Survey #1 Test Results

Well its been well over a week since I posted the first usability survey for fellow graphic designers to do and I am very impressed with the results! I had 23 participants with 85.7% of the test subjects understanding creative commons as it is meant to be, 81.0% believing it is a positive step for art and 78% agreeing they would use a site that is a centralized content sharing and open source resource.

Overall the test showed that females in there 20's and 30's are already utilising a lot of the available resources and have been into graphic design for less than 10 years which I believe to be a direct correlation with the digitization of the industry.

I immediately wish I had of also asked if any of the contributors to the survey  use open source resources professionally, afterall, the aim is to allow this for all resources on my proposed website. Its little late to backtrack now so I found some other surveys which other people have already done. Henley (2011) did a great one last year:

Very interesting to see the majority persons from my survey (20-40, less than 10 years experience in the industry) all seem to charge between the £250 - £300 per day they spend which is the higher end of the charging scale.

I am going to do another survey because I really do feel like I need to establish if the subjects do graphic design professionally and if they can become more competitive by reducing their rates when they have access to my website.

Brainstorming Session #1

I was going to wait until the weekend, but I have found myself with a free afternoon (a rare jewel at that). I figure while I am waiting for some comprehensive results of my first survey, I should brainstorm about how I want to the site to be so I can plan some more testing.

The key things that came out of the brainstorm are as per the below:

1. Interactivity

I want the users to be able to upload and download resources, select their favorite designers, use a project feature to guide them through a graphic design project, tag each other in their creations and share the attribution where necessary, communicate through comments, private messaging and forums and finally write and share tutorials, articles and third party links for graphic design.

2. Projects

I want users to be able to "Start a project" where they can name it and post their concept (optional feature). The user can then choose to either user a series of assistant features where they can record and discuss their progress during the design phase if they choose. Alternatively, the more experienced designers may not want to bother with this feature so it will all be optional and you can choose your project type from the beginning. Any resource used in the project will need to be tagged to the resource and designer location, or if the user has created the resource themselves they need to upload it to be shared with others. The final result will be a combination of the designers own creation and adaptations of the shared resources available. These final pieces will be added to the users portfolio and showcased in the online gallery.

3. Creative Commons Acceptance

The whole concept of the website is to create a design community who share resources, idea's and their creations. As standard anybody who uploads a resource (photo, illustration, clipart, Photoshop elements, patterns, stock images) will need to choose from a preselected list of creative commons licenses. All of these resources will be open for remixing and commercial use (remixed only, not the original form). The only content that is exempt from this rule is the artwork created through the projects where the designer will get a choice to select additional creative commons licensing which will allow them to block commercial use. As a community of professional designers it is important that the resources can be remixed and used commercially.

4. Copyright issues

After considering how the licensing is going to work, it occurred to me that people would be able to upload artwork and resources to the website and claim them as their own. I will need to research ways to tackle this off the top of my head though, they would need to agree to terms and conditions when becoming a member and accept a disclaimer when uploading content. I would incorporate a "report copy" function on each element so other users could report items they believe are not original.

5. Typography

I hadn't thought about it until the last minute of the brainstorm, but in addition to the already mentioned resources it would be great to have user created fonts also!

6. FlowChart

I've started to consider how the interface and navigation will actually work although more research on the concept and testing needs to be completed before I can look at this properly.

1st Survey

In preparation for the Market Research assignment, I have uploaded a survey aimed at people who have an interest in Graphic design. So far 11 people have completed it! I am pushing it on Facebook and the Curtin Uni Discussion boards so hopefully I can get a scope of users in the next few days.

