Zoloyo's Blog

week 12

zoloyo — Tue, 02 Jun 2009 15:31:02 +0000

I think I have had a fairly good understanding of the project from the early stages, so it’s quite hard to pin-point an precise moment where my comprehension of our task particularly ‘changed’. I guess the more research we did as a group into interactive design, and things such as testing prototypes furthered my understanding progressively, but not all at once. As mentioned in one of my previous blog entries,

“I’ve learned that good communication is absolutely vital in working on a group project. It’s not necessarily the fact that we’re all friends that makes us work well together, we communicate on a regular basis regarding the project, sharing and taking each others opinions and generally keeping each other up to date with things going on. Learning this is something that I will definitely carry on in future group projects.”

Not much of this opinion has changed, except there is one more thing I would like to add, having a sense of consistency and regularity is important – ie. meeting on the same day each week, because it keeps things running smoothly and more work can be done regularly. I think that our video, research document and prototypes would be the best thing to be primarily assessed upon, rather than these blog entries. These blog entries feel rather forced and sometimes not helpful to developing our project. I also feel that these blog entries accounting for 40 percent of our overall mark for the project is unfair – as some people aren’t as skilled in writing as others.

week 11

zoloyo — Tue, 02 Jun 2009 15:30:31 +0000

After completing our project, I could say that the thing I enjoyed the most was working creatively as a team. Each member of our group had skills in different areas, and collectively we could combine these skills in our work. This project really gave us an insight into what it means to work creatively as a team, which will be great practise for the work industry.

The thing I found to be difficult in this project was testing our prototype on users, becuase it was obviously impossible to create an actual park. We all recognised this as a problem and were able to do our best to counteract this. Another thing with this project that I found to be difficult was trying to meet together as a team. Due to living far away from each other and people’s work commitments, we often found it difficult to meet together at a time that suited everyone. We could have perhaps tackled this problem by working on our group project straight after uni.

Although I am thouroughly satisfied with the final outcome, if given more time I think we could have spent a little more time further refining our video. However, I’m very proud of our work as a team and what we’ve achieved so I wouldn’t change too much. I think our report document accompanying Arctic Orchestra needs a little work, the aesthetics of the document don’t really complement the final solution. But we aim to refine this before the final deadline.

week 10

zoloyo — Tue, 02 Jun 2009 15:29:10 +0000

As we design our video accompanying Arctic Orchestra, we have decided as a group that we would like our design to inspire the viewer into want to visit our park. We are aiming to set our park aside from the rest, and creating a friendly, welcoming atmosphere for the user to experience. After watching the Gruen Transfer clip and reading the article, I don’t think it will be possible to stir any controversy or depravity due to the nature of our interactive piece, so I really don’t think this is something we need to worry about.

week 9

zoloyo — Tue, 02 Jun 2009 15:26:57 +0000

The episode of the Gruen Transfer I watched was the last one of the series that aired on the 20th of May. The majority of the show was spend discussing the current advertising schemes for McDonalds. The segment mentioned that McDonalds used over one hundred different ads in the past year, and display their ads in a frequent way so that McDonalds is constantly on the consumers mind. They mentioned that McDonalds ads are displayed are done purposefully – for example, breakfast ads are displayed at night time so that the thought of McDonalds is fresh in the consumer’s minds. They discussed current advertising techniques that McDonalds are employing, trying to be more environmentally aware with their “rainforest certified coffee” and veering towards a healthier, more organic image. An old McDonalds ad from the 90s was shown in comparison to their current ads, showing how much their advertising mechanisms have changed. In the 90s, the food itself was basically advertised for what it was – greasy, Americanised, tasty, etc. As public opinions have changed towards fast food – so has the way in which McDonalds market their product.

week 8

zoloyo — Tue, 02 Jun 2009 15:26:07 +0000

I feel that when people are viewing our interactive piece in its development stages, they aren’t aware of the reason for us creating a park. In our video, I think we should emphasise the problem we are addressing, the need for an ‘escape’ from the intermittent mundaneness of inner-city life. Also the need for a public open space with plenty of shade that can be used for a number of purposes.
We have decided in our group that the video can’t really speak for itself and we should have just a small amount of text to explain the problem and how we aim to solve it.

week 7. prototype.

