Gibbs Points for a Main Street

Don’t distract people with flowers and fancy trees.
Don’t attract loiterers with lots of benches.
Don’t put in expensive thing that will go out of style or that are not easy to maintain.
See street as commercial space.
Clean side walk don’t want people to think that there is crime
Make thing with enough space so they can be easily maneuvered around.
Good security and lighting.
don’t make your mall a left turn mall and put in turn in road that allow people to view the store fronts more.
No restaurant next to clothing stores.
Store in right direction for the sun.
Restaurants can be more hidden but retail need to be more in prime location.
Promote a life style.
Large displays means cheap where small displays equals expensive.
Make sure people know when they are in down town.
Need a lot of shopping space to be a destination


I don’t think that Main Street should become a mall. I grew up in a small town and which has a beautiful Main Street. It is not the most busy place, but all the stores are surviving happily. Gibbs want to destroy the wonderful down town that I grew up in. I like the fact that our down town is not overly crowded, and that as a teenager I had some were to go with my friends. My favorite part is our park which Gibbs discourages because it take away attention to business. I don’t think that a down town is all based on business. It is based on a community and family.

My points for a Main Street
Have a nice but not extravagant walk space and foliage .
Have local food and shopping that is privately owned.
Have a park near by that is nice for children through adults.
Have well lit streets that are routinely patrolled by police.
Promote a home town feel, whatever it may be .
Good weather protection, like awnings.
Convenient parking .

The store I chose was McDonalds. I think that they have a wide market audience. First, little children love them, but they also appeal to adults and teens who want some cheap fast food. The store has a very warming feeling it has a red roof with gold and white trim. The door is a glass with aluminum trim. It also has a patio out front that is surrounded by a brown fence. They also have their huge iconic sign out front that is know all around the would. when entering the store you are greeted with the sounds of grilling food and humming of their workers. All their meals and items are displayed right over the cashier. They are in bright color with picture of how everyone wish their food came out of the back. The floor is tile which is easy to clean incase of an emergency.
The store tries to portray the idea of a sit down restaurant. They have booths all along the sides of the store. they try to give the idea that their food is inexpensive by promoting the dollar menu. They also seem to want to be a family place with all they toys for the kids and some have the play houses. When have gone into a McDonalds before I had never really notice how quite the customers are. The only thing that they talk about are what they are going to get. There is no much social interaction between people at all. They get their food, then sit to have a very quite conversation between large bites. This was also they part that I found interesting. This is because McDonalds is supposed to be a family dinning place yet the families really don’t speak to each other, defeating the purpose. The other thing I found was that it was a self refill on drinks that is right by the door.

shopping

This article contains many good points that are very interesting. First the store should take into account who their customer is, if they are male, female or both. Then they can arrange their store, and how their sales people act, accordingly. Next they need to think about the fact that people go to places just because other people do, so popularity is important. Then there is the Decompression Zone where people adjust to the store when they first enter. They also have the tendency to look from left to right to get an impression of there surroundings as they enter. Stores should put good anchor products to the right of the entrance. Also the store should be designed so that it is easy to walk around and affords the customer enough space. Stores should also put high demand items in the rear of their store so the customer has to dive all the way in to get what they want. Stores want their customers to stay in the store as long as possible.
I feel that I have been unconsciously effected by store designs my entire life. I think that most of the ideas that I have discussed above have effected my shopping and purchasing. Lots of people don’t think that they are being manipulated while shopping. We as a society may have figured out some of their tricks; but even if we have, our mind allows those tricks to trick us still. It is just a common practice to manipulate your customer and the better you do so the more successful you can become.
Analyze points
Organization of the store
If it is appropriate for its audience (male/female)
Does it draw the customer in
Does it keep the customer occupied
Does it have a great decompression zone

The Iconic

The packaging of a product is crucial to its profitability and emotional feel. The packaging is the first thing that some one notices when they look at a product. When first looking at a product, we always make snap judgments based on its design. The product is either appealing or not. The other key part in design is if it is involved in its function. Many products incorporate use into their design, for instance the Coca-Cola can opens at the top, which allows us to drink the product inside. If a product has appealing design that’s has great usability it could be a great product.
Any big product in today’s society has iconic packaging. The monster bottle is a black can with an M that looks like a beast scratched it out of the can. It is very bold but simple and give you the feeling that you are going to be given mass amounts of energy. Another iconic product design is the Macintosh apple design. It stand for the finest in computer and MP3 products. Any fast food chain or cereal product had its own mascot that symbolizes the product. If a product wants to be timeless it must have a design that can be changed but still maintains it basic loveable appeal.
Design is often incorporated with use ability. A cereal box it is made to show off the product plus to be able to re-close for later use. It also is made so the product can be pored right out the top with ease. Pop can have the tab at the top that allows the can to be opened. Some times it is very hard to open the can it you do not poses long finger nails though. You also have to be careful when opening the can so as to not cut yourself on the open metal edge.

This reading is all about the user and their needs. Websites should be geared towards their user first; then if it does not prevent the user purpose they can add their own needs. The article conveys the message that web sites should be simple unless the site has “heroin content” , which means that its material is so enthralling that it does not matter how awful the site is. This shows how naturally people will put up with bad design just because they like the information or product. Mostly this article describes how important it is to have behavioral design; how websites should be simple and easy to navigate.

