Below 5 items could be seen as belonging to the HOW section

2. Design opportunities explored by Demotech (Demotech Design Methods)


Design space, unlimited opportunities to design outside our cultural bias. Open Source design participation (as you worked out below)

Demotech has a number of design requirements:

Demotech using the Open Source method (more compact, only the principle, click through to relevant record in D-site

Demotech initiatives in design Mention how D illustrates her philosophy by design initiatives. No push, no pull, but offer a new approach. The below 6 lines are only partly relevant It is important to convey that Demotech does not want to dictate how things should be done, but only makes suggestions of how they could be done. Demotech does not aim to make aesthetically beautiful products, but just provides a working solution which people can finish to a lesser or greater degree of polish according to their wants and needs. Demotech designs, rather than pure products, function as tools to enable people.

3. Demotech design initiatives, how they work out We would like to outline five or so specific Demotech design projects.We believe that the five below are of highest priority - but assume that you might like to change the choice below, but we don't think there should be more than five since this is just an introduction to Demotech.

4. End credits
This page should have general information on Demotech, on Reinder van Tijen and contact information. It should also have a direct link to the website for more nformation on Demotech and some more theory that is mentioned in this introduction.

An option is to have a pointer to the NightReader Box, which demonstrates the practical side of the story which is not possible to show in the format of a powerpoint presentation. The above three lines contain a real nice idea. The why and how of Demotech as I would like to present, is pretty abstract. But when you build in an at once applicable test of how it works out in practice, then you give value to the abstractions. I could write a one to three line pop-up text to be seen with mouse over on a keyword. With Flash I expect it to be possible to make pop-up images, that really clarify the issue.

FORMAT OF PRESENTATION
A powerpoint-like presentation in Flash. Flash is widely used on the internet and the Demotech website already uses a Flash animation. When putting the presentation on CD you can bundle the flash program with the Flash animation which allows people to watch the flash animation without having to download the program.

We should aim for the presentation length to be no longer than five or six minutes. We estimate that each section will be comprised of 5 pages and that the presentation will be completed with a intro and end credits
- approx 17 pages in all.
On the sections:

1. Sustainable culture Each page will consist of one full screen background image with concise text overlay. The image will symbolise the topic, but not make a direct reference to it. In one corner of each page will have an image of the nightreader. The reader will be able to click or pass his mouse over this image to reveal a small text box which gives an example of how the use of the nightreader could alleviate this particular problem. This is what I really like
By using these rollover images we try to avoid an initial overload of information, but still having it available. This also makes it possible to just show the really imporant information first, and giving people the choice to read some more in detail.

For example in the subsection of waste/recycling a detail image will be shown of the nightreader's materials such as batteries and sheet metal and wood. And then the text box will explain how these components can be made from waste and recyclable objects.

It should be clear that the nightreader is only one example of Demotech's work which can be used in these circumstances. We are only using one example in this section in order to simplify and clarify our points. Its also demonstrates that just one product is applicable in all these situations. We believe that it will give this section a cohesive narrative.

2. Design Methods
In general we want to continue the basic format of the first section. In the subsections we want to use full images, not just background images. These full images should be photos of the Demotech working environment as well as pictures of actual fieldwork. The photos will be accompanied with a band of the text. There will be no overlay text in order to keep the page as readable as possible.

The rollover images are some of the sketches taken from the website. When the mouse rolls over the image, a textbox will appear explaining the working principals of Demotech (not designing a product but a tool to enable people, etc).

3. Demotech design initiatives
The explanations for these design initiatives can be found in the relevant records, but here ?in short- could be explained how they relate to the Demotech targets and the design approach. This in line with the mouse-over accounting for the design choises as shown about the NightReader.
These pages have roughly the same format as the previous sections. There will be one or more images depicting one of the Demotech?s designs. These images will have some text explaining the design and the environment it can be used in.
On every page with a design there is a link to the relevant page on the website. It would be no problem if one leaves the animation at this point as this is the last section.

Please think of a LITE-version of this Deep-Demotech-Dive, however much I would like to have the Demotech issue properly clarified. As in Reo's time of free to spend internship time is up. And in the workshop weeks of Petz and Leonora time is short for a lot of crucial work, so think of a lite version of the above.