m*e*c @m-ec - Tumblr Blog

Winners announced here!

http://sider2013.au.dk/24h/

Congrats to @AUmented AND @digfut! We had so much fun participating thanks for the honorable mention @sider13sc :) #SIDeR2013

Video showing our concept in context of use

Final Note

All of us need to think about the text we experience by interacting with others, for we know what we think only when we try to articulate or represent our thought (Booth, 2008)

We believe that in this multi-media, information oriented world it is increasingly important to create opportunities for people to think critically and creatively about current events. With projects such as TruthGoggles and the initiatives of the Knight Foundation we see people and news organizations working together to solve the credibility “problem” that has emerged in the age of the citizen journalist.

The facts are important. But also important is the voice of the people in this participatory age. We are inspired by projects such as Emoto that seek to give form to the emotions people feel around particular events and cultural moments. We recognize that new forms of commentary on current affairs such as viral memes act as the “Flash bulb memories” of our age. We also agree with David Gauntlett that everyday people are creative and that for them “making is connecting.”

So we ask, what would it mean to the news and readers of the news, if the voice of people could be read and shared alongside the context from which they emerged? How can engaging with current affairs become a richer experience when news consumers interact with meme consumers? What are the possibilities when the information that fuels ideas shares the same space as the tools for voicing feelings about those ideas and those consumers transform into makers?

Our proposal aims at creating a bridge between and among context driven readers (the news consumers) and entertainment driven readers (meme consumers) despite geographic or philosophical divides. By capturing not only the spectrum of facts but also the spectrum of feelings surrounding the news, we can enrich our understanding of what we know and what we believe about our world.

References

Booth, David W. (David Wallace). It’s Critical! : Classroom Strategies for Promoting Critical and Creative Comprehension. Markham, Ont.: Pembroke Publishers, 2008.

http://www.emoto2012.org/

http://www.knightfoundation.org/what-we-fund/innovating-media

Shihab, Ibrahim Abu. “Reading as Critical Thinking.” Asian Social Science 7.8 (2011): 209–219.

http://techcrunch.com/2012/11/18/flashbulb-memery/)

http://truthgoggl.es/

#sider13 #sider2013

Reflection on Step 4: Interrogating our Storyboard Scenarios

Our work this morning was to revisit the storyboards we developed and reflect on the activities, environments, interactions, objects and users they propose. We asked ourselves whether the scenarios met our goal of connecting and empowering two different groups who care about current events: the consumers of news via traditional journalistic platforms and the consumers of memes via social media. We re-examined our assumptions about their motivations for participation and typical activities. We imagined extreme users of each media (the person who reads the news in the print newspaper and the person who explicitly searches for and consumes memes) and the affordances of those technologies. We determined the opportunity for empowerment of each group is to think our design moving them from “Ready to know” about current affairs to “Ready to hold an opinion.”

Our conclusion post interrogation is that each group stands to benefit from the other’s way of processing current events. Each user is interested in what is happening now and invested in their contemporary world, yet they are only getting a part of the whole picture. Meme consumers are encountering the varied and lively commentary on current events by “the crowd” but are sometimes missing the larger context of “the facts,” “history” and “what the experts think.” Traditional news consumers are getting a more measured, fact-checked and carefully crafted version of current events, but missing the powerful collective voice of everyday people and how they feel about the news.

#sider13 #sider2013

Reflection on Step 2: Diagramming as a method for building and maintaining consensus

In addition to using the AEIOU method (Step #2) to get a better understanding of the design context and search for patterns and design opportunities, we wanted to make sure we had a shared vision for the design outcome at each step along the way. For our group, a key strategy for maintaining consensus and articulating our individual ideas and understandings of the design context, was to visualize our ideas. In the early stages those visualizations took the forms of diagrams. We diagrammed who we thought we were designing for (the stakeholders). The diagram that relied on Kolb’s Learning Styles gave us the opportunity to more deeply discuss our users (as discovered during the AEIOU process) and what they would do, how they would do it and what they would need/want. In addition, because reading and comprehension is central to the activity we are designing for, we diagrammed the reading process based on a model proposed by Shihab (2011). Finally, the team used visualization (storyboarding) to propose several scenarios around which we could interrogate our design proposal.

Reflection on step 1: Brainstorming

Before we began our brainstorming session, we discussed our concern regarding the time limitations on the challenge. As a team located in North America, we also knew we had to utilize the time we had at the front end of the process wisely, because we as we were going to sleep, other teams would be starting their day and the final push towards realizing their ideas.

This time crunch shaped how we approached our brainstorming. We narrowed the scope of our ideation to our team members’ emerging areas of expertise and interest: crowdsourcing and the intelligence of groups within the culture of sharing; improving critical and creative thinking in reading and viewing activities; developing remote conversation tools; adding “feeling data” to online experiences; utilizing Activity Theory framework and context-based design; and employing design research methods at the front end of the design process.

Armed with this focus, what emerged from our brainstorming session was our intent to connect and empower two distinct groups within American culture that care about current affairs: the consumers (and makers) of internet-based memes and the consumers (and makers) of the news.

#sider13 #sider2013

The interrogation stage of our process - reflections to follow!

Good Morning from North America!

We have a busy few hours ahead of us here at NC State. We were excited to wake up and see everyone else's progress, and how each team's ideas are coming together.

In the coming hour we will be posting reflections on the steps we have taken so far, as we continue to move forward with the scenarios we have developed.

Our next steps:

Revisit and interrogate our scenarios

Come up with a name for our concept

Ground our concept in the Literature and write about it

Develop Wireframes

Demonstrate the concept

#sider2013 #sider13

Where did our scenarios come from? We used the AEIOU method to define the taxonomy of the context we are working with. After we finish using this organizational framework, we analyzed our coding to develop scenarios of use

#sider13 #sider2013 interaction design user experience

Scenario possibility 2

#sider2013 #storyboards #scenarios of use

Storyboarding possible scenarios #sider2013

Situating our project using Kolb’s Learning Styles. At the top are experience driven learners who like to learn through action and emotion. At the bottom are factual, reflective learners who learn through facts. We will create a boundary object represented by the square in the middle.

#sider13 #diagramming #learning styles #boundary objects #sider2013

More diagrams!!

#sider13 #diagramming

All of us need to think about the text we experience by interacting with others, for we know what we think only when we try to articulate or represent our thought.

David W. Booth (2008)

The process of interpreting and forming opinions about what is read

digfut-blog

@SIDeR_2013 Capturing initial responses from ladies and gents from Canada, USA, Sweden, Norway, and Germany. Highlights to come soon…

m-ec

Empowerment definitions from all over the world

The m*e*c team and their brainstorming session as a backdrop #sider2013

Trending Blogs

Recently Viewed Blogs

mec