Phillip Shakesby Self Initiated Project

Hi, I am Phillip Shakesby and I am an Interactive Multimedia Designer currently studying at the Hull School of Art & Design.

We have been set a brief to identify a suitable project idea/topic, formalise our idea through appropriate documentation and produce an Interactive Media product to our own specification.

In this blog I will document the development of my ideas at regular intervals. You can see other pieces of work that I have created or worked on at the sites below.

You can view my uni portfolio here http://www.newmedia.artdesignhull.ac.uk/pshakesby/
You can view my personal website here http://www.pjshakesby.com/

Week 1

I pitched an idea to James Field our lecturer today and this is my idea and the work I have done so far:

I decided almost straight away when we were asked to come up with ideas that I would like to design and develop a mobile phone application. I have never developed a mobile application before and I believe the challenges of a mobile application project would enhance the skills that I already have and it would also give a chance to develop new skills and increase my knowledge of an area that is massive part of the interactive multimedia industry.

I realise that there are a large number of mobile devices on the market and currently the number one device to be designing for is the I-phone but due to the fact that the only mobile devices I access to are Nokia mobiles I decided to design my application for use on Nokia mobile phones.

I have a platform but what theme or idea I base my application on is also a major consideration for this project.

Last semester we did a project in conjunction with the BBC for their Dig in campaign and I really enjoyed the real world aspect of developing something with a high profile theme, this spurred me through out that project and I was looking for something similar with this project so I based my idea on the biggest event happening anywhere in the world throughout 2010 the Fifa World Cup in South Africa. I wanted to create something that would be useful to fans travelling to the event.

I came up with idea of calling my app Fan Friend 2010
I thought it could be an app that had useful information about teams involved in the tournament and the tournament itself, it could also have information about stadiums, cities and South Africa as the host nation for the tournament.

I also came up with the idea of having a currency calculator so fans could work out their finances whilst travelling and I though there should be a way for them to document the experience of being at such a momentous world event, so I thought of a blogging system either text based or audio based and a photo up loader that could possibly show the G.P.S details of where things were uploaded from, showing on a map to document peoples travels. I even wanted to add G.P.S locations of fan parks and events.

I proposed these ideas to my lecturer James Field and he really liked the idea but he had concerns about whether the technology available to us could support the feature I wanted to try and develop and he also was concerned about the time scale for this project.

My idea has not been approved due to these concerns although it has not been rejected either, he is going to speak to Sarah Humphries our course leader about the possibilities of developing some parts in concept due to technical limitations. I will find out on Friday if I can proceed with this project and I hope that I can as I have a real passion for this idea and I would really like to have the chance to see how far I can take myself and my idea?