Meeting with Sadhna Thursday 13 May
With Sadhna we discussed the following scenarios:
How you would book crit rooms and how many members should be in each crit?
Should the crits be with random members or could you invite members to based on similar fields of interest?
In what other ways could the crit rooms be used, should we arrange online exhibitions or talks?
We also talked about how we could store past crits so that members could re-visit recorded crits to access information.
Further we talked about what kind of system will need to be implemented to store the crits in a database on the website, agreeing that we would we need to implement a tagging system so that members could easily access information wanted. We discussed how storing information from each crit could make one big transcript or a big online scrapbook to browse.
How could you save your workspace in a crit and come back to the crit at a later time?
How long should a crit last? Is this something the potential host of the crit decides when inviting other members to the crit and they all decide on this together? For example if you had one hours worth of crit time you would have a stopwatch so that each member got his or her 15 minutes.
We also discussed how and who could become a member of the website.
Sadhna also talked about the role of the tutor, the dynamics of the website and the psychology behind the navigation.
We were also told to look at other collaborative tools currently available, which led us to discussing how internet poker rooms work.
We talked about how we could push the crit further with features such as being able to instantly draw and how we could visualize brainstorming.
We asked as ourselves what would be our ideal crit?
We also discussed how we could turn crits into immediately producing work and Sadhna talked about having crits in different physical environments, like for example staging a crit in a library which means you would have instant access to books, would it make a difference? From there the idea of synchronised browsing within the crit room window came about, we could have a crit within Google books or even a walk about in Google street view.
Last words from Sadhna were that we should always grow something from a core. The core being first and foremost our year group.
We came to the conclusion that our main tasks would be to:
Come up with a name and branding for the website and a possible campaign.
Work on the layout and the functions of the site.
Summarize our research and start working on books to present it within.
Meeting with Amanda Thursday 13 May
With Amanda we talked about the importance of the feeling of being in the same room and how companies set up videoconference rooms in certain ways to achieve that. We also discussed the possibility of having or own time zone within the crit room, in the end we decided on keeping it to UK time. We also talked about the importance of recording information from the crits and if you somehow could flag interesting points of conversation.
Meeting with Max Thursday 13 May
By speaking to fellow students we got to know that Max runs the web interest group consisting of 2nd and 3rd year students. They have been working on a similar website which lets students on different year groups at college interact, he kindly gave us access to what they have been working on so far.
Max talked about how you would get users to come with constructive criticism, with regards to this he showed us a link to paulgraham.com/hackersnews, which explains how fellow users can avoid getting into flame wars.
He also talked about how the small details are massively important to consider when building a website and told us to start low key and always think about the worst-case scenario. Finally he seemed to agree that it would be important to support the site with live events.
Crit with Patrick Friday 14 May
With Patrick we talked about how to manifest what’s going on within the website in a physical space. Patrick suggested the idea of a growing tower in a city every time someone was in a crit-room. That got us thinking and we started to explore the idea of leaving a light bulb in college, which would glow, or flicker every time there was activity in the online space. This would later lead us to explore the idea of leaving a crit table at college, which would introduce and remind new members/students to our growing community.
Meeting with Max Tuesday 18 May
Today we showed Max our layout so far.
1: We started of talking about how members would sign up for the site, one idea was to use the facebook sign in app but we decided it would be better to follow the University’s own lists of members so that we wouldn’t have to search through facebook to find members as the would already be using the University’s email address.
2: In your user profile there is a link to special interest with three tags, we decided that these tags could change according to how much you commented on certain posts. Essentially your interests will change and it will be tracked to your profile.
3: How could we make the site more attractive to a college user; Max told us he wanted students to come more into College. Could we link real life college crits up to the website, record them and post them into our archive? Or even have a physical online critroom, which can be booked upon request? Think the Microsoft surface table.
4: How do you search for specific items, search in tag clouds and so on?
5: How can we capture people’s vanity? Could members unlock different features off the site and be awarded accordingly? Would it draw more people in if we set them challenges to unlock points? What could the challenges and awards be?
One example is an app called Foursquare which tracks how many times you visit an area or a shop and the person who’s been there the most times becomes the major of that place. Should we track and award the top contributors to the site?
Max told us that Yale’s Graphic design website could be constantly changed in appearance by alumni and students and that it was proved that the alumni of the University would hang around on the site more than any other alumni.
