For our conceptual project, I chose the D.I.Y. House story. I chose this story because while I was reading all of the stories, this story was the one that made my creative juices go the most. I started by trying to come up with a headline for the story. I wanted to emphasize how hard home technology can be for users and i also wanted it to be attention-grabbing. So I came up with “Smart Homes are Making Life Harder” to exaggerate a bit but also get the main idea of the story across.

For the visual concept, I started by thinking of how to visualize smart homes and it malfunctioning. I had a concept where I wanted it to be a house with a lot of pop-up errors like the no wifi symbol and on the inside of the house it would technology circuit going all around. Although it seemed like a cool idea, I didn’t think it emphasized life being hard so i scrapped the idea.

I ended up going with a maze because I think it is a great way to visualize something being hard and challenging. I also wanted to somehow keep the no wifi symbol in the visual to show how something so small like that can make life hard.

I had a hard time figuring out what shape to make the maze. I almost wish I made it more like a usual square, but I wanted the readers to be led to the text so that is why it looks different. I also think it was a great way to put it into my sidebar. I tried to lead the reader to each security camera.

Overall I had a lot of fun doing this project and I like how it turned out.