Welcome (21st April 2015)

Procter Periodical #9

 
 

Another 2+ months roll on by...

 

Time flies so here is my latest curated links from the last month or so ! Originally I drafted this a month ago and even then I was behind, London Shows and events at Winchester School of Art have taken over however don't forget you can follow me on Twitter or check out dctr.pro for many more links.

Wow what a couple of months too! AFC Wimbledon went on to get into the Play offs and not only that but make the final and Win! To gain promotion to League 1. I had a horse voice for a week!!

 

And just prior to that we had a super successful open Arcade in Southampton for year 1 and 2 BA (Hons) Games Design & Art.

We also made a new Course film which I am super please with and can be seen first here.

In between all of this I made my second visits to Belfast School of Art and Newcastle College as their external examiner and then rapidly came the final year show for all of our BA programmes in Winchester and London and from what I could tell it seemed to be one of the busiest and best looking.

Original animation by Adrian Baxter converted to Gif with Gif Brewary 3

The School of Art has been placed 8th in the UK for Art & Design and 3rd in Teaching Excellence which is amazing and I am super pleased with all the work we have put in to get to this point. I wrote this blog about UK Design education and created a networked publication to promote good design education tips and tricks in the UK too.

I mentioned last time that I upgraded my hosting to host my own gitlab for my Xcode projects but this is still causing issues that I hope to fix. However it turns out my idea of running my own discourse would in fact need a server of its own and currently is no way I can justify higher monthly costs for a forum that will not be over used yet. I have however managed to secure an illustrator for my PhD work so watch this space. Hopefully I can get stuff on gitlab soon as I have been working away learning Swift 3 with Xcode beta 8 and to do this I have in fact been building app that will be released very soon, its pretty niche but also unique, but more importantly its a stepping stone to my PhD apps even though unrelated in content ! Watch this space.

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Ok lets start

EduTech

We work to spread the culture, processes and benefits of open wherever we can. - We Are Open

We are Open Coop - I have been on the Slack teams as this project was progressing and its now open which is great to see.

Decentralised Web - Sir Tim Berners-Lee gathered in San Francisco with other top computer scientists — including Brewster Kahle, head of the nonprofit Internet Archive and an internet activist — to discuss a new phase for the web.

The War on Learning, Gaining Ground in the Digital University - This is on my must read list, Elizabeth Losh examines current efforts to “reform” higher education by applying technological solutions to problems in teaching and learning.

Digital Skills Crisis - UK Digital skills in Schools need ACTION!

52 insights - has Technology failed us, excellent article on the issues around the way current technology products are born from a neoliberal VC backed nightmare and that the web and digital should and could be better than this.

Edutech - Another great medium article - Does our ‘edtech’ obsession get in the way of education?

New Blackboard - Blackboard have finally come round to the idea of design , but this is just emperors new clothes, but I have to praise them for at least trying to make blackboard a little nicer to use.

Why eLearning refuses to take off - There is some great writing on edutech at the moment I have to say.

Play Think Learn - using play in learning, this looks like this conference will be great.

 

Design Thinking

What the hell is design thinking anyway? - there you go :D

Design Method toolkit - A bunch of tools to help you work on a project using design processes

AMT - is finally up and running online and tweeting An office for media theory and speculative practice in art & design

Independent Article - Design / Creativity economy is massive and generate Ł84 billion a year for the UK!

their business models demand a turn around time for these skills that is not reasonable, which means they likely turn out a lot of graduates that think they are ready to work, but in many cases they are not.

When we interview potential UX team members, we rarely get to the portfolio. It’s generally a conversation about what’s going on in digital, how we all approach solving problems and, in some cases, geeking out over both our favorite and most mortifying experiences.

Teaching UX - some food for thought here as there has been a trend to try and teach design and UX skills in these fancy new short courses.

 

Hybrid Design

Mozilla’s rebrand - excellent look into it.

Greenpeace - Medium publication that will document there rebrand.

WSA Page - I was on Radio 5 talking about games & art, I enjoyed this so much!

Principle App - Animation on the web is a growing area and simple interactions can gain so much from the addition of motion and this is a good start

Quit painting a thin layer of cuteness over fundamentally broken interfaces.

Dear tech you suck at delight - something I am placing as a founding piece of my PhD is delight so this article is welcome.

When I am working on a problem, I never think about beauty but when I have finished, if the solution is not beautiful, I know it is wrong. ? Buckminster Fuller

Agile is dead - well not really, one of a bunch of IBM webcast things that are worth a look into.

The remix reality - More stuff to help you consider your approaches to creativity and design.

Do not look for reasons to use an icon because your design feels empty or cold or doesn’t work as well as you expected. Icons do not fix a structurally broken design. Add icons at the very end of the design process, do not play with icons while working on your wireframes.

Icons - as much as I love them this helps you consider when you need them in your design process.

Unpleasant design - really great article about new book and podcast on this idea.

Inclusion in design - super important.

 

Productivity

Better - Is a new ethical content blocker that focusses on trackers and is designed for iOS check it out

OneNote - I have to admit using this on iPad / iPhone and Mac is great, its like evernote but better.

Trello & Slack - Great convergence of two great tools.

Alfred - Spotlight on acid, was updated to version 3.

Level Up - some cool tips - Level Up Your Willpower Stats for a More Successful Workday.

Writing tips - Some routines you may want to try if like me you find writing hard.

(1) Read. A lot. (2) Write every day.

Late Binding - Chris Murphy is a great writer and presenter and I am fortunate to know him and his article on why leaving stuff to the last minute is fantastic and something I often look at ! :D

pinboard - delicious seems to be breaking this year so I have migrated to pinboard, totally recommend this for your bookmarking of websites along with the iOS app pinswift.

 

Music & Film

YataToy - make music, animate some illustrations !

Anohni Hoplessness - probably my favourite record of the year.

Grimes at Glastonbury - loads of great stuff on BBC iPlayer.

OPZ - Teenage engineering have some great products and the OP-1 is an item we use in Games and Graphic Design but the OPZ looks like another level !

Boilerroom- a recent graduate of ours works here as a creative director, docs, underground music, online what else do you want.

 

Misc

Buzzfeed - Apple finally Designing for Women.

Haptical - having just purchased a HTV vive for our BA (Hons) Games Design & Art. this is a great resource on emerging trends in VR/AR.

Super Arcade Football - Kick off revamp on ps4 got a slating but I think this game could do what they miss out on which is something PES and FIFA don’t manage, but fast fun reactive and not overly animated football video game play, this is looking hopeful

The Making of Spectra - No Mans Sky was delayed until August but this one was even more delayed, out in May so need to check it out. .

Book reviews - this features a great review of Seth Giddings book Gameworlds: Virtual Media and Children’s Everyday Play. He works with me and is one of my PhD Supervisors and all round nice guy.

Pokemon Go needs to be released in the UK before all the Pokémon are caught “illegally” - Me

Me elsewhere

inkubator.io(http://inkubator.io)

researchnot.es(http://researchnot.es)

adamprocter.co.uk(http://adamprocter.co.uk)

@adamprocter(http://twitter.com/adamprocter)

Instagram(https://instagram.com/adamprocter/)

Not to bad a collection of things to look at considering its been a couple of months. I still seem to lose things I see in minutes but I am sure you are all more than happy with this months collection. Please do tweet me any comments or ideas and please do share if you like the newsletter. Thanks for spending the time.

Adam.

Robot Wars is coming back!