This led us to talking about TRUSTING you’re to users and how Wikipedia works. In Wikipedia everyone one can add content and it works because it’s easier to make right than to make it wrong. It would make the site last longer if it was more user supported. Max also recommended a book called Here Comes Everybody by Clay Sherkey.
Could this be supported by an Iphone app?
6: We also talked about creating a difficult user case scenario to show how the site would work.
7: Finally would members go there if the site was empty from the start? What content can already be there? The solution to this would be to kick of the building of the database with information from the third year show and this years alumni will first gain access. CSM students will gain access as soon as the new school year started.
8: Finally we should deliver the final piece in QuickTime or most ideally on a DVD.
What we are doing/producing:
Building a website proposal.
Making books of our separate research and research done together.
Creating a physical campaign to raise awareness of website.
We have been thinking a lot today, and we think that narrowing it down content-wise even further might be a good idea. One idea that we have been discussing, is that we have a website with half a question, and the rest of the question will be formulated and asked every week. So for instance, for now we have been going with the core question “What did you learn?”, and the idea is that we finish the question and ask people to respond to that. A quick example could be “What did you learn about digital type?”, and then the answers would go on to the website and then saved and removed once the time is up, so we could build up a database of various tips/tricks/knowledge and experience from all the members.
We figured that some sort of organization was the way to go, to help fellow alumni the moment they left college. We thought about how we could pass on and exchange knowledge and experience, so we started thinking about how we obtain these things through CSM. We agreed on that crits and interaction with our fellow students is what makes CSM such a learning environment, and began playing around with various ways to explore this online. Some obvious ideas included tutorials, seminars, a monthly/quarterly magazine. But then we started thinking a little more freely, and came up with online video-meetings, mentoring as well as online collaborative mind maps.
The mind map seemed like an interesting idea to explore, as we couldn’t find any existing ones online. We thought that if one could create a personal mind map on a website by setting a topic and writing down one idea in the middle, it could then be saved to a website and other people could pick it up and respond by video, text, images, drawing and sound. We also thought about tracking, as all of these ideas could be potential memes. Even though the core idea itself is an altruistic meme; to pass on knowledge and experience to others. But we liked the idea of being able to track these ideas, in terms of authorship, duration, how long an idea can stay alive etc, all at the same time. That led us a little away from the mind map idea (at least in terms of looks), as we started to look at all these ideas as little particles, or stars if you like. We imagined an online interface where all these particles would float around in the same space, each one would be someone’s core idea. If someone had a new idea, they could simply click an icon; set a topic, write some lines/post an image/video, include some keywords, and just deploy it. New ideas would vibrate or pulse, so users would see if there was any activity. If a user clicks a floating idea, it will stop, and expand to show something similar to that of a forum post, docked to the particle. This will contain the core idea, and the responses. The users will have the option to respond by text, image, video, sound or drawing. Each post has a potential lifespan of one week; whenever a user responds, the time is renewed. This will keep pressure on authors to encourage response on their idea, as well as keeping the concept of a crit alive - where you have a certain amount of time to present your idea to the others.
As for the social aspect of it, we know that literally no-one wants another social networking account, so this will be more of a tool with some social networking attached to it. We thought that people could use Facebook Connect to log on, which will allow us to display their names, and location, and include these in a search function too.
We will also have a quarterly publication for sale (free to members). It could present the finished result of selected ideas, or articles on selected topics that have been popular on the site. Further along the road we will host annual exhibitions and/or talks.
Response to Sadhna:
The project focus lies in sharing and exchanging knowledge and experience, thus creating progress and breathing new life into our network. In terms of what concept we are exercising with this, it is first and foremost altruism; “Helping a friend in need will result in that friend appreciating you more and wanting to spend more time with you. By doing so, he will imitate you more than his less helpful friend, so your helpful meme will spread to him. He will become more helpful to his friends, and so the meme will gradually spread.” According to the article Share To Make Ideas Happen by Scott Belsky, “Creative professionals should take every opportunity to communicate new ideas broadly, seek feedback, and develop a sense of accountability.” From a more general memetic view, especially when it comes to online memes: this tool lets us track the origin and the lifespan of an idea, and potentially how long it takes before it “dies”. In terms of testing out research, it will be an ongoing process from when the whole thing is live. As none of us are programmers, we are looking to create a proposal explaining all the features and aspects of the website. We are, however, checking the possibilities of creating a small light-weight version of this, maybe letting people deploy an idea into a “pool” and respond to other peoples ideas by text only. We will also design the publication, and include documentation of the process there. So we are looking to create: a proposal for the site, a light-weight version, and a publication.
