Archives/Updates
Art Book Review
The art book we selected is This Book is Extremely Receptive by Janet Zweig. The book
is a flip book that shows a satellite dish in the bottom right moving a little bit on every page. The title could be interpreted as a pun because the reader is receiving what the author is describing, and the story is also about communication through technology. There’s a big satellite dish that must be receiving dialogue from Holly Anderson who is apparently talking through the phone. There are three lines of text on each page with sound waves between each line of text. The little telephone image signifies dialogue from Holly Anderson, the computer symbol signifies computer messages. The TV symbol signifies television transmissions. The book seems like it is trying to give technological objects emotions. The computer constantly struggles with different tasks throughout the book with error messages such as “Syntax error in escape sequence” (Zweig). Eventually, the phrase “User action: None” start to occur in the middle of the book as well as the end to show that the user is fed up with the computer’s errors and abandons it. Also at the end of the book the telephone and television transmissions stop to show that the computer either no longer works or nobody is controlling them. We chose this book because it looked like an ordinary flip book at first, but then the text
is intriguing when we began to read through it. The error messages form a small story between the user and computer where the user eventually abandons the computer due to the countless errors it produced. Since the artbook does not utilize any digital components, a nice addition would be an audio form of the text. This could be done with an audio player at the end of the story or the beginning. It could also be achieved with a link to a website that would play the text as an audio file. An audio form of the artbook would be interesting to listen to the parts where “User action: “None” is mentioned. From the middle of the flipbook and beyond that phrase gradually appears more often. Once listeners notice the phrase, they would start to question when that phrase first started and why it’s starting to appear more and more. Audio effects could create a unique dimension between the human dialogue and the computer or television speech. Overall, an audio version of the story seems like the most appropriate addition to this flip book.
Original Idea Pitch
● a topic or subject related to empowerment,
● a description of the physical interaction,
● a description of the digital interaction (and how it relates to the physical),
● and how the interaction is meant to explore the themes from the topic.
The topic we chose to create our project on relating to empowerment is growth. Our
character is going to be investigating a suspicious neighbor. This will lead to overcoming fears, becoming comfortable with the unknown, and independently investigating something you think is morally wrong. It will include self-development for sure, and help uncover the truth. The physical interaction will be using a physical book that contains different clues for different options in the adventure. The clues are meant to be hard to uncover in the text, causing the reader to dig deeper to get a hint. The clues will lead to various situations of the adventure and will come in different styles such as maps, text paragraphs, poems, pictures, etc. The digital interaction will be some sort of program to create a game-like feeling. Twine may be the answer here, but not for certain. The relation to the physical portion is that the clues picked up from the book will influence the decision made in the program on Twine or whatever is used. The interaction is going to encourage the user to make decisions on how to catch this suspicious neighbor. It is independent so it may require the user to overcome some fears and grow in the bravery department. The user will have to investigate, and dive in to the unknown a bit. The neighbor is working in his garage late at night, there are screams, and large bags being put in to the truck. Investigating will help you find out what is going on. The decisions made based on the guide will either help you uncover what is going on or not. It depends on which clues are found in the physical book and how they influence the decision making process in the digital interaction.
5/1/18 Drafting
We met together in-class to discuss the story of our project. We decided to go in a different direction than our original idea pitch. We started drafting a pop-up panel style book that is going to center around different issues students may face in their lives while going to school. Nancy started designing how the book will work which is shown in the picture on the right. The digital portion will be through Twine with some incorporation of QR codes. We have team roles more delegated, and we are clear on how we should make our project.
5/5/2018 Twine Prototype
After drafting the story content of our project, we implemented them into Twine to create a basic version of our final product. As of right now the flow of our project and most of our content is implemented in Twine, but are still subject to change.
Prototype Write-Up May 8th
Our group project will consist of creating a paper pop-up book design that will focus on the struggles that college students face in their daily lives (i.e., depression, stress, anxiety, family issues, financial issues, and etc.). The book will consist of several different scenarios that will demonstrate the struggles that some college student face in their daily life that can affect their ability to focus or succeed academically.
The project will begin with the user selecting their character by rolling a dice. Each character will have a number between one and six. The user will then, select the scenario according to the number that aligns with the character. After the user reads the scenario, the user will be directed towards a set of six cards in which they will choose the card matching their character’s number. The card will give the background information on their character, so the user can get to know their character. After reading the description of their character, the user must decide between two scenarios that will benefit or affect their character's situation.
For the digital portion of the project. We want to use QR codes underneath the flaps or cards to direct the user towards a Twine link which will include the character information, scenarios and outcomes. This gives good integration between the physical and digital aspect of the project.
For making the physical part, Nancy planned and outlined the game in a notebook. She gathered the materials which is a hardcover book. The pages were ripped out and she will begin turning it in to our book for the project. The cover will be re-painted and titled whatever we decide. The flaps or cards will go in to it, and underneath will be the QR codes that incorporate the digital portion.
For the digital part of the project. Jeremy has been learning how to use Twine. He made the character hub which will let the user click on the character they got via rolling the physical dice and then click on the numbered character. This will lead the the character biographies that Nancy wrote. Jeremy copy and pasted the text in to Twine, and then those will lead to the outcome scenarios.
There have not been too many issues with the project so far. The only thing is that we did switch our project idea from the one we pitched in mid-April. Also, Jeremy did have to learn how to use Twine to make the digital part, and we will all be learning how to incorporate QR codes in to the project.
Team Reflections
May 8th
The project has been going pretty well so far. I have embraced the role of updating the website. I have never really worked with websites before or designing one. It is challenging, but Wix has a lot of tools and a friendly interface that makes it easier to learn. I was a little bit scared when we were changing ideas, but we are rolling now and it feels like we are on a good track. We also had our fourth group member drop the class during the first week of class, and the member that replaced him has been quite absent, but our group of three is doing well in spite of this. I want to praise Jeremy for taking a leadership role in the team and for his work with Twine. I also want to praise Nancy because she was sick during the first few weeks of the quarter, but she came back and has been very involved with the project. Her contributions are great, and I am glad she took the book designing role because I know she's a whole lot better at it than I am!
-Ian Menge
I feel the project is flowing smoothly so far. As the leader of our group, I feel that every individual is contributing a fair amount of effort into our project. I also feel that I’ve done my best to divide the workload in a fair and respectful manner in order to produce a efficient workspace for my group members. For the upcoming road ahead I am confident we will continue to add more to our project in reasonable time and meet deadlines whenever necessary.
-Jeremy Reyes
I think our group project so far is going pretty good and for the most part all of our group members have been contributing, Jeremy has done a good job dividing our tasks for us. I can honestly say, in the beginning I was not contributing as much as I should have with our group assignments but recently I have made sure that I contribute and work with my teammates on our projects. I am working on creating the scenarios, characters, and the design of the book, Ian will be working on creating the pages inside the book, and Jeremy has been working on the digital part. I am confident that our group will continue to work together to finish our project by the deadline.
-Nancy Morales