Contact 28.08.14

My group and I all went to bed pretty late the night before the contact class. There was a lot to do and though the tasks were easy, they took up a lot of time to perfectionise.

Our poster was our first priority for the night. The poster may seem easy and all but we needed the mockups and descriptions on it, in addition to the actual poster design which took ages to do. Our idea for the poster, after completing a poll of all our suggested ideas on facebook, ended up being Animal Growls (if you remember) but Australian-ised. If you remember the concept for Animal Growls, it has the same idea but the animals will only be native speices of Australia. This was agreed on as Trove, being the National Library of Australia, would most likely provide more Australian animals as oppose to white tigers or pandas.

The poster design featured a dingo in the bottom left corner making a 'woooing' noise to give the idea of our concept. China worked on the script for the presentation, Soobin made the mockups for the poster, Bill started on the document and I collated all the information and images to make the poster.

During the contact, everyone presented their posters and were asked questions and given suggestions to. Though this sounds quick, especially when there are only 12 groups in the contact, it actually took the whole two hours (one hour and 50 mins to be exact). Going around to see the other groups' posters, i noticed that some groups had very similar ideas to ours, e.g. basing the game of animals and guessing the name of them. Some posters did not have mockups. Some were created so well that i felt like asking whether they drew the images or got them online. 

Here are some other examples from the contact. I took more photos but the lighting in them is soo bad i really dont want to upload them.

Being a class of teenagers - young adults, you could say our attention span is pretty short when it comes to repetitive activities. I think it was into the third presentation that the class started to lose interest and do their own things. In the time spent waiting for our turn, our team decided to search up places where we could obtain Australian animal noises from. 

Here is a sneaky photo i took of my team discussing Australian animal sound effects. If you look closely on the computer screen you can see that at the top of the page it says 'ANIMAL SOUNDS OF AUSTRALIA'. Proof that we were actually working in the photo. Or were we?

For our presentation, we arranged Bill and Soobin to read off the script but because we needed to present for three minutes, the script proved to be too short so China and I agreed to add further information in the presentation by addressing the mockups on our poster. We were the third last group to present so i guess everyone got a little reckless or desperate for time because when Bill and Soobin finished talking (as China and I were about to talk), they started clapping and assumed we were done. I didnt mind this at all. Suggestions were given to our concept and of course, the sound question was asked (about where to obtain the sound).  The contact class was ended after this. 

All ideas that were suggested have been included in the document, as well as our current ideas in full detail. It was suggested by Bill that we worked on the document via Google Docs, so i created the document and invited everyone in it. 

Since the night before last night we had spent all night doing the pitch and poster, the document was basically bare as of yesterday. Pretty much all hours before the contact class yesterday was spent adding final touches to the poster and script, and printing it (and skipping classes to do this. ..) and every hour after the contact class - all throughout the afternoon until early morning of the next day (which is today) - was spent doing the document. 

Once we got too tired to care about the document anymore, one by one each of us drifted off to sleep whilst the remainder of us would diligently fight back for completion. In the document, we discussed:

• The scope - the summary of the entire project and what we planned to achieve over the course of the next eight weeks. 
• Background Inspiration and Research - here we included everything that inspired our idea, from mutual interests to online/phone games. Prior research to confirming our concept was also added i.e. research of Australian animals and their habitats
• Interactivity and Design Concept - in this section we included the process of the game (its structure, rules, instructions and brief design). A brief section was also dedicated to the design concept of interactive design studios, i.e. the methodologies used (iterative, incremental, waterfall etc.)
• Purpose - what we aim to achieve from producing the application, what we want/expect our users to feel and gain from participating in the application through health, education and enjoyment 
• Audience - who we target the application for individually and as a group, i.e. for children and/or for the elderly to help hearing skills and for schools/retirement homes 
• Trove content - A small introduction to Trove and how we will be using data from it. A majority of this part was spent discussing what sort of Trove content was going to be used (images, maps, sound(?)) and how we wanted the data, i.e. images not too small and not too big and reasoning for choice
• Mockups - here we included all of our mockup designs and added a small summary of what each mockup was displaying. Most of this section contains reasoning of the mockup design choices, i.e. why we chose to use those colours, fonts, placement on the screen and image/words placement. For each reason, a reason was given with further elaboration on the decision made, i.e. game placed on the left of the screen - because we want children to also work on their concentration skills (not getting distracted) - because we want children to leave the game with as much gained from the game was possible - because we want a positive gaming image - because we want more children to play our game - because we want success etc. 
• Reference list - a list of all our used sources in order to support and help write up the document. The Harvard referencing system was used.

