I've spent the week working on an animated lower third and as of yesterday animating a possible logo. It's gone fairly well, other than a problem with my Illustrator files rasterizing in After Effects.
Meet with CS people. Tweak the interface. Email. Meet later. Tweak the interface. Email. Hope we can coordinate schedules to meet again.
That's pretty much what I've been doing the past few weeks. The advertising folks had some great ideas last week, and Stephanie and I are talking with Amitesh to see if it's feasible. Stephanie also came up with great layout idea for the television interface, and it's pretty exciting. Hopefully we can talk about that and see if we could maybe integrate it.
So far, I'm really enjoying the iMedia class. (And the iMedia name, which you're all changing anyway. :) ) I think I'll like it even more once we're actually able to see the application and the work we've done. Mostly, I'm glad that I'm keeping in "package-making" strength. I think developing reporting skills are a little like exercising. If I take a semester off, I'm afraid I'll get out of shape. And if I'm planning to get a job in reporting in a few months, I need to keep up my skills.
This semester, I handled most of the story on the animal shelter. I did interviews with the people at the Muncie Animal Shelter and PetSmart, and I shot VO. I put them together into a package and wrote the story. I'm doing the iMedia class as a part of my thesis, too, so I'm going to make a video blog. Now, I'm working on a story about medieval fighters in Muncie. This group gets together every week, and they wear authentic costumes and use real weapons. Apparently, though, jousting is too dangerous. Who knew? I also shot the Tha Paper Boiz story, though we haven't used it yet. I did at least four interviews as a part of that.
I'm a little nervous about the name change. I voted for Scoop in the "top three" vote, but when I told my friend about it, she said, "That's kinda sounds like a tabloid." Umm, it kind of does. I hope we can talk about it a little more in class today.
Sunday I worked on a story about a group of Ball State students who are training for a mini marathon. As I spoke to these people I realized that they have an attitude about running that I simply can not relate to. I enjoy excersizing (or the way I feel when I'm finished excersizing) but this people really love running. Endless running! They talked about how relaxing it was to be out a nice leasiurely run. They claimed that running relaxed them. Not me! I would rather stick my finger in an electrical socket! Anyway, this realization at how different people can be made me think of the testing we'll be doing in the coming weeks with the interactive tv and iphone application. Some things we do may get mixed reactions similar to the way the runners and I react differently to the thought of running. Ultimately though, I believe we have and will continue to move in a direction of extreme personalization so that people won't be forced to live with a feature they don't like they'll just change it. Enough with my rambling...just some observations about crazy runners!
They say "sleep is for the weak", and I can't remember the last time I made it to the gym... so where's mine?
This week for myself and many others has been one of the busiest so far this semester. I have the benefit of a semester long schedule without Friday classes, but that's gone to the wayside when Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday work loads build up and things simply need to get done.
Outside of i-media the workload has been placed upon news 485, the final, tallest hurdle of graduating from the tcom department for many. It's a fairly simple, multimedia project that needs to be thrown together in a matter of three weeks, but the biggest logistical problem is working in groups. Throw a couple other 4-hundred level classes into the mix and you've got a constant crave-for-caffeine diet 24/7. Heading up the student-run news show, Newswatch, also takes up quite a bit of time on the side.
For what i-media is, for what we are producing from a content perspective, there are things that work with the iphone, and things that don't. With video, with telling stories, I feel like it's not the standard news packages we want to produce in all cases. A lot of our stories are best told in an intimate way because watching things, on an iphone, with earbuds in, is an intimate way of viewing things. Point of view packages with lots of natural sound to it are the ideal ways to present stories when they are along the lines of feature packages.
Finding news stories, to present things in a typical news formatted package, is nearly impossible until we reach the point of turning things on a weekly basis.
I think things are coming together and we'll begin testing this project very shortly... : \
This week myself, Cameron Andry, and Jeff Kew ventured to the Ball State running club to put together a short piece about the a runner training for the Indianapolis Mini-Marathon. Some problems we ran into:
- The runner in which we interviewed was rather shy and didn't neccessarily emphasize on many of the important questions we were hoping he would answer. The three of us tried our best to get more out of him, which we eventually did, but it was almost like pulling teeth.
