Learners will explore the features and uses of a variety of digital products to discover the key principles of navigation and user interaction. They will plan, design and develop a digital product for a particular purpose and target audience by applying visual communication skills such as colour, typography and grids.
Understand processes and techniques when developing assets and designs for digital products.
Purposes: e.g. interactive communication, information retrieval, performing of specific tasks, educational, entertainment.
Uses: e.g. social communication, news, navigation and mapping, entertainment, education, moving image and audio.
Characteristics: e.g. touch, connectivity, mobility, offline working, convenience, ease of access, personalisation.
User requirements, e.g. interaction, functionality, accessibility, legibility, intuitiveness, content driven design, efficiency.
Devices: compatibility across platforms, e.g. smartphones and tablets and operating systems.
Restrictions, e.g. storage, compatibility, supported fonts, screen size, screen resolution, screen orientation, canvas size.
Standards and terms used in app development, e.g. user experience (UX), user interface (UI), graphical user interface (GUI), post-WIMP (windows, icons, menus, pointer), information architecture (IA), iterative design, prototyping.
Characteristics/visual communication:
Interaction and navigation: interface elements, including visual, written and interactive content, grid and typography.
Navigational elements: buttons, menus.
Informational elements, e.g. icons, controls: sliders, steppers.
Touch-based interactive gestures, e.g. tap, press, swipe.
Navigation movements, e.g. horizontal, vertical, back, master, detail and navigation transitions: slide, expand.
Assets, e.g. moving image, audio, sound, text, graphics.
Explain types of digital products and their use for different purposes.
Explain the characteristics and the visual communication used in the design and development of digital products.
Be able to design and create assets, navigation and interactivity for a digital product to meet requirements.
Generating ideas: brainstorming, primary and secondary research, photography, drawings, scripts, interviews, user personas, user journeys, genre such as sports, fantasy, political, adventure, music, mood and atmosphere such as urban, traditional, cutting edge, heritage.
Assets and user interfaces: structure and interactive development, e.g. wireframes, prototyping, workflows, information architecture, storyboard.
Generate design ideas for a digital product.
Create assets and user interfaces for a digital product.
Be able to implement processes and techniques to develop a digital product
Development of digital product through layout and grids, images and icons, typefaces and typographic hierarchy, etc.
Development of assets through visual communication, e.g. form colour, shape, texture or, for sound and motion, pace, tone, speed.
Carry out and respond to user testing and user feedback on individual assets and user interface.
Technical development of assets through software whilst considering restrictions such as platform, file formats, resolution, size.
Interactive flow and functionality development through paper to digital prototyping software.
Processes and techniques: project management, organising and following conventions of folders, files formats, naming, application of basic commands, apply assets, elements and features to create an app, dry run and final testing on target device for navigation, consistency, interactivity, usability, intentions, efficiency.
Document processes and techniques: design brief, wireframes, navigation flow between screens, visual communication experiments, user-testing feedback, software notes and screenshots.
Develop a digital product in line with requirements.
Document processes and techniques used during development.
Be able to review and reflect on the design and development of a digital product.
Evaluation and reflection: feedback (teachers, peers, target audience, social media), review of app against original brief, usability, consistency, navigation, legibility and accessibility, review against appropriate industry standards and software, self-review of own performance with identification of areas for development, e.g. strengths and weaknesses, challenges and opportunities, justifications for key decisions.
Evaluate a digital product and reflect on own performance in developing it.