A variety of simple wireframe concepts have been sketched which show a diverse range of distinct designs and mock up prototypes. The first drawings have taken influence from the blog post OUGD504 - Studio Brief 2 - Sat Nav & Map Concept where 3D maps were identified as an emerging technology being used on google earth and sat navs. This technology has been adopted into the concept, using a 3D street view as the apps home page.
Exploration into why other formats and medias were not appropriate
A website platform was considered during this stage however, it was deemed inappropriate for the project due to being a stationary platform. The concept behind the app is that it can be used whilst travelling from house to house. An accompanying app for iPads on iOS software could be transferred into a larger sister app but the same problem occurs. iPads are generally not used in everyday situations whilst travelling.
Some of the main points have been screen shotted to help assist with Studio Brief 2 when designing the final piece. These vary from parenting techniques, path orientation, track mats, blend modes and various other features.
Other Personal Notes -
After
Effects
New Project
– Then New Composition
PAL D1/DV
Widescreen Square Pixel
Frame Rate
- 25
Resolution
– Full
To import
shapes – Layer, New, Solid
Press
letter P for position
Press R for
Rotation
Letter
UBrings up Keyframes
File Save
to Save the file
Composition
– Add to Render Queue
Output
Module – Format options – H.264 (Video format which makes high quality videos
with low file size)
The notes below are from FaceTime call with my Dad in Australia, he is an architect over there which makes his advice extremely valuable to understand the mindset of someone who works within the real estate business and to gather any problems which he currently encounters. With him living in Australia, it is also advice which will help to make the brand more universal with a larger target audience.
Notes-
An option to click through to planning permission would be helpful for architects or property developers
Covenants on the land would also be very helpful and save a lot of time and effort for the user
You pay a ridiculous amount of money for estate agents in Australia, for small houses the fee is around $18,000
No body trusts an estate agent
Wether the land is greenbelt and an indication wether it can be built on or not
The next interview was a group interview with 3 students who live within Leeds
Notes -
A system needs to be in place which removes sold houses, it is a time consuming process ringing up an apartment to get told that it has already been sold.
It is hard to get in contact with my landlord. When the gas went off, we had to wait until the estate agents was open the next day just to get the contact details of the landlord.
My landlord was nasty to work with, some way of rating the landlord beforehand from previous tenants would have altered my decision to rent his house.
One specific problem identified with current private commission free platforms is that it still costs between £300 and £600 just to advertise within their website.
"In return for the website posting your photos, and matching you with buyers, you will pay anything from £300 to £600. At the higher end of that price range, your property details will also be advertised on the big portals like Rightmove and Zoopla, which dominate the market."
House web is the largest current platform which specialises in advertising properties without the need for an estate agent. The problem is that they state to have sold just over 15 thousand houses within their 21 years of establishment. This is a clear indicator that the private house selling market is a failing enterprise at the moment, there has to be a drastic solution put in place to have any chance of competing with the current competitors such as Rightmove or Zoopla who advertise using estate agents from all over the country. Their has to be some kind of benefit offered to the buyer to convince them to use private house selling rather than buying through an estate agent.
The average high-street estate agent fee is 1.3% including VAT, according to conveyancing firm MyHomeMove.
However, the percentage charged as an estate agent fee can vary from less than 1% to as much as 3.5%, depending on a number of factors including how many estate agents are selling your property.
Quote taken from - http://www.which.co.uk/money/mortgages-and-property/home-movers/guides/selling-a-house/estate-agent-fees-and-contracts
estate agents charge on average 1.3% the price of the house, with a £200,000 house the price to pay estate agents would be £2600.
£300,000 house - £3900
£400,000 house - £5200
£500,000 house - £6500
estate agents charging 3.5% at the highest end of the spectrum
£200,000 house - £7000
£300,000 house - £10,500
£400,000 house - £14,000
£500,000 house - £17,500
estate agents charging 1% at the lowest end of the spectrum
£200,000 house - £2000
£300,000 house - £3000
£400,000 house - £4000
£500,000 house - £5000
One solution could be to offer £1000 off the price of any house to the buyer whilst only charging the sellers £1500 once they have sold their house. £500 profit margin on each house sold.
