Peer Readings

Peer Readings
First of all, it’s a poor name… i’ll try to think of something snappy and get back to you..!

As you may have realised, through the course of reading this blog, one of my interests is using mobile applications in ways that can aid education. This interst is usually filtered through my experience as a parent and the interests of my kids, which means I have a bias towards pre-school up to early primary years, but in most cases I think the ideas could easily be adapted.
Previous ideas include QReative Reviews and BME(Beginning, Middle and End)Day.
This new idea has come from my daughters interest in books. In the last year her reading has rapidly improved and she’s reading entire books on her own.
For homework she has books to read to us, which she enjoys doing, and her brother enjoys listening too. This reminded me of their audio books (which they love) and whether they, and other kids, would equally enjoy listening to stories read by their peers, or other kids in general.
Without any persuasion whatsoever she happily allowed me to record her reading her latest school book. Two takes did it. There’s also a little interview which I did immediately afterwards to get her opinions on listening to other kids reading. I would be interested to hear from teachers and parents as to whether this is something which is done in classrooms and if there is value in sharing stories being read in this way.

As ever, please leave you comments below 🙂

#VloMo11 (Video Bloggers Month 2011)

I’m not sure whether I qualify as a video blogger – how many videos should you be uploading a week or month for that to be the case? Anyway, I love the concept and decided, when I heard about VloMo11 last week, that I would join in.

Nothing too fancy of my own as yet but loving catching up with other VloMo-ers videos via Twitter and on YouTube. I’m using this post as a collection of my own and also a selection of others which have caught my eye – in particular a new online facility which I had never heard of until this week called ‘PummelVision’ which pulls images from RSS, Flickr, etc and puts them to music and posts them on YouTube or Vimeo. I first saw this put to use in a VloMo11 from @Documentally yesterday and was instantly impressed… only to find that it would have taken him 5 mins 🙂
It is, however a very creative use of the application, using it to present a years worth of Instagram images…

Cool though, and I couldn’t wait to make one of my own! (in 2 mins ;)) Just using a set from my Flickr feed…

Other highlights this week, which feature heavily in my videos was my Graduation Ceremony. On Tuesday I was in Dundee getting last minute bits ‘n’ bobs for the event on Wednesday so I did a 360 degree shot of the City Square, outside of the Caird Hall (where the ceremony takes place)…

and then the next day did a comparrison shot, post ceremony. (Here you have the opportunity to run them simultaneously!!!)

The thing with posting a video every day is coming up with fresh material but it’s a great exercise so, even though I arrived at the party very, very late, here’s to the rest of the month. Thanks also to the other VloMo-ers who have provided so much inspiration in what they’ve done…

Here’s a small selection…

Transformational Games

A great couple of clips from Jesse Schell… he not only understands this games but he’s also got a smart handle on education – ex Disney Imagineer, Game Design expert and now Professor at Carnegie Mellon, Schell carries some clout when talking about Games Based Learning (GBL)

What I enjoyed most about these two talks is that he backs up what I was trying to achieve through the QR Treasure Hunts that I designed for my Masters project. He talks about putting the teacher in the position of overseer, or ‘Dungeon Master’ as he puts it. In Role Playing Games there was always an extra player who wasn’t part of the main game who had to oversee the game play. In the games I created ‘I’ was the Dungeon Master (Role Playing Games were even part inspiration which was reflected in the first game’s name – NEoN Knights!), but when pitching ideas to teachers the role of overseer was their’s; they would take my tools and game ideas and populate them with their own content, map out their own courses, decide the parameters of the game, etc.

Talking of parameters, Schell also talks about how difficult it is to fit games into school schedules and timetables. This was also something that I had considered… therefore I tested game running times from 5 mins to 5 days and several variations in between. All of them worked in their own way, they just had different dynamics, but dynamics vary for many reasons including what the purpose of the game is. The brief needs to be clear, what do you want the players (students) to achieve… and this is where Schell starts…

Rather than talk about Edu-tainment or Serious Games, Schell coins the term Transformational Games – games that will change the player in some meaningful way. This of course doesn’t happen on it’s own – the outcomes need to be considered so that a route to those outcomes can be designed. This is where the co-design between game designer and educator is essential. I was fortunate enough to have great discussions with the likes of Gary Penn at Denki, Derek Robertson at Learning and Teaching Scotland and Kenji Lamb at JISC RSC NE Scotland. Each (Google them) have an animated passion for games and education and how these two can come together and were a great source of inspiration to what I would go on to do.

So it’s a boost to hear someone like Schell backing up my processes…

Whoa! Maybe he’ll put my name forward to the Imagineers at Disney..!?