Once the document was finally complete, i saved it off from google docs into a word document format and added a proper contents page, header, footer and touched up the crooked/broken structures before converting it into a PDF file. Since i also made the poster and no one else in the group had it (or the document), i volunteered to upload it for the group on blackboard. 

The document and poster was due at midday today so i felt that uploading it at 11.30 was a good time. While i uploaded it i noticed that it was taking longer than usual and naturally, i started to get worried. I knew that some people took up to 15 minutes to upload due to server problems with everyone else on at once so at first i was calm, however by the time it was 11.45 i started to get slightly concerned. This was when i cancelled the submission (which didnt seem to even be submitting in the first place) and uploading it again several times. No, this did not work. So i tried uploading one file at a time. No, this did not work. Time was running short so i tried to save it as a draft in case anything happened. No, this did not work. By this time it was 11.50 and i started to panic. I frantically logged on to my other laptop assuming it was my current laptop's fault and used my phone's cellular data in case it was the internet. I was literally submitting the files on two laptops and waiting for them to finish loading in that time. 

Then I started whining to China and asked if she could upload it if mine didnt end up uploading in the next 10 mins, but it took forevvverrr to send her just the document. By this time it was 11.57 and i dont think ive ever panicked so much before. Anyway, China uploaded the document literally three minutes to 12. I could not however send her the poster as it was too large (56mb). China suggested that maybe i couldnt submit it because it was too big so in that three minutes left i went on a website that shrunk pdf files. This shrinking process took soo long (i actually remember using it before and it worked waaaay faster, so at that moment i realised it was my internet that was causing the problem). The file did not compress in time. Neither laptops had submitted the poster in time. I nearly died of overwhelming worry. Yea. It didnt upload at all. China then told me to email Lorna explaining the failure of the upload. So i tried logging on into my uq email (on both laptops since the first one was taking soo long). I confirmed after the first laptop finally loading the page after 30 mins that it was definitely my internet. 

So pretty much I explained everything over the email and sent it along with the compressed poster (which finally finished shrinking in that time). Seriously, do you know how it feels to fail to submit something that you spent so long on? Something that a whole team relies on? Yea i felt so scared. So anyway after i sent the email, i went to shut down one of my laptops and started closing the tabs that were opened on the internet. By the way, it was 12.40 by this time. Anyway, while i was closing blackboard, i saw that the poster finally submitted.!.! I think it was two or three minutes after 12, but i missed it because i was too busy stressing and trying to open up my uq email. There were actually two posters submitted since i was panicking so much. They were counted as late submissions. This wouldve relieved me soo much but it didnt. It didnt because i realised that i uploaded two of the wrong poster files. Seriously, i must have been so worried to have accidentally upload two of the wrong files. I felt so stupid. So yea i then had to email Lorna again at about 1pm explaining the situation. And you know what? The internet started to run nicely again. Really. I then told China everything and i dont think she was too impressed. Anyway, i had a group meeting at 2pm (for another course) so i couldnt sit around feeling depressed forever. I was still at home by the way, i skipped three classes today just for these two single submissions. Seriously. No doubt i was late for the meeting. 

Moving on, you know when its raining and you're in a car and suddenly youre in depressed mode and stare out the window instead of your phone? Yea, this was me on the bus to uni afterwards. Except it wasnt even raining. I was actually so scared that i had let the whole group down. What made me feel even worse was that i hadnt done any (or even touched) my assigned jobs for the course that i had a meeting in, when everybody else had. We have a presentation on monday and were going to do rehearsals today but couldnt because i didnt even have any slides for the powerpoint because id been working on the poster and document for the past few days. Thankfully i have the nicest group members. We worked on something else. At around 3pm it struck me that maybe Lorna isnt like my other course coordinators and actually replies to emails on the same week they are sent (or maybe even on the same day, i thought). So i checked my email and there sure was an email from her. 

She said that the latest poster would be marked (the one i sent in the email), and that our group wouldnt be penalised because the document was uploaded on time. I cant even start to explain how i felt when i read this. Seriously, i couldve cried of happiness but didnt for some reason. I told China and you bet she was happy. I dont think ive ever changed my mood from super depressed to super happy so quickly before. You could say the rest of the day i literally skipped and danced and hummed happy tunes everywhere i went. And i lived happily ever after, the end!