Once any seller has sold their house they will save anywhere between £500 and £16,000
The app/platform could drastically undercut the buying and selling fees of any estate agent whilst still being extremely profitable, and also drastically saving the money of its users. It would also become a very appealing service towards the user as it will be completely free until a house is sold or bought.
A meeting and conversation with two of the staff members at Precision Creative Print & Finishing has given me such a bigger insight into what needs to be considered when printing commercially. The printers explained that they had never put florissant book cover together and that it would be an challenging endeavour. We progressed to looking through various substitute stocks and materials for the cover such as florissant GF Smith paper along with Day-Glo stock. Various samples of lamination to apply to the cover material were also shown to me as we considered price range and ways to enhance the durability of the cover.
A range of binding processes were also debated, looking at pros and cons of each method and the price boundaries specific to each one. I also enquired about using a stock colour for each of the chapter pages but this would bump the price of the print up exponentially. Therefore, the chapter pages will be changed to black and white instead of black and florissant yellow. I am currently just waiting for them to email me with quotes for the print prices of the final print.
If the price of the book is too high, this was still an extremely beneficial experience to discuss my project with professional printers and get a real insight on what else to consider when printing commercially.
Researching into Apples official guidelines is a crucial step if the project evolves to be developed onto iOS. This webpage identifies elements that each app has to abide by, along with suggested feedback that could be useful when designing an application.
For example, a couple of Apples suggestions for the icon are listed below,
Embrace simplicity. Find a single element that captures the essence of your app and express that element in a simple, unique shape. Add details cautiously. If an icon’s content or shape is overly complex, the details can be hard to discern, especially at smaller sizes.
Provide a single focus point. Design an icon with a single, centered point that immediately captures attention and clearly identifies your app.
Design a recognizable icon. People shouldn’t have to analyze the icon to figure out what it represents. For example, the Mail app icon uses an envelope, which is universally associated with mail. Take time to design a beautiful and engaging abstract icon that artistically represents your app’s purpose
This is important to acknowledge when moving onto the designing stage as it is feedback from the Apple developers themselves.
Right move has some great innovations to their app which makes it stand out above competitors. The school checker, nearest stations, street view and nearby sold places are some of these features however, there are multiple steps which complicate the process of finding these features. 5 stages have to be travelled through in order to just find the house location on a map, the map feature is arguably the most used and most crucial feature to have when trying to find a house to buy or rent. In principle, this is the most important and therefore should require the least amount of stages to reach within the app.
Zoopla is another successfully design application with features such as the monthly total bills calculator. It has also includes a similar feature to one of my initial concepts where all of the house locations are displayed efficiently on one map. This feature however still requires the user to input a specific postcode which creates an unnecessary, the user will most likely be in the area when trying to find a house, utilising features such as current location would be a more efficient approach.
PrimeLocation is possibly the most complicated and confusing application with 6-7 steps just to start locating any house. The houses then appear in list format which only allows the user to select one house at a time. The majority of the time house buyers will be wanting to view multiple houses instead of one specifically and therefore this list format creates a process which involves unnecessarily clicking in and out of each house to get back to this list format.
The one effective feature is the collaboration with google earth to give the viewer a ground eye 360 degree view of the street and house.
SpareRoom has successfully identified a problem and focused in resolving this within an app to stand out as a differentiation to its competitors. It uses profiles, much like that of a social media site, in order to contact individuals who have a room spare or who are looking for a room mate. One repetitive noticeable aspect within the app is the reoccurrence of members between the ages of 18-25, this insinuates that the target audience is directed specifically at students and therefore has been designed with elements taken from social media sites in order to relate to the younger generation. The direct messaging system has been extracted directly out of twitters layout and composition along with the search bar which is identical to Instagram's.
The bad experience must be justified and noted in the problem
The interface must enhance the users experience
Write up your brief, print it, and get peers to come up with distinct solutions
Look at a broad range of research that is potentially unrelated but similar in certain aspects.
Look at similar problems which are solved through an interface.
Evidence analytically your feedback etc... It ticks off multiple criteria
Evidence everything you have done
Only the feedback which has informed your design should go on the design board
Idea selection, idea generation and production should all be showcased
Design decisions in reference to the production are still informed by demographic target audience etc...
