Blog-to-Book

Have been thinking of various ways of how to display my blog / documentation, and have now found a blog to book option using the Booksmart application on Blurb.com. I have tested it today and it's really easy to use so it shouldn't take me a long time to produce. There are various options for layouts and if I prefer I can even design my own in InDesign or Illustrator and import them directly.

I think that this way the process of my project will be presented in a clear and concise manner.

Madonna Cat

Just finished editing another video and it's all about stray cats. I was lucky to find a whole bunch of them very close to where I work.

Case Study

Today I conducted my first case studies at the college. These can be found in my Manifesto and Process Page. Below are some of my first observations, based on my Beta-version of the application.

Case study results:


1st look general comments: 
"This is quite addictive"
"It feels like a puzzle"
"the creepy sound makes you think that something bad is going to happen to the little girl"

2nd test observation:
Participant 1 (mature Photography student):

The participant was not told what to do and was not told what the application was about. The first observation was that he simply looked at the visuals without pressing anything. He commented that he felt absorbed into the water colours.

He commented that the sound effects coming from the water colour made him feel like he's in space. He even said that he saw faces in the moving water colours. With regards to concept he said that the subject seemed to be about different aspects of life / identity and personalities.

He was slightly confused by the moving and dragging and found the jamming of the videos to be slightly annoying. Finally he said that he wished to be able to go back to certain videos to hear all the stories and that he wanted to see and hear everything all at once.

Was playing with the application for more than 15 minutes and only stopped when I told him to explain what he thought was happening.

"To me it seems like it's saying, whilst something is going on in my life, something is also going on in yours."

Participant 2 (Photography student):

The participant found the application very confusing. Almost immediately she started to try and organise the videos. The constant randomisation seemed to frustrate her. She commented on how the sound stopped half way through the video (she did not know that the videos in fact had no sound and the sound recordings were randomised).

She seemed to want to find a certain closure and to order the chaotic environment. Subsequently she was quite annoyed with the application. She did find the stories interesting and funny. She also thought that the water colours were filmed floating 3d structures.

Participant 3 (Photography student):

Found the application to be "disjointed". She tried to figure out if the sound and visuals are connected / synched. Correctly guessed that some videos had corresponding recordings, whilst other didn't (since the application is still unfinished). She felt that the stories were about life and traumatic events that have caused some kind of impact on the individual. She stopped the sound attached to the water colour to be able to listen to the story.

Participant 4 (Media Lecturer & Producer):


The participant was trying to listen carefully to the story and seemed to have figured out the pattern quickly. He stopped clicking after a while, seemingly scared to lose the story. He states that he feels that the concept can work (he was not told what the concept was) but that the execution was "one big mess". He did not want the stories and videos to stop when others were clicked. He stated that nothing made sense and that he would have liked more control; buttons to choose and control sounds and effects.

When asked what he thought the concept was about, he said that he thought that I was trying to create sounds that put one in a certain state of mind. He didn't get the water colours but said he understood the link when he saw the one with sounds effects.

Participant 5 (Fine Art Assistant Lecturer):


This one was quite interesting to observe and she played around with the application for quite some time. She listened to the first recordings until the end without clicking anything; she seemed to be quite immersed in the story. (Does the sound distract from the visual?) Most people seemed to be scared to click through in the beginning and in fact did not get to see most of the stories.

When the story ended and she played another visual, a few things changed in the interface and her curiosity seemed to arise. (Participants immediately assumed that the recordings were attached to the visuals.)

The participant stated that the top-right screen was more appealing (although this was changing randomly). She found the scrolling to be distracting (this will hopefully be eliminated). She found the various accents to be creepy and made her feel slightly uncomfortable. She said that she first tries to focus on the sound to figure out what was going on, but once she realised that the stories were not so dramatic she started to focus on the visuals. "First it makes sense, then you're confused, but then it clicks". She also thought that the water colours were warped videos.

Testing out the touch screen

Today I took the application to work to test it out on the touch screen. First of all I was very glad that the few people who have used it have spent quite some time playing around with it. I got comments such as "this is quite addictive" "it feels like a puzzle" and "the creepy sound makes you feel like something is going to happen to that little girl" (of course the sound has nothing to do with the little girl). Most people also commented on the aesthetic strength of the piece that was quite nice to hear. This was of course the beta version of the interface, so I'm hoping once it's updated it will be more enjoyable. 

The touch screen worked out fine except for the dragging / moving / resizing. I will either have to modify the code or play around with the touch screen settings. I might also use the multi-touch option that enables users to zoom in and out of the interface.

It's working!

So Maria spent three and a half hours here today trying to make the application work on Chrome using a local host (for faster browsing) and it worked!

I will be conducting the Case study on friday with my students.

A few things I wish to fix for August:

At the moment the videos are not auto playing. The problem with auto play is that the play action triggers a random generator, so the code does not see the difference between play and auto play. Consequently videos keep randomly generating before stopping.

Removing the play bar. The play bar looks slightly ugly and I would like for it to only appear on roll over. Once again there is a code conflict since the roll over already has an action attached to it, i.e. the user can move the video and resize.

I want the variation in the video sizes to be much larger. As one can see in the screenshot the videos vary in size but not much. I want the contrast to be bigger and therefore more dramatic.

A few more things: Play option is invisible when browser is full screened & localhost sometimes needs to be refreshed a couple of times in order to work properly.

I've also decided to only have one story on the screen at one go so the user is more focused on one thing, but can also see multiple videos at one go. This way there is not absolute confusion but rather a balance between order and chaos. I believe this will make the user want to find meaning rather than giving up completely. At the same time however there might be multiple sound effects going on simultaneously; these are the ones attached to the water colours.

All in all at the moment I'm just happy to see all the videos working together successfully.

More Documentation Ideas

One of the books I got from the library lately is "Things I have Learned in My Life So Far" once again by Stefan Sagmeister. I got it solely for the way it is bound together. This could be ideal for the way I want to present my work since I want to split it into four different parts. Of course I will not be copying Sagmeister's ideas but stapling the four parts individually is very cost efficient, and then I will only need to think of a way to have them exhibited together as one. I was thinking of ways of how to view them together as one book, or have the option to take them apart. Tried some maquettes already that I will put up soon.

Ideas for Documentation

So for my Documentation I want to have a book that will be split into 4 parts: Sketchbook / Water Colours / Video & Interface. Last week I went to the college library and tried to get some ideas for the layout. Below are some shots of "The art of looking sideways" and "Sagmeister".

I was basically was looking for interesting ways to display my images / texts as well as looking into how to bind the final book.

I like the extra large bold text on the left in contrast with the super small text on the far left, and then a whole page image on the opposite side.

Possible way to display a large landscape image & sideways text

Grid for text

Possible text over imagery? Although the text will not be completely legible so it should not be something of great importance, but rather annotations and reflections

Just a very raw hand written 2-page spread that I really like and could work well in my layout

The middle visual reminded me of my water colours; possible ways to display them perhaps

Sagmeister's book was just full of hand-written annotations in combination with very structured type grids. Found this idea to be very immersive and casual at the same time

Possible way of displaying various frames from an animation / video

A simple 2-page spread but displayed diagonally. Ideal for the sketchbook part.

I am currently exporting several videos and water colours so Maria and I can finalise the interface for the casestudy that will hopefully happen this week!