This has got to be the longest post ive ever written. I shouldve divided it in two. Anyway, time to rest your eyes. Congratulations that you've read this far. I shall stop writing now and start on that powerpoint that was expected of me far too long ago. 

Workshop 27.08.14

The poster and documentation was due earlier today (as an online PDF file). The poster and pitch were done in class yesterday. My team and i have been working on these so much but i finally have time now to update on this week's workshop & contact.

The workshop on wednesday was divided into two activities; working on the poster and pitch (for those who had their workshops the following day), and using FileZilla to do simple tasks. When China and I showed Khoa (our tutor guy) our incomplete poster for suggestions, he told us that our resolution was off and that our colours needed to be in CMYK mode. Naturally, we were not aware of such things since our poster was originally created in Photoshop Elements and was of a significant different design to Photoshop CS6. So we converted the poster from Photoshop Elements into Photoshop CS6 and touched it up. Khoa kept reminding us that we needed to print the poster in A3 for tomorrow. It's a long story how our poster ended up being printed. We were almost going to attend class without it due to technical difficulties, but thats another story.

For the coding side of the workshop, we were given our zone numbers to use for our own unique purposes. Basically everyone in the same group for the project has the game zone number. Each zone was named deco1800 - xx, where xx was the given number, such as 45. We used our zone numbers to apply them to different links to activate different pages. A URL was provided for us to insert our zone names into in order to access the 'front end' of the zones. Other programs used during the session include Terminator and TextWrangler. I admit the rest of the tasks during the workshop was too fast for me to keep up and understand, so i dont think i can really explain them on here. The final task was postponed until next week as an error prevented our class from opening the page.

You may have realised that i pretty much dont publish any posts without images. So here are the photos from the workshop.

 Here i have FileZilla opened inserting in my student number and zone names and stuff to connect to something that i dont really remember ..

Random screenshot of Terminator. 

Um i hope posting these images here arent bad in any way but if they are ill remove them. I guess you can tell that my coding knowledge is pretty low. I will need to catch up on the work. Anyway i shall now write up a contact post for yesterday and include the details of the oh so dramatic document & poster uploading experience that i went through today. 

Team Processes

We have been asked to complete the quizzes and reflections on a website (about a week ago) and i just did mine. The page forced me into completing several quizzes and reflections and i honestly thought it would be a two minute task so i didnt put in as much effort as i should have. Regardless of my behaviour, i took some screenshots of the questions so i have reference to my answers in case we would be asked on them.

This was my result for the first quiz. Clearly, im not the leader type. 

This was the first quiz i did on Effective Listening. I got two wrong and was pretty proud and took a screenshot, then i realised that the answers could easily be changed to look like you got them all right and i felt stupid. So this photo is pretty useless. 

Some more questions. I didnt do these ones because we haven't done a lot of group work yet.

Alongside these quizzes, we're also supposed to answer the following questions so..