Is it appropriate to the screen size?
Explain why considerations have been made to not put the device onto a apple watch etc... and why
why has it been made on a phone, look at peer feedback
HTML - Hyper Text Markup Language
CSS - Cascading Style Sheets
(Websites script)
Java - Android Language
Javascript - Advanced effects and added interactivity
(Games)
SQL - Database Language
PHP - Server Based Language
(Communication between a database and a Website)
Search criteria
iOS - Apple
Ruby - Twitter, social media
Designing for browsers
Chrome
Safari
Firefox
Opera
Internet Explorer
An internet explorer interprets HTML and each one produces a different result.
Conduct surveys on what browsers are most used to make them 100% effective on that particular browser.
Devices
Desktop Computers
Laptops
Tablets
Mobile Phones
Televisions
Each one of these has to be a consideration too as each one will change the layout of the website. It needs to be able to work in a computer as well as a mobile phone, it needs to be responsive web design. When a bar across the top of the computer is transferred to a mobile phone, it uses a hamburger icon to open up a tab with a list of the navigational buttons. This could be a problem as interactivity with these navigational buttons usually reduces.
A good user interface should be able to navigate to any page, from any page.
72 pixels per inch are the standard for website design, this is due to file size and the speed of the website to load up the content. The average web user will wait around 2.5 seconds for the page to load before backing out of the webpage. As the internet speed increases this pixel size could increase.
Accessibility
Screen readers are programs that read the contents of a computer screen to the user. They are most commonly used by people with visual impairments. Laws are in place which mean that all people must be able to read the text content using a screen reader. Typographic layouts must not be converted to JPEGS as this will be breaking the law.
Google Fonts will allow you to download your chosen type to your website. The only problem with this is that you will be illegally distributing the chosen typeface without a licence. Royalty free typefaces can be used however, make sure that they are royalty free for web browsers. The licence fees for online distribution is much higher than print distribution.
The typefaces are not installed on the website, this means that custom typefaces will reset to times new roman if the users computer does not have the typeface installed.
CODE
HTML divides each element of a webpage within an open and close tag. Every element of a website has to be enclosed within an open and closed bracket that is relevant to what it is e.g. paragraph, title etc...
Opening tag:
<p>
Closing tag:
</p>
The most basic website must include,
<html>
<head>
<title>
<body>
along with their closing counterparts.
If one part on the code is incorrect, nothing on the website will work, the design of coding is extremely intricate.
WYSIWYG applications are good however, real letter coding is the only real exact code that is the most successful.
HTML CSS is a great book to continue working on and learning coding
Useful websites are www.codecademy.com
For thousands of people the start of spring means the beginning of the house-hunting season.
It is also time to ponder one of life's unanswered questions: How do estate agents have the cheek to charge a king's ransom for selling a house?
If that is your view, have you thought of trying to sell it yourself?
This year that should become easier, as the government is changing the rules on selling houses over the internet.
Private sale websites that help you find a buyer for your property will be given new freedom to operate.
As a result, sellers could save thousands of pounds. But is it really a good idea, or could you end up wasting, rather than saving, money?
How does it work?
Selling your house DIY style means exactly that.
When you sign up with a private sale website, they will send you a "For Sale" sign with your phone number on it to erect outside your house.
Get used to the graft of banging the sign into the ground, because from now on the task is only going to get harder.
You take the photographs, you show potential buyers round the property, you organise Energy Performance Certificates (EPC's), and above all, you negotiate on price with any potential buyer.
In return for the website posting your photos, and matching you with buyers, you will pay anything from £300 to £600.
At the higher end of that price range, your property details will also be advertised on the big portals like Rightmove and Zoopla, which dominate the market.
Some sellers, like David Dexter, are ecstatic at the potential savings on offer.
"I think that an estate agent is a service that I can do. And I think it's a really great opportunity to get the house out to as many people as possible. And essentially, to save a lot of money," he explains.
He is selling a three-bedroom house near Reading in Berkshire for £265,000.
His local estate agent quoted a fee of around £4,800, including VAT.
