports
• date as in romantic
• clubbing
• bar
• book club
• graduation

All day

• birthday
• anniversary
• holiday

Span/range

• conference
• vacation
• visit
• trip

Hmm…seems good for now.  Anyone have suggestions?

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