 

Mixed Media

Another inspirational AudioBoo from Christian Payne, aka @Documentally

Much of what I was trying to achieve through my QR hunts was to demonstrate what a number of people are already doing…

In our analogue world we share common behaviours:
we: • experience • explore • interact,
with:  •people • objects • environments…
we: • document • archive • share…

I have been constructing spaces in the real-world where real journeys take place. Navigation however is achieved by means of technology (Mobile devices, Google Maps, QR Codes); capturing, documenting and sharing as we go (Twitter, Instagram, AudioBoo, FaceBook, Flickr, YouTube, Vimeo), with the Dungeon Master curating this content for online audiences across the World (WordPress, Storify).

My games (the image above is from my St Andrews PHD Summer School game) reflect the digital equivalent of those common analogue behaviours which will become even more prevalent in the future. Some are already doing it – see Documentally amongst others. However, I believe my games can help us understand what we want from these tools, what uses we can find for them and what forms they should take in the future.

Documentally’s Boo is specifically about the various ways in which we ‘consume’ media. He observed within a few, cramped, square feet multiple methods of creating and consuming media, each of them a succession in terms of technology but each equally valid and acceptable in itself.

There may be value in artificially constructing such a scene – however contrived it may seem – as an illustration of where we stand with regards to media in 2011. But to have witnessed it in the wild..!? There are definitely overtones of a frustrated Attenborough as Documentally, our guide in the urban jungle, laments missing the money-shot!

So have a listen to Documentally’s AudioBoo, but before you do please sign up on the right for updates – In the coming weeks I plan to deliver complete outlines and outcomes from the three real-world games plus the smaller prototype games, projects and methods in development as a result of my Masters project.

I passed BTW 🙂

Practice what you preach…

I’ve been in the Uni workshop over the last two days putting together a display piece for my final show… you may even recognise the design..!

As a demonstration of what I’m trying to achieve through my project, and as I’d aquired a funky new app, I thought I should get documenting and sharing…

This was yesterday afternoon…

I captured these two videos with iMotion HD, an easy to use stopframe and timelapse photo app for  iPad2 and iPhone… an ideal format for demonstrating what I was doing rather than dull, real-time clips of me gluing, etc…

You’ll also find Instagram stills via my Flickr page feed on the right. I’ll be combining some of this content, and more, for display in my final show.

Beginning/Middle/End

Beginning/Middle/End: A challenge to capture your life in three images through Instagram!

UPDATE: (9-8-11) ***BMEday is confirmed as being this Saturday 13 August!***

I blogged about Instagram recently. Instagram is a great iPhone app (runs on iPad2 but no Android plans as yet…) for sharing photos in a way that is not dissimilar to how people use Twitter. Just under a year old the service has six million users who have shared over 100 million photos. It has it’s own micro-community but it’s possible to share your images instantly with other networks you may be connected to such as Flickr, Twitter and Facebook. Images can be captured within the app but there’s also the option to pull images in from your device’s photo library which means you can still use other photograph apps and filters before you share.

Why do I like it so much? Well digital has give photographers the ability to throw caution to the wind. No spools of film to worry about or the restrictions of a 36 image spool… at the end of a day out there can be 500 images on the camera card to sort through. Instagram, because it’s ‘instant’, is closer to the old experience of a Polaroid or 35mm where every image counts. Choosing exactly the right image to tell a story in the ‘moment’ is a really interesting idea to me. I may not be telling you the whole story, but it very definitely is a story… and a single image has a mystery element, it fires the imagination and these are elements very close to the heart of my project.

By now, you’ll know that I’m obsessed with stories. Stories themselves but also the construction and architecture of stories. There are many definitions of what makes a story but rather than try to ‘define’ what I think a story is i’ve decided to distill everything I’ve written above and distill it down into a creative experiment…

Beginning/Middle/End is an experiment inspired by a quote, a film and my work. Through my Masters project I’ve been creating treasure hunt style games in varying places and spaces… varying in size from a city over the course of a week, a conference venue over a day and even a gallery space for ten minutes. The most interesting things to come out of each of these games is not the game itself but what happens around the players and the stories that consequently unfold…

Recently the movie Life In A Day showed what would happen if thousands of people captured their life on video, and shared it on YouTube. Producer Ridley Scott and Director Kevin MacDonald curated a selection of those moments, captured over the course of 24 July 2010, and created a 90 minute snapshot of life on that day. It felt appropriate to me to do something similar in the real world ‘real life’ to contrast the artificial worlds and situations i’ve been creating through the games.

