Supporting Graphic Designers’ Online Inspiration Seeking Practices via Software Tools (Ph.D. thesis)

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Abstract

Inspiration seeking is an integral part of a graphic designer’s work: they often seek inspiration for new design ideas by exploring examples of others’ designs on the Internet. Designers also seek inspiration for new ways to use complex design software, such as Photoshop and Illustrator. Driven by their intrinsic motivation to master these complex tools, graphic designers often explore online software learning materials, seeking ideas for new software techniques that would extend their arsenal. However, notwithstanding the importance of inspiration seeking, finding and managing suitable inspirational material on the Internet is a hard task that presents designers with numerous challenges. This thesis investigates how to design and evaluate software tools that support graphic designers’ online inspiration seeking practices. Chapters 3 through 5 describe the design and evaluation of three systems, Switter, Instory, and Prism, respectively, each instantiating a different approach of helping designers with inspiration-seeking related challenges. Summarizing our findings, Chapter 6 presents a set of guides towards designing and evaluating inspiration-seeking support systems for graphic design.

Citation

Volodymyr Dziubak. Supporting Graphic Designers’ Online Inspiration Seeking Practices via Software Tools. Ph.D. Thesis (2019). University of Manitoba, Canada.

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