After a couple of changes, I settled on the below questioning, with a focus on the resources used and the users understanding and feeling towards creative commons licensing:

1. What is your understanding of creative commons licensing?
Don't Know
A Way for Artists to legally share artwork
A way for people to get around copyright
A way to exploit the work of other people

2. How do you feel about creative commons licensing?
Don't know/Don't Care
It's a positive step for art
It's a negative step for art

3. Have you ever used open sources resources for design?
Yes 

No

 

4. Have you ever uploaded to or downloaded from any of these sites?

Flickr

Brusheezy

Deviant Art

My Photoshop Brushes

Open Clip Art

Other (Please specify)

 

5. Which category below includes your age?

17

18-20

21-29

30-39

40-49

50-59

60+

 

6. Are you male or female?
Male
Female


7. How long have you been into graphic design?
Less than 1 year
1-5 years
6-10 years
11-15 years
15 years +


8. Would you subscribe to a website which you could find all visual resources, share your creations and use others as well as maintain a profile and communicate with other designers?
Yes
No 


I am looking forward to collecting the data - so far its positive and 87% of people would subscribe to a site like this.

Introducing....!

The Problem Solved

I was able to decide on my chosen topic pretty quickly as it is a concept I have already thought of in the past. My aim is to create a "Creative Commons UI" in which graphic designers can become members to share, contribute and create using open source resources. I got the idea after realising that in my own design work, I use a variety of different resources to create my own piece of work, and I end up having to bookmark multiple pages often wishing I could find what I was looking for in one place. Anything from photo's to photoshop elements such as brushes and patterns, I utilise those open to creative commons licensing often to create my own pieces of work.


It occurred to me that the culture of remixing on the internet is occasionally frowned upon and what I envisage my site to achieve, is a community base of designers who can share their creations for remixing, as well as show case their artwork which has been created using open source resources. It will also be a place where users can communicate with each other and set up internal groups within the community.

Inspired By...

Brusheezy

Brusheezy is a fantastic website where people can upload Photoshop elements created by themselves. I find this a great place to find brush sets, vectors and patterns for use in my own creations and I enjoy sharing my own created elements also. While it is a great place to find these sorts of resources, I find more often than not the person who has uploaded their creation hasn't adopted any creative commons licensing which makes the designs good to look at but that's about it. My site would incorporate the sharing nature of Brusheezy, however all work uploaded will need to have been shared with creative commons licensing and will need to be open source for other users of the site.

Deviant Art

Deviant Art carries the tag line "where art meets application". With more of a focus on user generated illustrations and artwork rather than the resources, Deviant Art has an array of pages offering you different themes of artwork to look at and choose from. The people who upload to the site are clearly talented and passionate about their visual artwork which inspires the sharing element of my site. As I intend to allow users to upload their overall creations which have been completed using other resources available on the website, I hope that people will find inspiration in each others work to keep the creative energy flowing, like Deviant Art seems to do for its own users. I found the lack of communication between users a downfall of this website. In terms of usability, from my point of view I think the menu's are a little overcrowded and it could certianly be simplified.

Creative Commons Search

Such a fantastic tool that I can't get enough of - which is the main base for the inspiration for my own website concept. The creative commons search function which is operated from the official creative commons wesbite allows you to search for any online media which is licensed for creative commons usage. Just brilliant! My wesbite will adapt a search function also, however it will be focused purely on visual design, no video or audio for the purpose of this assignment. It will be possible for users to use meta date or tags for their uploads and for other users to use a keyword search to find them. As it is only a search engine, its one of many tools we can use to find open source content.

Facebook

Well everybody has it or knows about it at the very least! I'm including Facebook in my line up inspiration purely for the community factor. Similar to Facebook, I hope for each user to have their own page or portfolio which will outline their uploads and interests in visual art, which members can comment on and communicate. As well as a private messaging service similar to that of Facebook, my concept will draw on many of the communicative elements of social networking sites like Facebook. It will of course be completely different to Facebook as I don't intend to include the "friend" system, but rather a favourite system where you can see updates from your favorite users in your home screen.

That covers off all of the sites that have inspired my initial idea. Over the course of the next few days, I intend to conduct some testing on these sites and more to establish how other graphic designers feel about these sites.