Abstract:

This project was funded by the National Science Foundation’s Small Business Innovation Research supplemental grant.

8 undergraduate communication design students, along with Asst. Professor Dan Wong and an MFA graduate student, Matthew Scheer, in partnership with Artbox LLC were tasked with creating a mobile app to represent the efforts of Artbox in the mobile environment.

The project was designed as a graduate-level research project. Each student received a stipend and an iPad to aid in their research and design efforts.

Goals and intended outcomes were set out by the client, Artbox LLC. The purpose of the mobile app was to aid in the networking, collaboration, and publicity of creative professionals and their works from a broad range of disciplines including fine art, photography, new media technologies, architecture, design. Artbox also requested that it have game features and utilize such mobile technologies as geolocation and social media widgets.

The team used video documentation, a blog website, weekly group meetings, video conference during the process. The group of 8 students were broken up into 2 teams of 4 where each had a distinct management role: Art Director, Technology Director, Operations Director, Creative Director. The aim was to develop concepts and designs concurrently and separately, maximizing the potential for 2 different concepts.

The project took 8 months to execute. Weekly half-day meetings occurred throughout this period.

Step one was to familiarize the team with the target audience. In preliminary discussions with Artbox, it was decided to focus on the Fine Art audience. This was done so as to focus the scope of the project. Also, New York City is uniquely positioned as a Fine Art center in the country. This allowed for concentrated insight to result from the research efforts.

Concurrently, the team studied existing mobile apps, mobile games, social media technologies, and potential competitors.

Guest lecturers and customized tours were given by gallery directors, museum curators, an auction house sales expert, a marketing specialist, and a mobile app design firm. There was a guided tours of the Chelsea Gallery District.

Each student was tasked with doing 5 interviews of practicing fine artists, and documenting the interviews in video whenever possible.

The conceptualization phase went surprisingly smoothly. The initial concept was determined early. It was elegant in its simplicity. For a time, the 2 competing team structure was maintained to make an attempt at creating a second, alternate concept. It became apparent after approximately a month that any second concept was inferior by comparison.

The beauty and simplicity of the game was apparent when the concept extended naturally to other fields than fine art.

The remaining months were spent on designing the game logic, the branding, and the interface. Reports and presentations were created for Artbox at key points during the process.

Keywords:

Innovation, mobile apps, games, social media, tablets, conceptual development, grant funded, undergraduate researcher, real-world project.