- Catching b-roll for running is hard. They run towards you... and then away from you... and then they are gone on a 13-mile run.
But overall I think we came out with a piece that got the job done. Could be better, could be worse, but at least it's technically sound.
This week is one of the busiest of the semester so far, and iMedia has something to do with it. Earlier in the week I worked to get content done for the television application so computer science students can upload it to the template in time for user testing. Since then, I've been brainstorming the best ways to create interactive graphics for the iPhone. I've also been working with Shelby Murphy to figure out what changes to the old iPhone interface we absolutely need to make before user testing begins.
Creating graphics for the television screen involves a lot of thought and planning. I have to keep in mind the size of the television, the distance people are going to be from the television and how navigation is going to work. It was much more of a challenge to create interactive graphics for the television than I thought it would be.
My work on the television is going to be different than my work for the iPhone application. The iPhone's navigation is much more versatile than the televisions. Instead of four simple directional buttons, the iPhone offers a full touchscreen for users to interact with. As an iPhone user, I enjoy interacting with the touchscreen. At first I thought it was just because of the novelty of the thing, but after a semester of use I think it's just because the touchscreen enriches the online experience. I want to keep that in mind when we're deciding on content for the iPhone testing.
I've also spent this week thinking about the complexity of this class. It brings together multiple disciplines to create a product that has literally thousands of variables. Late last week we discussed changing the name of the application and there were variables brought up that I hadn't even considered. The best solution is a synthesis of the best ideas from each area, I think. Hopefully we'll be testing multiple names in the future so we can see which one people respond to.
Communication is another important aspect of this class. The complex situation outlined above is just one of many we're going to have to solve throughout the semester. Without the proper communication about these topics it's unlikely anything will be solved. Communication is interesting, and sometimes frustrating, for me. I'm constantly connected via my iPhone and other means. Almost literally every second of the day I'm able to respond to phone calls, text messages, e-mails, online chats, Tweets and other forms of communication. If you try to contact me I'll get back with you almost instantaneously the vast majority of the time. Everyone isn't this connected, however, so the instant communication I'm used to doesn't happen at times. I think it's necessary for all of us to be connected; after all, we are designing an iPhone app and most iPhone users are extremely connected.
We have class in a bit, so this post needs to end. I can't wait to see what the next few weeks bring.
Last week some of the advertising group proposed the idea of incorporating more advertising in the applications possibly by skinning them. We talked about getting rid of the bottom news ticker to make more room for the ad skin. Kyle and I met to discuss the possibility of doing this. We were both really interested in maybe trying something with this idea. We were having difficulty anyways coming up with a way to make the ticker interactive that would not just be clicking on it and going to a screen with only text.
The ads team also sent us a prototype of their idea for a skin. They had a lot of great ideas, but one of the problems we ran into with it was trying to put an image over the video a little bit because (CS people, correct me if I'm wrong) I think that that's not possible for us to do.
We also met with Amitesh to see if it would be possible to try and add a skin before the next user testing, but with all of the changes to the application and adding the new content we decided this might be pushing it for this update to try and get the skin added in time.
If we don't have time to add the skin, Kyle and I discussed the possibility of making some of the questions we ask the user in testing, "How would you feel if the ticker was gone?" and "Would you mind if there was an advertisment skin in the background of the application?"
Kyle and I also were interested in trying to redesign the TV application to better fit this advertising skin. But since there is a lack of time right now, we thought maybe this could be something we work on on the side while we move into the iPhone content. And then maybe at the end of the semester if there's time we can try and put out one more prototype for the TV. Thoughts?
This week was pretty quiet for me with iMedia. I'm excited to see all the content we've worked on get put into the TV. It takes so much collaborating from the graphics, t-comm, advertising and cs kids to get everything into place.
I worked on a slideshow for our animal shelter story...hopefully it's at least a little entertaining for viewers. The more I've thought about it, the more I believe people aren't very happy with the idea of being "too" interactive with their television. Minimal is good, but too much, is well - too much.
I'm looking forward to get started updating the content and iVillage on the iPhone. I find that part of the project to be the most challenging and exciting because wireless is where our world is headed.
Class tomorrow - let's hope we make some headway!