The hierarchy of needs principle states that a good design must serve the low level needs (e.g function) before higher level needs such as creativity. The five key levels of needs are; functionality, reliability, usability, proficiency and creativity.
Fox Feud definitely meets functional needs because everything about it is works, as it should, there are no glitches with the buttons or sound. It also for fills functionality because it informs users about the characters of The Animals of Farthing Wood, which is what it was designed to do. Users should also find it fairly easy to navigate and use.
The project is reliable, and as it has been programmed correctly in Flash and tested many times, does not have any glitches. I have established a stable and consistent performance from the project - it always works.
Fox Feud is very simple, only containing clickable buttons with visual prompts. Therefore it is easy to use, and for fills the usability section of the hierarchy of needs.
There aren’t many other projects I’ve ever seen like Fox Feud because the game its based on isn’t real and The Animals of Farthing Wood is a fairly old story so isn’t explored much. Therefore it can empower people to do things better than they could previously, because the only way you could find out about all the characters in Fox Feud was to read The Animals of Farthing Wood books or watch the television series, which would take a lot of time, or look it up on Wikipedia. So Fox Feud makes learning about these characters quicker and more enjoyable, when referring to Wikipedia.
Creativity has been met as Fox Feud is aesthetically pleasing, and not many applications allow you to click on animated characters to learn about them in relation to this topic.
Therefore, Fox Feud addresses all aspects of the hierarchy of needs to a certain extent, making it a fairly good design.
In regards to Project 2, my experiences with copyright issues are extensive. As I chose to explain Framing through the plot and characters from Disney’s The Lion King, it is difficult to claim my work is original. However, the overall concept of the graphic novel, where Simba explains to his young daughter the concept of framing, is original. Even so, if I were to try to print my work in large quantities, and the Walt Disney Company found out, they would probably take legal action for copyright breach associated with using their characters and story without permission.
Morally, I didn’t find it hard to use characters thought up by Disney, because it is such a large corporation these days. This makes it feel less like I was taking something personal from a creator, plus they have already made millions off of the characters. The amount of profit Disney has made makes it seem like their characters should belong to everyone - millions own The Lion King film and have paid to have it available at their homes. In addition, Walt Disney took the story of Kimba the White Lion and turned it into The Lion King without giving any credit to the creators of Kimba. Therefore, it makes little sense to worry about using “Disney Characters” without giving credit, as the company hasn’t set the best moral example to follow, and no one would ever think I came up with those characters because Disney’s The Lion King is so infamous.
From a creative point of view, it didn’t feel like I was breaching copyright laws, because I still had to draw the scenes in the comic myself and then ink them in Photoshop, which took hours. In addition to this, I had to create a new script, where scenes from the original story needed to be short, as well as design the layouts for each page so that the comic wasn’t too long but readers understood the story and what was going on.
In conclusion, copyright in this case, comes down to money and profit. The primary reason why the Disney Corporation has such a strong hold over it’s characters, while wanting to share them with the world, is so that they can make money, while preventing others from making any kind of profit that they could be making. Seeing as I am not going to make a profit from Project 2, I don’t see a problem with using Disney characters. I would feel more of a sense of guilt if the individual Disney employees who created the film, rather than the company itself, owned the rights to the story and characters.