Final Project - Final Submission

I initially chose the Ultimate Team card because I really enjoy playing FIFA soccer games, and this is an element of the game that I interact with a lot. I knew that I wanted to use the style of this card, and so I started looking for an element that I could remix with this style. The first thing that popped into my mind was the Facebook about profile. They are both similar interactions, as the viewer is essentially getting an overview of the person whose profile they are looking at. The difference is that the FIFA card is more numerical, whereas Facebook is more textual information. Even thought they present different information, the essential principles of each style are similar, as they are both pretty much a way to simply showcase essential information. That is why I decided to remix the two.

In my mind, adopting the style of one work over another is to take distinct visual elements from the work and apply them to the other work. That is what I decided to do for my project. The visual elements I took from the Ultimate Team cards is the background, the font used, and the general layout of items. Essentially, I used the same exact card back as is used in the actual cards, and then I found the font used on the cards and applied it to my remix. Lastly, I kept the hierarchy of the Ultimate Team cards by having a big number at the top, font underneath it, and then the picture of the person next to the nationality. The only thing I removed is the club logo, as I felt like that would be hard to replicate with Facebook information, and I didn't think it was a thing present on Facebook. Besides that, I kept the name in the middle of the card, and I have 3 lines of information, just like the original cards.

One of the main things that makes the interaction with profiles now is the layout of the information. It is much more compact, and the differences in layout are significant. On a Facebook profile, the name and picture are the first things seen, and are very major elements of the layout, highlighted by the fact that the font size for the name is by far the largest out of all other fonts on the page. Compared to that, my design does highlight the name by making it centered and large, but it is no longer the largest thing in the design. Another interaction change is the addition of the flag and gender as they are not elements really present on the Facebook profile. Lastly, the about information is made larger, but there is now a smaller distinction between variable information and the wrapper words that apply to everyone. These are mainly relics of the UT card design, as I tried to stay true to that design, and did not allow myself to remove too many elements or change the font color.

Ultimately(haha), I think I achieved what I set out to do. I wanted to make the Facebook profile look like an Ultimate Team card, and that was accomplished. This achieved my goal of compacting the information on the Facebook profile, and making each person's information a small bundle that easily read at a glance. This, I think, accomplishes the goal set out by the Ultimate Team cards - to be able to easily see a player's stats at a glance and be able to compare them. I think that's why it works better now, as a Facebook profile is essentially just a place to look at the person, see important details about them, and then compare them to yours to see if you share anything. As such, I'm not sure if the audience really changed. The only way I could see the audience changing is if Facebook scraps the whole profile idea, not just the About section, and replaces it with this. Then the audience might shift to more like speed daters and maybe more to just strangers, as your actual friends likely know this information about you already. But I don't think Facebook would do that.