But he has opted to pay £600 for a premium service with The Little House Company, one of many private sale websites.
If he manages to sell it, he will therefore save himself over £4,000.
Traditional agencies
Estate Agencies are having to defend their reputations like never before.
Image captionEstate agents include price negotiations in their charges
They point out that selling a house is only a small part of the service they offer.
"Selling the house is the easy bit," says Mark Hayward, of the National Association of Estate Agents.
"Much more difficult is dealing with the offer, checking the chain, and talking to lawyers," he says.
Many estate agents will try and establish whether potential buyers are who they say they are, and whether they can really afford to buy your house.
In particular they say price negotiation is a skill that many people think they have, but in reality do not.
Peter Bolton King, of the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors (RICS), says private sale websites offer a totally different level of service to that of an estate agent.
"There is a huge difference between paying a few hundred pounds just to put the property on to the internet, compared with all of the services that should be provided, and the security that should be offered, by the good traditional local estate agent," he told the BBC.
Estate agents are also members of the Property Ombudsman scheme, which provides for financial compensation should things go wrong.
Law Change
For anyone thinking of selling privately, the key question is how many houses have actually been sold through such websites.
Houseweb, which has been going for 17 years, claims to have sold 15,000 homes over that time.
But some of the other websites the BBC tried to contact were not so forthcoming with figures. One of the best known did not return our calls.
This may be because the current legal limitations prevent them operating effectively.
When the law that defines an estate agent is changed later this year, these private websites will be relieved of certain obligations placed on estate agents, like having to visit the property concerned.
The government hopes the greater freedom they then will enjoy will allow them to flourish, and the market to grow.
In the United States it is thought around 10% of house sales are carried out through private sale websites.
RICS estimates that the equivalent figure for the UK is currently around 5%, which suggests that de-regulation could make a significant difference.
Image captionDIY house selling includes erecting your own for sale sign
Advice
The danger for sellers is that they may pay several hundred pounds to a private sale website, but still fail to find a buyer. If they then resort to an estate agent, they will have spent more money, not less.
One alternative is to use an online estate agency instead. They tend to have a larger reach, and so attract a larger number of potential buyers.
Ask yourself whether anyone looking for property in your area is really going to be able to find it on the internet.
Maybe do a web search in the area, and see which property site comes up first.
Or consider a private sale alongside an estate agent sale.
But be careful to get the agreement right with the agent, in case you end up selling privately, but still paying the agent.
"If you get the contract right, if you're absolutely up front with both sides, you could advertise privately, but then you can also work through an estate agent as well," advises Kate Faulkner of the website Propertychecklists.
"But you need to get the contract absolutely watertight to make sure you don't end up paying both fees."
Even if most house-sellers fail to embrace the new websites, the forthcoming deregulation could still end up changing the market.
Some believe that estate agents may be forced to introduce fixed fees for their services, rather than taking an average 1.5% commission.
That could be particularly advantageous for those with larger properties, who historically have faced steeper bills from estate agents.
Some of the laws designed to protect consumers are now so out of date that they’re hampering economic growth.
The government wants to simplify or repeal these laws without losing any that give consumers the protection they need.
Actions
Estate agents
The Estate Agents Act was written before the internet existed. Parts of the Act made it difficult to run some online property sites - the kind that puts buyers and sellers in touch with each other, but don’t offer personal advice. We have changed the law to make trading easier for this kind of online business.
The amendment to the Act came into force on 1 October 2013.
Street traders
Some of the laws covering street traders date from the 19th century. This makes some of them unfit for the 21st century and they need to be updated. Additionally, new European regulations say the UK’s street trading laws are too complex. We need to make some changes to the law for street traders as a result.
We’ll be making these changes in summer 2014.
Background
A 2010 survey by the Office of Fair Trading found that, although many buyers use the internet as a way of looking for property, there wasn’t much choice for consumers who wanted to buy or sell a home without using an estate agent. The government felt that there was space in the market for new players to provide online property marketplaces for private sellers, as long as we made some changes to the law.
Laws on street trading and pedlary are part of retail law. This means they come under the EU’s European Services Directive. As a result, we have to change any street trading or pedlary laws to meet the directive.