The most important point in this article is that a web site should be easy to navigate. I have always had a problem finding my way around more complicated or poorly designed sites. I did not get a computer till I was older, but that is not an excuse for web pages to be hard to maneuver. I think that web site designer should be more concerned with making the website easy for the user.
A list of important points in web design.
-Ease of navigation
-Visually appealing but not distracting
-Provides me with what I was searching for
-Has interesting and well written content
-Does not have huge endless pages

The main parts in this article where hard to derive at first; then they became evident. It talks about how Wikipedia is almost like a community and I agree. It has a hierarchy along with rules and regulators. They also discuss the lead up in history of encyclopedias. Another of its main points is that peoples knowledge is more concise when pooled together, but at the same time it is very difficult to get some people to agree. This article also bring up the point that anything man made is bound to have flaws and corruption. People will change articles on themselves to make themselves seem more appealing. People will also change other peoples articles as jokes or out of dislike. This bring up another point that people naturally like to play joke or mess around with others. Overall we are shown a lot about human nature and they way we work together.

I thought this part of the article was humorous and help prove a great point. “Even Wales has been caught airbrushing his Wikipedia entry--- eighteen times in the past year.” I thought this was just great it shows exactly why a human run organization can’t be flawless. Even the creator is driven by its own wants and desires and throws away the care for the absolute truth.

I think that ease of use is very important in a encyclopedia. So i would compare how difficult it was to visually direct yourself while using it. They are made of different things, Wikipedia is online it has no actual presents while Britannica is in volumes of books. This give Britannica a very reflective look. Viscerally Britannica also is better it is a bright red. We also have think how the content was created. Wikipedia was created by many people, which brings up the problem of arguments and the fact that any one can publish something. While Britannica was created by a few scholars so it could be subject to unchanged bias and opinion. Then there is the fact that Wikipedia is free and I am sure that they are not giving out free 32 volume
Britannicas.

Simplicity V.S Complexity

I think that simplicity and complexity are part of most of the emotional design elements, however I think that some lead more towards one or the other. Visceral design is more appealing if it is simple. Visceral is our tendency to like certain thing because they a re biologically appealing. I feel that simplicity is one important part in our biological world for the most part. We like simple shapes and colors. We also like more complicated colors as well, along with the fact that some things are very complicated in our biological world. Behavioral is the only one that is literally one sided. The point of this type of design is to be easily understood; so it would be contradictory to make it complicated. I think that reflective designs can be either complicated or simple. Their could be a very nice chair that is one piece of metal that is reflective or a lazy boy with a million different positions.

“I think that complexity can only be justified on something that can do many different things, such as a computer.” -Ted

“Complexity is justified when extra features are included.”- Ronnie

I Pick these quotes because I disagree with both of them. They help me prove my point because I feel they show how the majority of the world view design. I personally think that we should not have to deal with bad designs. It is not a justification for something to be complicated just because it can perform many different things. We should be able to design even the most complicated ideas with simplicity. Also just because it has extra features does not give a design the right to be complicated either. I hope to live I a world were people don't accept poorly designed products.

It is a very difficult task to think of a product that is bought for the purpose of being complicated. My family tries to keep things simple but some of the art that we purchase is very detailed. It is even challenging to take in one of our pieces with a thorough investigation. We have a piece with a rooster on it that was created from all these colors and lines and shapes. So the rooster is not the important part it is a cover up the real art is how it is created by all the shapes and colors.
Complex products are only good when that is what the user is looking for. Most of the time they are inappropriate and frustrating for the user. Some users my take pride in the fact that their product is complicated and they are still able to operated it. I think the majority of the time simplicity is the way to go. It is easy to understand and operate. It is especially important when the product does crucial functions that need to be easily understood.
“A few summers ago, I was going on a three week long trip to Europe. The trip took me to France, Italy, Austria, and Switzerland. In order to document my vacation, my parents invested in a new digital camera for the family...It was the newest Kodak, complete with a special zoom and a bunch of other state-of-the-art features that I didn't understand. There were five buttons down the side, two buttons for zooming (in and out), and a cursor with four directions. I was unable to take full advantage of these features because the menus were seemingly impossible to navigate. They used terminology I did not understand, cued different images to appear on the screen that I did not know how to use, and made the camera far more intense than what was necessary. Visibility was great until you went into the menus, which I did not know how to navigate.” I like this quote from Brittney because I can really relate to her problem. For my seventeenth birthday I wanted a camera so my parents went with me to buy one. We went to Best Buy and Circuit City to compare prices. We ended up going to Circuit City and I bought a Sony camera. When we arrived home I took it out of the box. I was looking forward to being able to take artsy pictures, but all I could figure out was how to use the automatic function. This was a big disappointment for me. I wish that they had made the camera more user-friendly but that was not the case. I should have taken it back but I did not it had now become the family point and shoot camera.

I found a quote that Normand included in his chapter to be very shocking. “The brilliant conceptual artists Vitally Komar and Alex Melamid conducted surveys asking people questions like, what’s your favorite color? Do you prefer landscapes to portraits? Then they produced exhibitions of perfectly “user-centered art.” The results were profoundly disturbing. The works were completely lacking in innovation of finesse of craftsmanship, disliked even by the very same survey respondents.” I thought this was very interesting because it shows how people think they know what they want but in reality they don’t. It lets us know that people are naturally fickle and indecisive. I never grasped this concept to the degree that I have after reading this article. It made me think of all the times that I changed my mind after having thought it was made up.
I think that Normand could have used a more descriptive word instead of visceral but I feel the other categories are very easy to interpret. Reflective makes sense because it is how people want to be seen like an image or reflection. When I think about behavioral it brings to mind how something performs. I think that Normand should have used biological taste instead of visceral this would have been more simple and understandable.
If a designers need to know what type of design to make their product they need to take certain things into consideration. First they need to know which kind of person they are trying to sell to. If they are trying to appeal to a richer crowd they could make the product reflective. Then they need to think what would apply to the product that they are going to create. If they are going to make a glue stick it would be ridiculous to make it reflective it is obviously behavioral or visceral.