This is by far one of the fun and interactive DECO courses I've done so far in UQ. Plus, it's a Lorna course, who doesn't like courses taught by Lorna? ;) The other one that was fun and good was back in my first year when I did DECO1100 where we were given time to test and play various games in the exhibition hall.
Along this course, I felt that i've learnt quite a lot of stuff, especially in coding. My coding skills have not been any good at all in my whole life as an IT student, but this semester itself i've learnt alot through AS3 and it's given me some hope and drive to go learn more programming. I have also learnt alot of prototype skills especially in this course. In every prac session, I really liked the exercises given to us. One of the good ones was to invent a makey-makey connection that allows us to play mario cat and one of the challenge was to not have the ground connected to us. This exercise itself helped my final prototype alot as i've actually made waters in the cups the ground/earth.
Hence, i do believe that prac sessions are really useful and should be made mandatory, maybe make 70-80% attendance to pass the course? I remembered back in graphic designs (deco2200) where attendance to prac and tutorial sessions were mandatory and each of us made efforts to go, and we ended up learning alot from the sessions. But either way, even if each prac is not made mandatory, I think the TESTING SESSIONS should be made mandatory so that all students could benefit from the session. If 5 users only turn up to the testing session, the results are not broad enough or opinions could all be much similar to each other. I was lucky to have a good practical session where normally at least about 10 students would be around.
For the first assignment (video), I was disappointed that there was no Premiere Pros in our IT building, compared to the JACs building. Lucky for me, I own the Adobe CC student suite. But what about the other students that dont have? To rely on photoshop to edit videos is quite hard. Really hope that the IT building next time supports premiere pro as well, especially the mac lab.
About prototype planning at the start, i felt that maybe more consultation times with the tutor or even the lecturer (Lorna) would help. Because this would be the single idea that would be built and last for the would last the whole semester. For me, I actually had 3 game mash up ideas and going for one was quite hard. But I'm really thankful for all the tutors' who helped me assessed each game mash up and choose the right one for me to develop and build on.
All in all, I felt that I learnt a lot through this course. Going through the assessments along with your peers and getting advise from the tutors were really helpful. Many tutors and friends actually help me alot especially in coding. Being a more design based student, I'm very glad to be able to learn more about designing especially back in assignment 1, the video prototype where i get to learn how to make a good kickstarter style video which in future could be really beneficial for me. I also learnt alot of designing skills in illustrator as i have to make many of my objects through it.
Really thankful that I've taken this course. It's also a bittersweet ending as this would be the last course that Lorna would be teaching me in UQ. Thank you so much to all tutors (Will, Callum, Khoa and Peter) and Lorna!
PS: below are all the videos of the prototypes that I've done on the game mash-up of tic tac toe and minesweeper along the whole semester:
Video 1: Kickstarter Video Prototype
Video 2: Demonstration on Interactive Prototype II
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