Finally, my research into storytelling led me to the use of the number three. In fact the ‘rule of three’ ‘rules’ storytelling. The Three Bears, three wishes, the third day, etc…  ‘threes’ can even be found in the structure of story telling. Famously, French film director Jean Luc Goddard said, “a story should have a beginning, middle and end… but not necessarily in that order”.

So, I took these ‘three’ elements, filtered them through Instagram, and dreamed up this challenge. On a specific date ‘to be confirmed’, I would like YOU to take three images. A beginning, middle and end for YOUR story. It’s entirely up to you whether you need to add a words or a caption. The day in question may be your lazy day, your birthday, your wedding day! You might be off to Costa, the Co-Op or another continent..! It’s your life I’m interested in, or at least how you want to present your life through Instagram. In three all important images.

If you don’t yet have an Instagram account then set one up, see what it’s all about and get ready for BMEday!

Rules
What you must do (boring but essential stuff coming…) is label each of the images ‘beginning’, ‘middle’ or ‘end’ and also hashtag each of them #BMEday. You’ll find Instagram remembers tags after you’ve used them once.

Why are these two labels important?
The ‘beginning’, ‘middle’ and ‘end’ labels are important because I will be gathering the images together as a series of stories into some kind of online exhibition on my website so I need to know what order you want them in. The hashtag is essential for me to finding your entries on Instagram.

What’s NOT important
I don’t have an iPhone. I run Instagram on a wi-fi only iPad2 so I rarely get to upload images when I’m out and about. It’s not essential to me that the images are posted in real-time or from their location so, if like me you want to use an iPad, feel free to take your pics and upload them by the end of #BMEday.

Also, your images can be taken over the course of a day (eg morning, noon and night), they don’t need to be all together in your image stream (another reason for the labels and hashtags) so don’t worry about other Instagrams that you might send during the day.

It’s not even essential to follow me on Instagram, but it would be useful to know if you intend on taking part, so a tweet, email or comment here would be great.

Also, any queries/questions you may have can be posted below. I’ll post the date for BMEday asap – it’ll most likely be a saturday but if you have any comments regarding that, then let me know. It’d also be great to hear what you love about Instagram – what it has to offer you and others who might like it…

I can’t wait to see your stories…

Who Killed The QR Code?

Marble QR memorial in Pere Lachaise, Paris

Found this on the web via ‘Geek-eLeaks‘ and copied it here before it was removed… apparently a leaked obituary for the QR Code!

Obituary: QR Code

Who Killed The QR Code, aka Quick Response?
The sad irony of course was that the QR Code was anything but ‘quick‘ to catch on. Is this a tale of ‘tech‘ ahead of it’s time?

Created by the ‘Terminator II‘ sounding Denso Wave (a subsidiary of Toyota) in 1995, to keep track of car parts, the QR filtered through into public consciousness in the mid-naughties with the rise of the ‘smart phone‘! But it seems that the phones were smarter than the people and the QR just didn’t catch on. Speaking from Cupertino back in 2002 an iPhone said, “Sure I can make calls and text an stuff, but when you’ve paid $500 for a phone and $30 a month for two years you need a little extra, a little justification, to sweeten the purchase! QR did that for me in spades.. the geeks ‘lurve’ the Codes maan!“

Clearly a hit with the early adopters QR Codes, along with more obviously useful applications, promted a whole slew of smart phone purchases and QR Codes could be found across the world on the office doors of computer scientists who would embed them with ZX81 jokes.

However, the ascension of the bell curve from early adopter obscurity to it’s big break with the early majority fan-boy status was an endurance test of K2 proportions. But even then it didn’t quite happen for the Code.

2009 was heralded as Year of the QR Code… as was 2010… and then 2011. To be fair 2011 looked promising, but even before the paint was dry on the ‘welcome‘ banners the backlash had started and signalled the demise of the Code called Quick. So what was it exactly that made the Code more Napoleon Dynamite than Justin Bieber?

Was it the casual association with Supermarket 1D barcodes?
Did it’s challenging appearance make it the Elephant Man in the room?

This may be one autopsy that remains unresolved.
This mystery may never be explained.

However, there is one designer who believes ‘mystery’ is ‘the key’. He also believes that the passing of the QR Code is much simpler than the media would have us believe.

Initially designer Jon Gill wasn’t enamoured by the QR code, he was much more interested in the much ‘cooler’ GPS technology, but the QRs accessibility made it perfect for his projects. In early 2009 he started an outdoor visual arts exhibition project called SuperFly. While QRs were on the cards from the start it would be late 2010 before they found their way onto a SuperFly street poster treasure hunt called NEoN Knights.

