Concept Introduction

The following is a little better description of what my thesis project is, along with some basic user goals. It's not as thorough as I would like to describe it, but for now it's decent. There has since been tons of features that I've made up my mind to add, but those will come in a later post. This is taken pretty much word for word from my Interface Design class statement.

My chosen interface design comes from a field that I have been interested in for quite some time, but never actually pursued professionally or academically. That field is architecture. Personal residential architecture to be precise. Due to my interest in the area I want to develop a website that contains a step-by-step Design Your Own Floor Plan interface that users can use to fully customize and completely control what they desire in a house. It will be dynamic and fully responsive every step of the way so that the users can see what changes they’ve made at anytime and change whatever they want at anytime. They would send off the plans to the website’s administration and architectural design team who would officiate, perfect, and modify in order to send it back to the user for final approval.



The great thing about this system is that the existing floor plan and housing web sites don’t offer this kind of interaction. They only provide you with existing floor plans for a price. You enter what you want and they send you several plans in the mail. It isn’t very convenient. The only other direct user-controlled options are expensive software programs that you must purchase separately and take a lot of time to learn on your own before you start. This website would attempt to cut out that middleware and give the customers something to immediately work with and take shape. In addition, there is no direct competition in this area to worry about as no formal website as of yet offers this service.


User Goals

• Complete a step-by-step guide for designing your own floor plan within several minutes (Modify an Existing Design) or several hours (Design From Scratch) depending on the user’s desired level of complexity
• Save your design in the site’s database to be referred back to and picked up at later dates
• Send design to professional architects for official approval, professional modification (heavy or light) depending on the user’s needs

For the class, I basically finished an interface for just the Modify an Existing Design portion of the system. I only picked the simpler of the two parts for the Interface class since it was all that was required. It, of course, wasn't as detailed as I'd hoped and will definitely be improved upon during my Studio and Thesis classes.

Now that I'm in Studio I, I'm beginning anew on the project. For this, I'm focusing on the Design From Scratch portion of the system and beginning from the ground up. I've already come into contact with some intermediate algorithms and coding techniques, but no unmanageable problems as of yet.

Stay tuned for detailed schedules, addition lists, and my first progress report! Riveting.

Informal Thesis Statement

Here's my informal thesis statement.

For my thesis I would like to develop a Flash-based website that contains a step-by-step Design Your Own Floor Plan interface that users can use to fully customize and completely control what they desire in a home floor plan. It will be dynamic and fully responsive every step of the way so that the users can see what changes they’ve made at anytime and change whatever they want at anytime. There will be a Design From Scratch section and a Modify An Existing Design section. With this thesis project, I will show that it is possible, over a web based application, to develop a fully interactive and pliable system that lets a user create a viable and structurally sound architectural floor plan.

Here's a little background into it. Last summer, I took an online class in Interface Design. Pretty standard class. Nothing too intriguing in it. Since it was online, I didn't feel I got as much out of it as I could have. But anyway, the thesis came from there.

It's the idea from the comprehensive project in that class. We had to come up with a unique idea that used some type of interface. Very open-ended kinda thing. So this idea about a build your own floorplan site just popped in my head. I'd never seen one before and after visiting that acclaimed Converse Customize Your Own Shoe site, I thought, why not?

So, I developed the idea further, drew some sketches, wrote down new things as they came to me and came up with an interface design (a template, I guess) that did a satisfactory job and got me a decent grade. But it was no one near where I wanted it to be. So I just thought I'd hold on to the idea for some future date and kind of put it into the back of my mind.

Cue a couple months later and the requirement of thinking up a permanent thesis comes up. So I naturally pulled out the idea of the Architecture Site. I'm glad too. I was sweating earlier this year. Now I just gotta follow through with this and make something worth a damn.

Welcome, Justin

Welcome to the fold, Justin.

Thanks, it's nice to be here. I've never done this before. Started a real "blog", I mean. I have a mySpace, but that hardly counts seeing as it embarrasses me and I'm afraid of who might have found me every time I log in. I need to delete that thing.

Well, what are you even doing here? It's not like you do this kind of thing everyday.

Good question. I'm glad you asked. What I'm doing here is something somewhat professional if you can believe that. This blog has been created in the hopes of aiding my thesis for my masters in Interactive Design at SCAD. Simply put, I'm going to use this as a way of helping me in the creative process and as a feedback tool to get in touch with interested parties like yourself.

Wow. That's very noble of you. I didn't think you had it in you. So who told you to do it?

Well I'm glad to see your confidence in me is ever unwavering, justin. And so what if I was told to do it? I'm happy to do it! I would've done it anyway, I tell you. Right.

But enough of this talking to myself. Time to get started. This was my introduction. More detailed information will be in the next post. You can't wait.

Peace.