Which design shall reign supreme?

Which design will reign supreme?

Talk about some amazing designs!  I've been very impressed with the creativity and personality many of you have put into your blog template sketches!  I can clearly see that the majority of us have included some of the important functions and features we feel will make our blogs successful such as clearly defined menus, user friendly gadgets and colorful backgrounds and themes!  So many choices!

Now that we have a better idea of what possibilities are available to us, we'll need to begin the process of narrowing down all of our ideas to find the design(s) that will potentially be the most successful.

The question becomes... How do we do that?  What standards or methods should we use that will help us separate and choose the best design and theme?

Our Design Specification

In our last blog post, we chose a number of criteria that we felt helped make blogs be more successful.  These criteria are the specific characteristics our blog must have to be successful... and we call them our Design Specifications.  We feel, in order for our blog to be successful it needs to fulfill the criteria we chose.

We can use these criteria to measure and provide some comparison and contrast to our designs.  We can use them to help rate and rank our designs strengths and weaknesses. Simply put, our best choice would be the design that meets our criteria or design specifications the best.  Each of has selected our own criteria from the class criteria we compiled. (Green, Blue and Red.)

Which criteria did you pick and which of your designs meets your design specifications the best?

Your Task:

Demonstrate your thought process of why how you created each unique design by publishing a new blog post.  The post should provide evidence of your evaluation of each of your designs in comparison to your design specifications, the functional blog requirements (from our last task) and your own personality (likes and interests).  Each of your designs should be shown as an embedded or linked screenshot of your scanned sketches.

Finally, you'll need to recommend one final design as the best possible choice and share your feelings as to why you have chosen it.

Due Dates:

Remember, you should have your blog post completed and published for review in class on:

• December 3rd, 2014

How to earn a 7 or 8:

Finally, if you would like to earn a 7-8, please be sure to pay close attention to our task specific rubric including:

• For each blog template sketch you provide a detailed comparison of it against the design specifications
• For each blog template sketch you share how the design will support a quality user experience or detract from that experience
• You select a final blog sketch and explain your decision based on how well it meets your design specifications, our functional blog requirements and matches your personality (likes and interests)

Here are some great examples from students past who have successfully evaluated their designs against their design specifications and chosen a winning design!  Oddly, they both seem to like horses!

• Emma
• Gianna

Looks like a Million Bucks!

Together we've begun to take take the first steps toward designing our blogs functional and aesthetic features.  We know that the first step toward creating a good design is to draw out or sketch on paper the various ideas we have of what we want our blog to look like.

We are using our design specifications (the successful blog criteria we reflected on in our first blog post) as a resources to help guide us in our designs.  Additionally, we will use the knowledge we gained from our research and experience with blogs to help us focus on what features our necessary for our blogs.  Finally, we will also use our own personality as a source for what themes might represent us.

We will be demonstrating our understanding of these concepts by sketching and coloring rough drafts of a few various blog templates.  Each of the templates should be drawn on the provided sheets of A4 paper and will communicate what the "home" page of your blog will look like.

Your Task:
You can look to the examples in this blog post for inspiration.  Each of these were made by a previous 6th grader.  Please note that your template sketches should include the following qualities:

• clean and neat drawings
• lots of color
• clean space on the page
• bold black outlines
• all details included (widgets, header, post area, titles, etc)

Additionally, your sketches should also take into account the quality blog criteria that we researched and decided upon in class together.  Your individual sections created these criteria as seen below:

• MYP 1 - Blue Quality Blog Criteria
• MYP 1 - Red Quality Blog Criteria
• MYP 1 - Green Quality Blog Criteria

Due Dates:

Remember, you should have at least 3 complete and detailed rough drafts that will be due on:

• Blue Section: November 8th
• Red Section: November 8th
• Green Section: November 8th

How to earn a 5 or 6:

Finally, if you would like to earn a 5-6, please be sure to pay close attention to our task specific rubric including:

• You generate 3 or more thought fully created template mock-up sketches.
• All of your templates include the minimum functional requirements of a blog.
• All of your templates incorporate good design concepts using the basic design elements and principles.
• All of your templates clearly reflect your personality, theme and design specifications of your blog.

Designing Our Blog

Together we've begun to take take the first steps toward designing our blogs functional and aesthetic features.  We know that the first step toward creating a good design is to draw out or sketch on paper the various ideas we have of what we want our blog to look like.

We are using our design specifications (the successful blog criteria we reflected on in our first blog post) as a resources to help guide us in our designs.  Additionally, we will use the knowledge we gained from our research and experience with blogs to help us focus on what features our necessary for our blogs.  Finally, we will also use our own personality as a source for what themes might represent us.

We will be demonstrating our understanding of these concepts by sketching and coloring rough drafts of a few various blog templates.  Each of the templates should be drawn on the provided sheets of A4 paper and will communicate what the "home" page of your blog will look like.

Your Task:
You can look to the examples in this blog post for inspiration.  Each of these were made by one of your fellow classmates.  Please note that your template sketches should include the following qualities:

• clean and neat drawings
• lots of color
• clean space on the page
• bold black outlines
• all details included (widgets, header, post area, titles, etc)

Additionally, your sketches should also take into account the quality blog criteria that we researched and decided upon in class together.  Your individual sections created these criteria as seen below:

• MYP 1 - Blue Quality Blog Criteria
• MYP 1 - Red Quality Blog Criteria
• MYP 1 - Green Quality Blog Criteria

Due Dates:

Remember, you should have at least 3 complete and detailed rough drafts that will be due on:

• Blue Section: November 8th
• Red Section: November 9th
• Green Section: November 13th

How to earn a 5 or 6:

Finally, if you would like to earn a 5-6, please be sure to pay close attention to our task specific rubric including:

• You generate 3 or more thought fully created template mock-up sketches.
• All of your templates include the minimum functional requirements of a blog.
• All of your templates demonstrate good blog design using the basic design elements and principles.
• All of your templates clearly reflect your personality, theme and design specifications of your blog.

Welcome to Design Technology

Aloha 6th Graders!

Welcome to Middle School, the MYP Program and 6th Grade Design Tech!  I can't wait to meet all of you as I've heard such wonderful things about you all!

This is our class blog for Design Tech.  It's the place you'll go to find out what's going on in class, where to go to get help and what's expected of you.  It will be my way of communicating to all of you and your parents about our units of work (assignments and deadlines), upcoming events (activities) and much more.

I know that were going to learn a lot this year - all while having a great time!  If you have any questions or comments, please let me know! See you all soon!