Gill says of QR Codes, “They are a great tool for ‘mystery’! Once you’ve scanned one you can’t wait to find out what lies behind the next!”

Gill developed a close working relationship with the Code, some would say too close… but undeterred by the naysayers Gill persevered with a single minded creative passion. Of the Codes untimely relegation and controversial Wikipedia entry deletion, he says, “The problem, as I see it, was that too much responsibility was placed on the shoulders of the QR code. The QR is a key, a doorway if you will, to somewhere interesting, engaging, and worthy of the mystery implied by the enigmatic pixelated box that bought you here. The trouble was, while there were lots of really cool and creative uses of the QR they were swamped by a deluge of rubbish from ‘less_than_creative_marketeers.com’ who just didn’t understand what to do with them.”

‘Less than Creative’ advertising and PR is nothing new. Open a magazine. Turn on a TV. Any day of the week. You’ll never be far from a steaming pile of marketing manure. But on this occasion it was the QR Code carrying the can. By early 2012 “doing a QR” had superseded “doing a Murdoch” (which, only months before had superseded “doing a Lucan“) as the street-side nomenclature for ‘disappearing without a trace‘.

The collapse of the QR Code would almost take Gill with it, although it appears he was doing a fine job by himself… he laments, “I was the QR-go-to-guy… the QR-go-to-superguy..! But when the QR Code folded I was seen as a one trick pony… I was a laughing stock and… well… folk assumed I’d go with it.
I’ll have the last laugh though… with ‘HooLED-Hoops’ my line of Hula-hoops embedded with LEDs that spell out pre-programmable messages… they’re going to completely change the way we communicate with each other… we’ll be bigger than Twitter!”

Gill may well be the architect of his own demise but the definitive killer of the QR Code remains a mystery, open for debate. Although it would seem that the return of the QR code is not. While many believed that the technology would live on such was the backlash toward it in the industry that, as a standard, it was completely deleted. When quizzed on any possible reinstatement an industry expert said, “It’ll be a ‘Adobe Flash’ day in Apple‘ before that happens.

Q.R.I.P. indeed.

A cautionary tale…?
…or could this mean that the death of the QR Code is imminent?
Clearly QReativity is called for…

What are your thoughts?

Comments below…

New Brand Voice

In MDes this week our task has been to prototype the poster section of our final show. Part of that process is encapsulating our product not only in what we write about it but ‘how’ we write about it. What is your voice? Is it appropriate to your audience and your product?

A brand I’ve always had admiration for is Innocent, who recently published their first cook book (above). Obviously their products are great but it was the presentation that first got my attention. The illustrations were fun and and playful but that communication didn’t end with the illustration.. it continued on through the copy. The way that Innocent talk to their community is interesting and it’s carried through into other products such as the cook book. I’m not going to go on… i’ll spoil it, but watch this video by two of Innocent’s key management…

The interesting thing is that they say their style of communication is as natural as the products they create…  The other thing is that he mentions talking about the product as if he were talking to his ‘gran’. As a rule of thumb we, in MDes, we are often reminded to pitch as if we were talking to a ‘clever Aunty’… it’s not a bad idea… and it’s worked for Innocent!

I was curious though, because this week my wife came home with a new range of smoothies by Tesco. How interesting it is that they too have a ‘chatty’ style to their smoothy packaging… how does this fit with other Tesco lines, the overall Tesco voice?

Well, of course it doesn’t and it’s not intended too. Tesco are making an attempt at going under the radar and persuade you that their smooties are just as good as those really cool (but more expensive) ones on the shelf above.

Clearly you can communicate a lot in your ‘voice’. Maybe as much (or more) than you actually say?

So, my self appointed task now is to find a couple of examples of ‘brand voice’ that I like and that I think is pitched at a similar level to what I should be doing through my show… the hunt is on!

While we’re talking about voice… I was scouring through the websites of a few new Twitter followers last week and came across this site. Intro video’s I thought were a thing of the past… but then you don’t come across many as good as this… and it features an ‘actual voice’ that I was familiar with… back in the day (anyone still on CB radio?). The video says a great deal in a very short space of time and clearly it’s all about the ‘brand’ and ‘story’ in a very clear ‘voice’!

One last thing… here’s a ‘voice’ that branded not only a product but an entire culture… ably illustrated by marketing agitator Eaon Pritchard; also encapsulating these ideas of brand, story and voice!

SuperFly Space Hop

A Space Hop, by SuperFly definition, is a treasure hunt using a specially tagged Google map, QR codes and mobile devices around a town or city. This one was designed as a ice breaker for PHD students gathered for a Summer School focusing on eTourism.

