We Are Students Of The
Interactive Design Labs
For the Interactive Design Program at Capilano University
I don’t know if any of you guys out in Cyber Space lie in bed at night and wonder when we will be able to do away with monitors and be totally immersed in a holographic 3d computer experience. Probably anyone who grew up with Star Wars has wondered this at one point or another.
Well [...]
As students of the Interactive Design program at Capilano University we have been assigned many group projects over the course of the last 2 years. But none have been quite so satisfying as our recent SEO challenge that spawned Robot Salmon.
Our challenge was to create a Blog that would be able to draw interested users to it and send them on through to the Interactive Design programs website to learn more about what the program has to offer, the teachers, the facilities etc. We had just under 2 months to create our web presence, build a following of interested viewers, generate content that would keep our new readers coming back and make Robot Salmon a know name in the web design community of Vancouver. Here is a wrap up of how it all flowed for Robot Salmon.
As a student of the Interactive Design program at Capilano University in my last term of the program I have the exciting opportunity to participate in a 6 week practicum… My number one motivating factor in my decision to leave the hospitality industry and jump headlong into the world of web design was my love of travel. I had visions of sitting on the beach somewhere far away from Vancouver and the ominous rain, my trusty laptop in front of me as I worked away on web design contracts. When the practicum opportunity came up I decided to test my theory and travel to Taveuni, an island in Fiji.
As I was walking home after the hockey game from the Corner of Robson and Beaty up to Robson and Howe and the South I saw some really great examples of how Canada celebrates. There were seas of people all singing and dancing, draped in Canadian flags. It was all at once intimidating and inspiring. [...]
Canada Wins Gold in Olympic Hockey Alberta Plaza Celebrates
This is where I work right now and it is crazy!!!
Another short one:
As a chef turned web designer I know that the promise of a tasty lunch or dinner can make a day in front of the computer pass much easier. I wanted to interview a friend and fellow Vancouver blog writer, Malgosia Krol. She has many talents, but for Robot Salmon I wanted to pick her mind about her skills as a Landscape Architect, a photographer, a chef and a blogger for Like Mama Said.
One of my favorite parts of living in this city during the 2010 Olympics has been the experience of getting to see the localy created interactive media displays, the colorful graphic designs plastering the city everywhere you look, and all of the tech nerd stuff that has been set up all over town (there are giant T.V. projections on every surface that you rest your eyes on). But one of the things that has stood out to me the most is the fact that with the mass influx of people into this city has also come a mass influx of iPhones, Blackberries, digital cameras, HD Flip video recorders etc. Everywhere that you look someone is pressing the shutter on a digital camera, or shooting a video that will be up on You Tube in a matter of minutes. The citizens and visitors in this city have all become “citizen journalists” in their own right.
We all know that the Internet and social networking are doing their best to change the way that we view the world. Different little things during the Vancouver 2010 Olympics have been caught on the Robot Salmon teams radar; An official Facebook pin was too cool to not talk about! It seems crazy that a social network can infiltrate such an iconic little thing as an olympic pin.
As a web designer I don’t have a ton of extra peripheral tools to plug into my Mac Book Pro. Just the usual effects – good headphones for a long day, external hard drive for all that extra data (think iTunes!) but for the last year or so I’ve been using a great tool for all of my design work, the Intous 4 Medium from Wacom. Wacom is the main offender in the tablet world, all they do is tablets and tablet accessories. They offer a full range of tablets with a wide range of prices starting with the Bamboo (less than $100 for the base model) series which is for casual use and ending with the monstrous Cintiq 21UX ($2000+ for the top model) which is a full backlit LCD monitor that you can draw directly on to. The Intous 4 series falls right in the middle of Cintiq and Bamboo and for me, it is perfect.
Usabilla is a usability design application that us Vancouver web design students at Capilano University often use in the early stages of development. You can use the software for free, or you can pay which will unlock some extra features. The information gathered with Usabilla is extremely useful. I was able to get direct feedback from 14 people with in 1 day of posting the test. Under normal circumstances that would have cost me 14 conversations and a ton of time in carrying out each survey individually.