zoloyo — Tue, 02 Jun 2009 15:13:15 +0000

Because we obviously couldn’t physically create a park as our prototype, our group tried to think of alternative ways to emulate interaction between a user and Arctic Orchestra. We decided to create a virtual park on the computer game ‘The Sims’, that would work as a prototype to test on users. This was probably as close as we could get to actually making a park – we contemplated creating a drawing of the park and asking viewers to pin where they would sit in the park – but it would have been too hard to get genuine interaction.
Hannah was able to create a great representation of the park in The Sims and make a ‘user’ character that people in the class would play in order to interact with our park. The major problem we encountered was that people in the class weren’t actually displaying actions in the game as they would in real life. People were getting distracted by the game itself, making the ‘user’ character talk to other people in the park in ways that one wouldn’t really do in real life.
Because of the scale of our interactive piece, it was inevitable that we would face problems creating a prototype, but I feel that we did the best we could.

week 6. our group.

zoloyo — Tue, 02 Jun 2009 15:12:14 +0000

Our team has worked really well together so far, it has really helped that we’re all friends and are able to use Hannah’s house in Brunswick as our primary location for doing our work. Although we don’t all live close together (especially Sally living in Ballarat) we all still manage to compromise and work out times to work that suits everyone. I’ve learned that good communication is absolutely vital in working on a group project. It’s not necessarily the fact that we’re all friends that makes us work well together, we communicate on a regular basis regarding the project, sharing and taking each others opinions and generally keeping each other up to date with things going on. Learning this is something that I will definitely carry on in future group projects.

week 4, research + observations.

zoloyo — Tue, 02 Jun 2009 15:03:50 +0000

In our initial stages of research for Arctic Orchestra, we wandered around the city observing public, open spaces in which people would congregate. Some places we went to were the front of the State Library, Flagstaff gardens and Birrarung Marr. We noted such things as: what types of people inhabited these spaces, their behaviour and the size of the groups of people. Although noting all of these observations were basically all things i’d seen before, what I did find interesting was the way in which having shelter is a vital part to any public space. We observed the State Library grass on a rainy day and noticed the need for shelter. Searching for a place to pass the time on a rainy day is difficult, and people will tend to opt for foodcourts or other places where there may be an obligation to spend money. This is one of the problems we are aiming to resolve in creating Arctic Orchestra, as one of it’s features will be the shade that the domes create. Another thing us as a group discovered in our research was that some people had no problem in using such a public open space as a place for relaxation. There was one man in particular who was dressed in corporate attire, probably finished work for the day as it was after 5pm, lying on his back in deep sleep. I took a photo of him on my phone which I will later upload. We also noticed that some people would tend to sit against pillars or trees to rest their back on something. Our aim is to gather these observations and create our park to accomodate the needs of the people who will inhabit it.

week 5 – thoughts on the project thus far.

zoloyo — Tue, 02 Jun 2009 14:39:06 +0000

Not that it’s really time to start to start thinking of our video just yet, but as a group we have spoken about perhaps using claymation or stop-animation to show people interacting with a model of Arctic Orchestra, because we obviously can’t build the real thing.
The film clip to the song “White Winter Hymnal” by Fleet Foxes I thought would be great to use as inspiration if we decide to use claymation in our video. I just love the lighting used in the film clip, showing transitions from day to night. The technique is so simple but effective. The song accompanying the video is fantastic, I’d like to use a song like this for our video. Although claymation and stop-motion will be difficult and time-consuming, I think we’ll be capable of it as a group of we put in the time.

week 3, short story

zoloyo — Thu, 26 Mar 2009 00:24:44 +0000

Written from the point of view of Marion, a 42-year-old Accountant for a finance company in the CBD.

What a week it’s been! If i see one more tax invoice i’m going to lose my mind! It’s been that flat out in the office all week I haven’t even had a chance to step outside for my lunch breaks, which is exactly what I’m going to do today. The last thing I feel like doing is spending my Friday afternoon in the office lunchroom with my homemade lunch. Theres a really nice spot I spend most of my afternoon lunch breaks in the gardens across the road from work. I normally sit on the grass underneath this tree with my book and let the hour pass by; it’s much more pleasant than sitting in the depressing, stark white lunch room in the office.

Tick Tick Tick Tick… as I sit here counting down the minutes until my lunch break my stomach feels like it’s going to eat itself. I really need to get some fresh air.

Two minutes to go. Just as I’m getting my things together to venture across the road I hear a roar of thunder, and slowly the clouds in the sky turn from white to grey with massive raindrops splattering their way across the office windows. This is terrible! The one day of the week I actually want to spend the afternoon outside and it’s raining! My only other option is to sit inside a cafe or restaurant, in which case I would feel obliged to buy something. If only there was a warm, comfortable outdoor space that was undercover! A place that anyone could spend afternoons in for free and protected from weather conditions.

Oh well, the lunchroom it is…