Stil here…

I’ve been so busy the last few weeks with uni work that my blog has been a bit neglected! So I will do my best to fill in as many of the blanks as I can. I’ll update asap!!

Exam prep…

Today was the last lecture Angelo was giving in preparation of the exam in the coming weeks. It was incredibly useful, and i made enough notes to take me through my revision. I’m concerned about this exam, I’m not sure i feel completely prepared for it at the moment. I’ve been to all Angelo’s lectures and the practicals but i still have a nagging doubt in the back of my mind. Hopefully revision will sort this out.

Sorting out the e-den presentation…

We spent the day sorting out what and how we were going to present the e-den project, as well as adding a few final touches. It was a long day, the less said about it the better!

Presented…

I presented my negotiated project earlier, which i was really pleased with but i think it went down like a lead balloon, they didn’t look impressed.

This is it…

Since my last post I’ve played around with the flash file I’d made. Trying all the nodes and experimenting with different patterns to see the different ways my news interacts with your news etc.

Here’s my final project, and below it I’ll explain it properly.

To break it down:

• Each purple circle represents a person, I asked more than 6 people for their news sources, but decided to only use 6 in the end. These circles rotate, as demonstrated by the yellow spinning circles within them. This also represents the clock and time ticking away throughout the day, as with the news its constant like time.

• Every node originates from the person, much like a mind map, with the key feature in the center and all subjects coming off it.

• Having the nodes coming off the person also represents this idea i’ve been intrigued by all along, which is inclusion, and having this need to be surrounded by the news, even though we don’t really know why we want to be.

• The colours of the nodes represent the different news sources the people i asked got their news from, it just so happens everyone seems to get their news from more or less the same places. Of course this is because everyone asked is British and as such I believe follow very similar daily paths.

• The nodes are all completely manipulatable, as is the central person circle. I’ve done this because it gives the user the opportunity to manipulate the data, and to change the visualizations to see what else the data could look like. This follows the notion of infosthetics. This way the user can change how a set of data looks, granted the data is definite and isn’t changing dynamically. It’s still possible to make patterns and look at possible interatctions between similar news sources and completely different ones. Maybe there is no commonality between the sources, maybe there is.

• The rollover names, are an added extra really. They just show what the nodes are actually representing. The information isn’t really important but it shows the range of sites and stations these people frequently tune into.

A few more references…

I’ve had a look through these sites as I’ve been looking at current works in similar areas and in particular infosthetics.

create digital motion

well formed data

no org

visual complexity

eric blue

moma

Interactivity…

Right, having been drawing static images for the last week or so, I’m well aware that they’re not interactive. So I’ve started with flash to try and build something which has an interactive element.

So here are the starting of interactive pieces:

Dragable circles.

I’ve already said I think there’s something very aesthetically pleasing about circles, which is why I’m pushing to use them.

Joining nodes.

As I’m trying to show connections it would seem logical tofind a way of joining the dots, so that’s what this is all about.

Joining up.

This is where I’m heading I think. It is interactive, allows the user to manipulate the news nodes and create additional connection as well as see how different peoples news sources looks in a visual way. Hopefully people will find it interesting and will want to move everything around to see what happens.

Illustrator…

I’ve been working on this for a couple of days now trying to figure out a more artistic way of showing the information. I took inspiration from Barbara Hepworth’s Stringed Figure. I really like the criss crossing of the strings and thought it would be interesting to take this and apply it to my data. I’m not entirely sure it’s going to work for my piece though. Overall it looks too static and well boring. So looks like this one is going to be discounted!

Having drawn this I came across an artist called Stefanie Posavec, in particular her piece Literary Organism (image on the left). Take a look at it it’s beautiful. It’s described by Prosavec as;

‘A visualization of part one of on the road by Jack Kerouac’

I like the way its laid out as both a map/graph and an artwork. It works perfectly as both as far as I’m concerned. It’s to me, in a way, similar to the piece of mine, I’m trying to show information in an artistic way, but it’s more much successful than mine. Had I seen this before I started making mine it might have looked a lot better.

I think it’s clear I like using circles to represent the information, it seems my physics and chemistry background is rearing its head, and I’m turning out the nodes! It makes sense to use the idea of nodes in this piece, it allows for alignment and order, and gives the piece much greater map quality.

I think the progression from the drawing above to this is quite obvious. I’ve taken the same arrangements and this time added connecting lines through the dots to try and show this idea of our news being connected whether it comes from the same source or not.
I much prefer the colours of this piece, think they are much more web 2.0, so this would fit in with current trends far better. I’m not keen on the arrangement of this, but it was just an experiment. So that I will be taking forward!

Final e-learning game…

Here is our final game, this is what we’ve handed in!

Testing part two…

Having been into school on Tuesday and watched how the children used the game and asking them what they thought they’d like to see on the game, we’ve been away and updated the game

What changes have we made?

Sound -

We’ve added the sound component, which we said we would from the start. The voice we used isn’t brilliant it’s a bit robotic but we felt it was ok and clear enough for the children to understand. Which proved to be a good move as they all seemed to hear what she was saying and responded by doing what they’d just heard.

Rollovers -

As some of the children didn’t grasp the concept of some of the symbols used on the screen, such as the next arrow. We’ve added rollover texts which show the word. For example when rolling over the play triangle the word ‘play’ will appear.

Watch -

We slowed down the drawing of the shapes movie clip, as it started a bit too soon and the children were so busy looking around the screen they missed it. So now the instruction is read out, the movie starts drawing, and they can have a go.

Animation -

We’ve made it a bit more interesting, so the children have something fun to look at once they’ve finished. It shows them how they can use the shapes they’ve just been practicing to draw something fun.

After playing the game, one of the children came back out to us and handed us a piece of paper, with a massive grin on their face. This is what was on the piece of paper:

We’re were pretty impressed t say the least, one of the children had understood the point of the game, and was able to draw the shapes by themselves on paper having played our game. We obviously aren’t taking credit for that. The children at this stage in the year have already had a lot of time to learn their shapes. But it shows this child managed to understand the instructions at the very least and felt they could draw the same four shapes for us.