OUGD504 - Studio Brief 02 - Key Design Elements: Time Feed

One of the key elements to design for is the live LED time screen which will be kept in a consistent place on the interface screen with each page being updated regularly to show new journey times for users bookings. In the initial design of this element, it was decided that this should mimic the aesthetics of a live departure time boards which can be found in places such as train stations, airports and at some bus stops. Typically this would consist of black boards with type such as that seen on a digital clock. A similar typeface has been used in these designs in order to reflect this style, as well as helping with the interface's functionality in terms of speed. This digital style means that times can be updated easily by the system through simply changing the placement of various lines or dots to produce a different number or letterform.

Initially the idea was to produce this interface in portrait format. This layout would help with the functionality of the interface if there were a lot of elements and pages to scroll through, as this would mimic the movement of someone scrolling through feeds and apps, etc on their mobile devices, a movement in which users would be most familiar with. In this format, the placement of the live time feed was experimented with using columns on each side of the whole screen which would flow with the scrolling movements users would potentially make whilst using the interface. It's placement would also allow users who have already booked their journeys to clearly see any updates and changes in time whilst a different user is still able to book their own. This was also experimented through placing the screen at the top of the interface for similar reasons. However, it was decided this did not work as well as a continuous column down the side since the times appeared closer together, which was thought to affect the legibility of information. This could get confusing for users in that times and order numbers could easily be misread, therefore affecting the accurate communication of information.

Although the use of a portrait layout works well to mimic the natural scrolling motion of most touch screen interfaces that users would be familiar with, it was decided that this could also be harder to work with depending on it's size. Therefore, landscape formats were also experimented with using both columns and a row at the top of the screen. With it's placement at the top of the screen, this posed similar problems to that as when it was in portrait. 

Based on these developments it was felt that the placement of this element worked best in landscape format as a column on the left hand side of the screen. This means a decent sized screen was left to work with for other elements to be placed in, for instance the interactive map. In landscape this can be easily moved around by users in any direction that need be. It also means they can get a clearer and bigger picture of their location and it's surrounding areas since their eyes would not be strained through continuously looking up if used in portrait. Placement on the left hand side also works more effectively in how most users would scroll through touch screen interfaces, predominantly using their right hand which links with the fact the majority of the population are right handed. This means that the live time feed is not hidden through the arm movements of it's current user, so others can still clearly keep track of their own journey times.