Academy by Facebook - An Invisible App Project
THE CHALLENGE
Design an "Invisible" or fictional application that would act as a mechanism for analysis of how Facebook's product portfolio must retrieve lost functionality in order to engage a lost audience, the collegiate social media user.
THE OUTCOME
Wires, a high-fidelity prototype, and marketing collateral were designed for this project. When crafting the Academy user interface I used the Facebook Brand Assets Guide as a source of inspiration and guidance.
IMPACT
This project afforded me the opportunity to better understand how articulation and assemblage can be used as a prism to critically examine the role and fit technologies have with each other and the greater culture at large.
Additionally, by exploring the retrieval of Facebook's lost functionality I was able to investigate the early product decisions Mark Zuckerberg made while simultaneously better understanding the concept of reversal as it pertains to Marshall McCluhan's tetrad of media effects.
On a more technical front, the effect of this work lead to a better comprehension of the iOS mobile design guides, advancements in my understanding of Invision's prototyping system, and improvements in my ability to design mobile user interfaces with Sketch.
Revisions
Based on the feedback that I received during my presentation and demo of the Academy prototype to my New Media, Old Media classmates, and professor, I opted to create an onboarding section for my prototype to better frame the focus of this app as a collegiate social media app that requires the user to submit a university email address prior to creating an account.
In addition to the design changes, I revised the associated Medium article that accompanied my invisible app project to offer more context to the reader by providing background and insights into the project.
