welcome back

After a long time leaving this blog all by itself I decided to come back and use it as a new inspiration tool which I will add anything I found interesting and inspiring..

What happened during the time?

Well I finalized my thesis and graduated..

I made a detailed research on non-native english speakers and english as a second language learners.. What type of problems they face when learning and pronouncing the language. English is a phonetic language and one can not read the words simply as they are spelled. As a non-native English speaker, I have experienced difficulty pronouncing the English language. Therefore I have decided to create a visual and graphical solution so English learners can more easily memorize the correct pronunciation of words.

How do we physically and biologically accomplish speaking, hearing, reading and therefore learning a new language? I designed a book that collects all of this research. As the visual project of my thesis topic I researched the existing dictionaries in the market and designed an electronic dictionary prototype that has various new functions to help learning english and it's correct pronunciation.

You can view a demo video illustrating the project here: http://neslihankaplan.com/index.php?/projects/thesis/
also please scroll below the same link to check out my thesis book.

oSkope visual search

oSkope is a visual search assitstant and it helps you to organize the products you'd like to purchase from sites like amazon,Ebay, Youtube or Flickr. It lets you browse and search images and products from these popular websites. Soon more sites will be added. While you're searching, thumbnail images will be added on your screen and more information comes when rolled over with the mouse. You can click on the image to zoom in or you can play it if it's a video and a special link opens the original webpage. I found it similar to the experience of using Adobe Bridge for your most visited websites. I loved it, check it out: http://oskope.com/

LOGO

So decided for the name Phonaetic and these are some variations of my logo design

Icon Design

I know everyone in this group started to focus on their icon designs nowadays so I thought this link would be useful to all of us. It talks about what Not to do when designing icons. Check it out I found it helpful..

The Crisis of Credits

This a great visualization of the credit crisis.. I was reading some economy news to understand what's happening to our financial system and came across to this video. I thought it simplifies good points and explains with great graphics and funny language what happened to America's economy, check it out it comes in 2 parts.

Interactive Video Advertising- INNOVID -

Going beyond conventional video limits.. That's how they identify themselves.. What they do is basically interactive video advertising.  The static format of video integrates with the interactivity of the web. The way of brand and ad experience will surely change..

Here check it out:  www.innovid.com      

It's pretty cool to see what Flash is all capable..

When I first opened the page I thought the guy in the video is going to click on the wall, but he didn't :) After waiting a while (actually a long while) I finally thought to drag my cursor on the red spot and realized its interactive !

I was totally amazed to figure out a video could be interactive and looked over all other pages, the same video keeps playing in a loop but the background changes interactively. You can click on the buttons inside the video and go to different pages. The second yellow room is a pong game, it took me a while it's pretty tough :))

This is the link for ad gallery in case you missed it: www.innovid.com/gallery.php

Back to my Device _ Here's a Scenerio

Bora has just moved to the United States from Turkey. He is an ESL student and he came to America to practice English.

He bought a mobile device. He is sitting in a coffee shop, listening music from his mobile device and reading an ESL e-book that he downloaded via Internet from the same device. He zooms into a word that he never saw before and highlights it. A pop-up window appears that has three options. First he clicks on the translation option, then to pronunciation. This is an option where he can see a graphic correspondence to the specific word he just highlighted. This option helps him to memorize the correct pronunciation and spelling. Then he enables the audio option. This way he visually and auditory learns a new vocabulary.

After a while a Polish girl comes close to the table. She’s the girl that he met couple of days ago at the ESL Networking application he just downloaded to his mobile device. It’s a socializing website that contacts ESL students to each other. They start a nice conversation and he impresses the girl with the new word he just learned. They watch together the video tutorial that is saved in his mobile device and record themselves repeating the same example and compare with the video simultaneously how successful they were. It’s fun to study together. They will meet again the next weekend to go to a museum. So he adds this date on his organizer using the same device. He checks up the map feature of this device and gets an idea where the museum is located. It’s not far from his ESL school.

They walk together to the subway station and take different trains back home.
During the ride he is watching a pod-cast Business English class. After a while he takes off his headphones and enjoys understanding the people talking around him in the subway. He thinks that NYC is a great city to live.

Vault49

Today I'd like to talk about the design group Vault49. It's famed for it's maximalist approach to design and illustration. They call them boutique design, illustration and photography studio. The themes are usually fashion-conscious, sexy and provocative female and they create the imagery by using a combination of vibrant colors, gothic and fairyesque characters and multilayered imagery.
It was founded in 2002 in London and now they are based out of New York. They produce award-winning work world wide and feature in many solo and collaborative international exhibitions.

In 2008 the work of Vault49 was considered a genre in its own right by WGSN, and one of the 10 most influential trends of the last decade. The design firm revolutionaised the world of vector illustration.

Here's the link: www.vault49.com/

Names

These are some names I'm thinking for my mobile device prototype.. It's the combination of the words Phonetic + Dictionary.. I added the symbols of IPA (International Phonetic Alphabet) in some of them. And I think I kinda like that idea; it's communicating the Phonetic system and ultimately my graphic solution is also going to be based on this system.
In example [æ] is the symbol of the sound of the letter 'e' used in the word ponethic and [æ] this is the symbol used in IPA, also p and h letters together make the sound [f]..


PhoneDic

phonædic

ædic

Fonictionary

[f]dic


which one do you think fits the best for my device?

Existing Electronic Dictionaries

i-station UDIC



This one is my favorite..This device has many functions including audio/video, mobile TV, electronic dictionary (US, KR, JP), E-book reader, photo viewer, Wi-Fi, and 30GB or 60GB of HDD.
Video Dic, Audio Dic, and i-Trans. Video Dic and Audio Dic displays the lyrics to the tune you are listening to, and translates them






Unfortunately it's only available in Korea!

click here for more images


60/30GB Hard-Drive
4.3-inch touch screen
Mobile TV
Captioning videos
E-book reader
Video Dictionary
Audio Dictionary
Wi-Fi


It's like a little pc in your pocket.. The ones below also are great designs, but they don't have Wi-Fi.



Atree UM10

2/4GB storage
3-inch touch screen
TV streaming
audio/video playback, integrated FM radio
e-book capability
Voice recorder
Microsoft Office reader application
Flash games

Iriver D5







2/4GB storage
3-inch touch screen
TV streaming
MPEG-4, flash video
MP3/WMA/OGG
FM radio
Voice recorder
14.9-mm thick closed

mesaj from old times

Hello Everyone,

I found this hilarious flash site and wanted to share it with you.. What it does is basically, you write and can send messages to your friends in different formats such in animation characters or as news reporter from the early 30's.. what makes it so successful is that it sounds pretty naturalistic as a real person reading rather than the scary and fake programming voices that we usually hear when we pay bills on phone.. I would love to hear if you have any ideas about how it was made.. I think the technical part could also help me to figure out my visual project for my Thesis..
Enjoy;
(click on the image and wait until it uploads)

Fubiz

I was going around some web sites and blogs and I stopped by fubiz
(click on the image to go to link)



It's a great site up since 2005 with slogan of "dailly dose of Inspiration". It covers the topics of the graphic world, the urban culture, the products tendencies and numerical arts. The categories are Advertising, Design, Graphic, Inspiration, Motion, Music, Photography and Technology together within the access to galleries of peoples work and collaborative space. I think it's a great site to spent time on getting inspiration and think about concepts.
Here are some of my favorite works so far:
(click on the images to see the link and motion file)

Hello Interactive 2

This is Nesli and I'm very happy to meet all of you guys at Interactive Design 2 class.