Co-op Placement

Graphic Design, Motion Graphics

Objectives:

• Determine problem spaces within the Sheridan Trafalgar SCAET wing and ideate possible solutions or improvements 

• Further develop a solution or improvement and develop high-fidelity mockups

• Formally propose solutions and improvements to stakeholders

Problem Space and Solutions

This was my work at my co-op placement at the public Creativity Studio at Sheridan College, which is a collection of students from different programs in the Trafalgar campus working to propose renovations to the SCAET wing within the campus based on our skills. Among the proposed additions were accessible and comfortable seating made for all students regardless of mobility, revised positions of seating arrangements throughout the wing, and a redesigned Sheridan app for navigation throughout the campus.

My contributions, aside from helping construct physical prototypes of some of the proposed additions, are the ideation of an interactive digital poster and the improvement of the display screens showing student work.

For context, within the Sheridan SCAET wing, there are posters of movies worked on by Sheridan alumni; however, due to exposure to the sun and time, many of these posters have degraded, with their colors fading away or bleeding onto each other. These posters are spread throughout the wing, and are quite a sore sight given their diminished quality. It is also not clear what alumni has worked on what movie due to alumni receiving a tiny plaque, which are also degrading, detailing their work positioned next to some of the poster, with the font being small enough that someone would have to walk right up to it to read it, which few would do. Additionally there are several television screens displaying student work from the Bachelor of Animation program, with the credit to the students being at the beginning or end of the animation. The problem here is that someone will not likely stay to watch the whole animation, and even if they did, there’s still a chance they would not see the student’s name.

In essence, my objective was to improve the posters and student work displays within the SCAET wing. As I worked on completing these objectives, I met and consulted with other students in the program as well as stakeholders to discuss my ideas, the boundaries they would be in, and how to move forward.

Ideation and Execution of Solutions

When it came to the student work displays, I opted for a low cost solution. I decided to go for a simple translucent watermark at the bottom of the video, which displays the student’s name, their program, and their year in their program. This would allow a viewer to know who made the video at any time during said video. I added the program in the watermark, based on the idea that several programs could have student work shown, such as Interaction Design and Photography, and these programs can have different weeks of the months to show their work, giving the college a chance to show the full breadth of their students’ abilities.

Below are the before and after mockups of this idea.

For the movie posters, I was more ambitious. I wanted to help enhance Sheridan’s reputation as a technological campus, and so I decided to push the posters to a higher level. The natural conclusion was a digital poster, one that wouldn’t be sun-bleached or degrade so dramatically, the design of which was made to look sleek yet grandiose compared to the rest of the posters in the wing, with marquee lighting present throughout the poster, in order to invoke a an old ‘Hollywood’ aesthetic. But I wanted to go even further; I decided to make the digital poster interactive to encourage users to use it. Users can use their hands to flip through the posters, at the bottom of which display the names of the alumni who worked on it and what they did, but unlike the plaques, these would be seen with their poster rather than far away from it. Additionally, the posters could be switched by sliding either them, or the alumni names below them, this is meant to give users of all heights a chance to interact with the poster. Even then, I wanted to go further; if someone wanted to know more about the alumni’s experiences with a specific movie, they could tap the poster, which would bring up videos of the alumni talking about their experiences and behind-the-scenes footage, with speakers on the ceiling above the user and subtitles in the videos, all in order to give as many users as possible more insight in their experiences.

Below are various iterations of my idea, with the last mockup acting as the intended design.

After finishing the concept and mockups of the interactive digital poster, I created a proof-of-concept video to explain how it functioned, which I then presented, along with my other contributions, to a number of stakeholders in a formal proposal at the end of my co-op.

While my co-op experience was not necessarily what I had expected, I am quite thankful for the opportunity it gave me. It allowed me to solidify my skills with a number of Adobe software, provided me the opportunity to work in a team of diverse skills, and gave me valuable experience in interacting with stakeholders in a variety of situations. I learned more in my co-op than I could have imagined, and it helped me solidify what kind of designer I want to be.