Is Design Art?

In the discussion of whether design is art we need to look at the roles, whether professional or otherwise, of artist and designer.A designer, by definition is someone who works to a brief, this can be self directed or given by a client. In either circumstance the designer must work to a set of rules in order to meet the needs of their audience. This means that the designer will have initial ideas, often over-ambitious and beyond the function of their piece, that will have to be restricted by the client.An artist, on the other hand is less restricted and often will do work purely for themselves. This can mean there is less financial security in art, as it may be the case that an artist is creating work for their own personal tastes and simply hoping that other people agree. There are artists who work for commission, and so are working to a brief like a designer, but this will usually be on the back of successful work they’ve done for themselves.It is impossible for a designer to work without applying basic art theories. Even an engineer, a designer whose mind is focused almost purely on functionality, has to think of the basic aesthetics of their work. This relates to the principal that if something is aesthetically unappealing it is badly designed. Using this principle you cannot produce any work of design without thinking about its appearance, although this will almost always come after first planning the functionality around the target audience for the piece.Equally, artists, even the most obscure surrealists, would use fundamental practices of design in their pieces, whether inadvertently or deliberately. Those artists who deliberately break the rules will still have to reference the essential laws of design in order for their piece to have any context, and for others to understand it.A functional piece can, however, be designed with much more of the focus on aesthetics, therefore taking the opposite approach to many traditional designers. This could take the form, for example, of a chair that is perhaps not the most comfortable to sit on, but looks much more interesting than most other chairs. This could perhaps apply in the opposite direction as an artist creating a non-functional piece could deliberately apply every possible design practice in order to create an over the top, functional style.

How have you addressed accessibility and usability within your own work over the past year?

In the past year I have completed two projects which addressed the issues of usability and accessibility, these were a website and a touch screen interactive.Accessibility in this sense is referring to people with or without disabilities having the same access, and in these two media there are many accessibility features to consider. In the website project we were advised of new laws that relate the Disability Act to website design. The majority of these are aimed at those who are fully or partially blind, or have other sight disabilities. One design feature included was expandable text boxes. This means that text size can be increased on the browser options, and the text will still be visible on the page without affecting the design, meaning if you have trouble reading smaller text you can receive information in the same way. Another feature is alt tags; these are text boxes, which appear if the cursor is held over an image. There is special software available for blind computer users, which reads text aloud when it is visible on the page. These alt tags mean that even images have text, and so by entering a description the user can have the image explained to them even if they cannot see it. Another usability feature was making the buttons use editable text, so again the text can be resized and read aloud by the computer.Usability relates to all media, as the creator or designer is always thinking of how the audience receives their work, however in web design there are probably more usability guidelines than in any other media. In my website project I considered many visual factors. The colours in the page have to be generally easy on the eye to not scare people off, perhaps older users. Also, the colour of the text has to be readable on the background, however research has shown that people have difficulty reading anything that isn’t black text on a white or extremely pale background. Also in terms of text, fonts should be limited to a set list of the five easiest fonts to read, in my site I stuck to Helvetica. There are other usability features that have become web standards. These include the underlining of links to make them stand out. I also checked the size of my buttons was easy to click on, and the button’s text was large and clear. Other obvious features are having consistent graphics and navigation, and having constant access to a ‘Home’ link.In the interactive kiosk, the same usability guidelines were applied, but with much more of the emphasis on button size and shape, as people have had difficulty in the past with small active areas. I also made the pages inactive for the first second after being loaded as people often double click as they are used to using computers, and as a result skip through the pages too fast on touch screens.Overall, accessibility is becoming increasingly necessary and easier to employ, as technology advances and laws change. Usability is something all designers should think about in everything they do.

How will virtual environments (for example CAVE's) develop in the near future? What impact will it have on the way we live?

Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Games (or MMORPGs to those who play them) have been around in one way or another since the early 1970s, however they have become massively popular since the earlier 1990s. This popularity has developed much further in recent years due to faster internet connections and better usability in terms of graphics and design.

However, with this widespread use, MMORPGs have created issues and caused incidents outside of their world. A lot of this crossover between reality and online gaming has come with the introduction of currency, which has a real exchange rate, and means players can earn enough on MMORPGs to devote all of their lives to playing. For example, in 2005 a man, Zhu Caoyuan, was murdered after an altercation about an online game, where an associate sold a sword owned by his character in the game Legend of Mir 3. This was an isolated incident, but behaviour of this nature could certainly become more frequent as players start spending most (if not all) of their time on MMORPGs. Although the majority of these games are fantasy based, such as Legend of Mir 3 and the phenomenally popular World of Warcraft, the game which has sparked most debate on society is Second Life; the game that produced the first MMORPG millionaire. In Second Life your character is a human, and, as the name suggests, you can run a normal life, own property and businesses, go to gigs and even get married.With this freedom and possibility of large amounts of real money, there has been a lot of illegal activity arising on Second Life, ranging from gambling and online prostitution to real-life paedophile rings posing as children.

Some of this activity is hard to police without shutting down MMORPGs like Second Life altogether, perhaps making the online money worthless in reality would stop a lot of it. However, some people’s real lives have become dependent on their online accounts and would be made bankrupt if that were to happen, such as businessmen who run sweatshops in the Far East to earn them online credits. These people, and those who are just enjoying the game in healthy amounts, would certainly object to MMORPGs being banned, but the opposite could be said for the family of Zhu Caoyuan and others whose lives have been ruined by this modern-day social phenomenon.

http://blogs.guardian.co.uk/games/archives/2005/03/30/virtual_sword_theft_results_in_reallife_retribution.html

“A Shanghai online game player has stabbed to death a competitor who sold his cyber sword for real money.”
“The China Daily newspaper reported that a Shanghai court was told Qiu Chengwei, 41, stabbed competitor Zhu Caoyuan repeatedly in the chest after he was told Zhu had sold his dragon sabre, used in the popular online game Legend of Mir 3.”

http://news.sky.com/skynews/article/0,,30100-1290719,00.html

“Second Life's polygon world is powered by that great tradition: money. Players buy and sell in "Linden dollars" - Reuters track their value each day, as they do the dollar or the pound. The presence of cash accounts for many of the seediest corners of such virtual§ worlds, whether it's players posing as minors to sell virtual sex in Second Life, or real-life Chinese workers in Shanghai sweatshops playing around the clock as "gold farmers" in World of Warcraft (worldofwarcraft.com). Gold farms are tightly packed buildings full of men hunched over computers, paid to play multiplayer games and earn credits that can be sold to rich Westerners who don't have the time to devote to advancing in the game. It's a kind of battery farm for grown men, but instead of laying eggs, the human chickens play computer games in which real currencies change hands.”

Essay Beginning

People have been arguing for years that young people in particular are influenced by the violent films and computer games they watch and play. However, do heavily addictive online RPGs pose more of a threat to their players' mental health?The essay will begin by looking at both sides of the argument on violent films and computer games. It will then give examples of severe mental illness on the back of playing MMORPGs (Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Games). It will end by answering the question directly, looking at the psychology of MMORPGs and addiction, and comparing the cases to those involving violent films and computer games.