The game is part of my Masters research focusing on evolving role of storytelling through social media and video games. I want to find effective and engaging ways of using these emerging tools for education, entertainment and advertising.

The game in ST Andrews had five teams of four or five members each. Each team had a HTC Flyer Android Tablet to view the map, scan the codes and complete the prescribed tasks by capturing photos and video. In addition each team had a videographer with another tablet capturing their progress.

Just over a week ago I began the task of watching a few hours worth of video to make some sense of it all. There were certain things that I was looking for… were the tasks too hard, too easy, understandable? I was also looking for clues as to how a tourist may behave using an application such as this. Does it enhance or hinder the experience of visiting the city?

Below is a rough cut of some of the video captured during the game.

I’ve since been able to capture feedback from three of the five teams that took part and so I pretty much have a 360 view on what happened and how the players and observers felt about it.

Probably the most negative person in relation to how the day panned out was me because, as ever, there were technical issues. Nothing that could have been foreseen without a complete dry run, and nothing that couldn’t be remedied in other ways. Mainly the issues were with uploading images and particularly video during the game. Looking back, trying to gather a live feed of images and video, given the constraints of 3G, was perhaps a little optimistic. However, those issues coupled with some of the feedback would suggest that the most convenient way to go would be an ‘app’ that contained the Google map, QR reader and links to Flickr and Twitter so that each element could be accessed more easily.

I’m now in the process of visualising the feedback and experiences of NEoN Knights, the two SuperFly Safari’s and now the Space Hop.

It’s amazing how much information you can take from playing a game like this. Besides the benefits that come from the experience itself there is also a huge amount of behavioural data that could be manipulated out of these scenarios. An artificial cultural probe? Not even sure what I mean, are any cultural probes non-artificial..? However, theres something in there… I’m sure that scenarios could be orchestrated, like role play, but observations made during the process… like a Swiss Army Knife of a design tool..?

Anyway, this post has been long enough so I’ll leave you with your thoughts and post more later…

Instagram: Apps-olute Must Have

A couple of months ago I was fortunate enough to get an iPad for my 40th birthday! I even got to visit London’s flagship Apple Store to pick one up.

I was very keen to get my hands on some ‘must-have’ apps so that I could easily demonstrate, to all who would listen, the ‘must-have-ness’ of this ‘must-have’ item!

Unexcitingly, the real purpose for the purchase was University and not lugging the laptop around all the time. But a funky notepad wasn’t going to cut it… I needed slick graphics, cool interaction and, probably, very big and very loud guns!

I really love the iPad2. I never had an original iPad because, to justify it’s purpose, for me it needed a camera… so I waited. Consequently I can’t compare with the original, but it must be said that while iPad2 does have a camera, it’s not the best… it’s not even that good.
For video it does do a great job. For stills however it really isn’t up to scratch, which is a shame. However, for quick ‘sketch-book’ functionality when compiling ideas and capturing spur of the moment events it’s adequate.

Having said that, my most used app over the last two months has been a photo one!

Instagram
Instagram is the only specific app that I knew I ‘needed’ before I had got the iPad. I’d seen others sharing images through Twitter using this app and it really appealed to me.

It’s is a simple idea. Take a photo (from within the app or lift an image from your library, and therefore use other photo-capturing apps…), choose from a minimal number of filters to give your image a slightly retro ‘polaroid’ feel and then share it. You can auto share through several outlets…I use Twitter and Flickr but there’s also Facebook, Email, Tumbler, Foursquare and Posterous. Essentially, it’s visual Twitter.

Through the Instagram community you can follow other users and ‘like’ and ‘comment’ on their images as well as view the ‘likes’ and ‘comments’ of those you follow.

Interestingly there is no Instagram repository for all of these images online, so they can only be viewed through the app, which creates a level of exclusivity which is in keeping with the concept.

You might be wondering, as I would, why anyone would need ‘another’ community to belong to..!? But it doesn’t feel like that. It doesn’t feel forced or cumbersome, just a cool way to create and share images with like minded people and your wider networks.

What’s cool for me in light on what I’m trying to do through my project is that there are examples like this of people sharing snippets of stories. With Instagram, maybe it’s the ‘whole brevity thing’ that makes it so popular… like Twitter there’s minimal investment by the audience… but it’s interesting enough that you find yourself checking back to see what everyone’s been up to.

So, thank you Instagram, a fascinating take on storytelling and a great influence on me on how I take my projects further.

For designers and entrepreneurs, here’s an interesting insight  from Instagram CEO Kevin Systrom into how the ‘original’ idea for the Instagram app changed quite drastically from a ‘Swiss Army Knife’ of features to simply focussing on just one.