*****TLDR*****
Idea:
A platform for exchanging knowledge, ideas and experience, in the form of an interactive website. An intuitive forum that also serves as a meme-tracker. It will let the user browse ideas that are floating around in the same space, interact with them in terms of response as well as to deploy new ideas and getting feedback on them. Potentially this could draw links between professionals and students - a social network for ideas.
Design:
We imagine this as a cluster of particles or stars, floating around in the same space. Each particle/star is someone’s initial idea and when clicked, it will expand to show the whole post, with the other users individual responses. Every new post can be tagged with keywords. Peoples responses automatically contain the same keywords, as well as potential new ones.
Possible Features:
- Discussing ideas
- Hint and tips on technical aspects of design (software, type tips etc)
- Hint and tips on other aspects of design (how much to charge etc)
- Logging on through Facebook
- Posting via e-mail
- Responding with text, video, sound, images and drawing
- Tracking ideas by keywords
- Tracking activity by adding orbiting objects around the core idea/particle
- Tracking duration/lifetime. Ideas fade as there isn’t any activity, so after awhile they will be completely gone and moved to an archive (good ideas never die).
- Viewing “dead” ideas, and the possibility to revive them and sending them back into the system
- Tracking newly added
- Tracking where people are
- Lunch webcam meetings?
- Priority system
- Ideas attract each other according to keywords, as well as clicking on them.
After proposing the ida of the gentlemens club to Amanda, she advised use to look at weird traditional English traditions, such as the cheese rolling in cheshire, also typically british foods. We were told to find a name and write the rules/philosophy to begin with which then can be used to form the rest of the brand of the club. We were told to look at tradition and use our imaginations to bring it to modern day in a quirky fun way.
So we thought about possible rules in the evening and further thought what could be the brand of the club.
Our tutorial with Sadhna brought up the morals of a club like this. Main points were
Like the freemasons clubs, the idea of the club was romantizing something that wasn’t sound.
The university is a multi cultural place, why just base it on the british.
“Shaky”
Our final feeling was that we should drop the “upper class” english idea.
After a short lunch we broadened our idea to present to Patrick, we said we are going to form a social club, where by the people for St Martins can join and remain in contact, A club where by events can be held annually to bring these people back together and to remain part of this network.
He said that to follow the tradition of clubs isn’t necessary. and we should look at other practical things to make it work. such as Backing people up with clients etc, hints and tips, common problems in the field, sharing Knowledge and experience, he mentioned other “design clubs” such as grafill and QBN.
We then worked on this idea of forming a club whereby someone can get hints and tips about working on a project and other ideas including : Sharing peoples work, Cross-collabortion network, Seminars could be videoed and shared, coffee break video chats, We then thought about what the main aspects of CSM are.
As the graduates disperse with their endeavors, the community which once was breaks down. The Club is a private club set by and for alumni students from the Graphic Design course at Central Saint Martins College of Art & Design, London, UK. The purpose of The Club is to maintain networks within the environment they were formed, after graduation. Like the old gentlemen’s clubs, it serves as a social support network for alumni’s of Central Saint Martins Graphic Design 2010. Through real events based around traditional British culture, The Club will act as a defined social network as well as passing on a culture people may not have experienced whilst living here.
What:
Keeping the idea of something alive through our own approach. Our focus is on British high culture.
How:
Setting up a Gentlemen’s Club, and host events every month.
Why:
Key words are: integration, acceptance, cultural heritage, experiential events and semiotics. All of these words tie in with our separate research.
We (Alex, Anders & Martin) have decided to team up for our Unit 14. Alex has been researching semiotics of type, hidden narratives & changing behavior through design, Anders has been looking into memes, flocking, language & slang, while Martin has been researching the values of something being made in Great Britain with focus on bespoke tailoring on Saville Row. Here are the blogs we have been keeping up until now:
www.visualperception.tumblr.com
Spiffing!