Who we’re working with
Estate agents
The consultation ‘Encouraging New Business Models: Proposal to Amend the Estate Agents Act 1979’ closed in August 2012. We published our response on 13 September 2012.
We had over 400 responses from 271 different organisations and individuals. These included traditional estate agents, owners of online property sites, the National Federation of Property Professionals and Trading Standards officers.
Street trading
England, Wales and Northern Ireland jointly consulted on street trading laws from 23 November 2012 to 5 April 2013 and are now analysing the responses.
‘Street Trading and Pedlary Laws: Consultation on Draft Regulations to Ensure Compliance with the Requirements of the European Service Directive’ asked about:
a new definition of what a pedlar is
allowing people under 17 to trade as pedlars
letting councils grant street trading licences for longer than 12 months
taking away some local authority powers for refusing or revoking a street trading licence
The consultation also contains a proposal to repeal the UK-wide Pedlars Acts to comply with the European Services Directive.
Appendix 1: buying and selling property online
This was a supporting detail page of the main policy document.
Government consulted on amending the Estate Agents Act (1979) and repealing the Property Misdescriptions Act (1991).
We proposed amending the Estate Agents Act (EAA) because the rules governing estate agency work were defined before the internet existed resulting in the Act possibly stopping some online ‘property introduction sites’ developing as a market sector.
How did the law hold back property introduction sites?
Traditional estate agents usually offer clients a range of services. These can include preparing information about a property and giving advice.
Property introduction sites are different from high street agents as they don’t usually offer these kind of services. Instead, they act more like dating agencies - a way for 2 people (a buyer and seller) to get in touch with each other.
The EAA treated estate agents and property introduction sites the same. We considered this unfair to some introduction sites offering a very limited service. It did not involve giving advice or involvement in the property transaction, because complying with the law may have involved them in unnecessary expense.
Removing online property introduction sites from the Act
Taking the consultation responses into account, we amended the EAA to remove certain property introduction sites from the scope of the Act. We believe this will make it easier for them to do business.
Any online site that offers typical estate agency services, such as one-to-one advice and taking photographs of the property, will still be covered by the Act.
We believe that these changes will create opportunities for growth and competition, as well as more choice for the consumer in the market.
Why we have repealed the Property Misdescriptions Act (PMA)
The PMA said estate agents must check the accuracy of the property details they give to potential buyers.
Other laws have now largely overtaken the PMA. The Consumer Protection from Unfair Trading Regulations (CPR) and the Business Protection from Misleading Advertising Regulations (BPR) offer a wider range of protection. They’re also more flexible.
Changes we have made
The amendment to the EAA and repeal of the PMA came into force on 1 October 2013.
Evaluation
The law changes which occurred in 2014 above have made the process of buying and selling houses online much easier. This allows utilising the internet to put the house buyer and seller directly in contact with each other privately without the use of an estate agent. The laws stopping this process were put in place before the internet was invented making it very had to use the internet effectively when selling houses privately.
A meeting and conversation with two of the staff members at Precision Creative Print & Finishing has given me such a bigger insight into what needs to be considered when printing commercially. The printers explained that they had never put florissant book cover together and that it would be an challenging endeavour. We progressed to looking through various substitute stocks and materials for the cover such as florissant GF Smith paper along with Day-Glo stock. Various samples of lamination to apply to the cover material were also shown to me as we considered price range and ways to enhance the durability of the cover.
SpareRoom has successfully identified a problem and focused in resolving this within an app to stand out as a differentiation to its competitors. It uses profiles, much like that of a social media site, in order to contact individuals who have a room spare or who are looking for a room mate. One repetitive noticeable aspect within the app is the reoccurrence of members between the ages of 18-25, this insinuates that the target audience is directed specifically at students and therefore has been designed with elements taken from social media sites in order to relate to the younger generation. The direct messaging system has been extracted directly out of twitters layout and composition along with the search bar which is identical to Instagram's.
Information taken from https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/2010-to-2015-government-policy-making-it-easier-to-trade/2010-to-2015-government-policy-making-it-easier-to-trade#appendix-1-buying-and-selling-property-online