1. What did you learn about your attitudes to working in a team? Which Belbin roles did you identify with?
   I'm usually the quiet member in the team but thus far, i have found myself to be one of the people that lead the team. I tend to be explaining to other members in the team what the instructions were a lot of the time (which i actually like). So far, I've learnt that even though i am a shy person, i can speak with eloquence and confidence and actually feel good. Within the roles in the Belbin Inventory, i think i identified with a mixture of the leader and someone who evaluates and improves processes most (maybe less of a leader), but usually i find myself to connect with the role which makes sure that final product is fit for purpose most. 
2. Were you surprised by either your Leadership or Team Score following the first quiz? Why/why not? You don't need to specify the scores that you received - rather was it higher/lower than you expected.
   'You don't need to specify the scores that you received', weeell I happen to be reading these questions after i posted all the images above, so too late ive already posted my results and dont really feel ashamed or insecure or anything so yea why not. No, i was not surprised by any of my scores mainly because I've been told soo many times that I'm a quiet person and that i should speak up. In previous team projects (for the ones that i prefer not speaking in), sometimes other members would look at me and be like, 'What about you? You haven't said much, what do you think about our ideas/do you have any ideas?', and its really obvious from their faces that they see me as the quiet person in the team that prefers observing and listening over talking. So my scores werent higher/lower than i expected, it was what i expected. Apart from not being the team leader, my results also mention that i am apparently an effective team leader because i keep things on track. In a way, i expected this too. 
3. Did you identify with any of the causes of conflict? Is it something you have a tendency to do or something you have experienced from previous team projects? How will you manage this if it occurs in this team project?
   I'm not too sure where this question is going since I've met up with my team literally twice, so im not sure if its expected that we should already have conflicts or if this question should be answered sometime later in the semester, or if it actually means the conflicts that include the little tiny encounters that i don't think is really worth talking about (like not understanding what one person meant for two seconds or having a member absent). Anyhow, some of the conflicts include:
    - people being actively critical
    - people taking control/dominating
    - poor work standards of a member
    - differing expectations/goals
    - poor communications
    - free riding/social loafing
    - other priorities
    - disagreements/interpersonal
    - getting off track
    - people withdrawing/losing interest
   I wouldn't say that we encountered any of these problems, but if I had to choose one that related to our situation most, it would be poor communication. Sometimes we don't get what another member is suggesting. This isn’t a conflict though since we understand after a repeat of the sentence/rewording of the sentence. Last week, a member was absent during the contact lesson (this is cool, he told us that he was sick and everything, its fine), but when we were trying to update him with what we did in class afterwards, things got a little confusing. I think the main cause was because it was online and therefore harder to express what we meant. No, this problem is not usually something that tends to happen. If this problem (of communication) got worse during the semester, i would manage it by actively including members in the conversation and constantly keeping them up to date with what we are talking about (if there was a quiet person), and try to include myself in the discussions if i was the quiet person. I dont think there is a lot you can do to manage this conflict. I just realised my answers are getting longer for each question so i'll stop now.
4. What is important to you when working in a team?
   I have been made to answer this question soo many times in the last few months.. I think that communication is important when working in a team. I believe that all team members need to know what is happening at all times and need to be aware of their assigned tasks. Sometimes when there is a quiet member, they actually dont feel welcomed to talk even once they are invited to, so i think its important that all members are included in discussions. Sometimes, the group comes to a dead end and is out of ideas. They then all start to think of what to do or how to fix their current problem. They ask around for suggestions. The quiet person says they know nothing, but really, they have a mindful of ideas and is secretly judging the slowness/stupidity of the rest of the group (ok yes i am the quiet one sometimes and this is what i usually think). What im trying to say is that unless the quiet one feels welcomed/close enough with the group, they still wont share their opinions sometimes. So i think communication is a big factor in this. Imagine collating everyone's parts for the documentation the night before its due only to realise that one person did not do their part/did their part on a completely different idea because communication was not strong enough in the group. What a nightmare this would be. Know what im saying? good. 

Contact 21.08.14

I honestly don't know where to start with today's update. We did so much today yet gained nothing in return. For the contact class today, each group was required to bring in three concepts based on their idea. Last night, as a group we ended up with a total of six concepts and found ourselves with five concepts in the contact today - one from China, and two from Soobin and myself (Bill, our last member was away sick). We chose the best three concepts to present.

An activity that we performed today in order to present and provide feedback to the many ideas in the class involved the old Six Thinking Hats strategy. Basically, we were given six different coloured hats, or rather cones, of the colours blue, red, white, black, yellow and green. Each hat represented a form of thinking i.e. objective, process, intuitive, creativity, negativity and positivity. By visiting different groups in the contact and being presented with their idea, we were to give feedback based on a different colour hat. This technique, though somewhat tedious, proved effective as it gave us the chance to come up with different responses in a planned and smart order.

Our three ideas that were chosen:

1. Animal Growls - concept by Soobin: A game where users are faced with a variety of sounds from animals (i.e. elephant, bird, frog etc), before users are then asked where the animal lives (i.e. mountain, sea, safari etc). If the user gets the answer correct from the list of provided images, the user will then be faced with three imaged options of that the animal is. This whole process is one round, while progressing through the game, the game will get harder by adding in a time limit. 

2. What's That Sound - concept by China: Similar to Soobin's concept. The computer will play various types of sounds (i.e. thunder, dog barking, car racing etc) and users are given three options (not images, but words) to what the sound could be. Each time the user guesses, there will be a time limit that will gradually get shorter as the user advances through the levels. If the user gets three wrong answers, the game is over. 

3. Guess The Location - concept by myself: The computer will play different sounds that one would hear from a certain location (i.e. school bell, talking and papers ruffling for school, waves, sun shining, volleyball for beach etc) and users will need to guess the location that the computer has chosen. As the user progresses on to the more difficult levels, less sound tracks will be played from harder to guess locations, such as only playing the sound of water splashing, a whistle and heavy breathing for a swimming lesson. 

Left sheet: Animal Growls by Soobin

Top right: Guess The Location by Lien

Bottom right: What's That Sound by China 

Basically what we had to do during class was agree on two members in a team to stay at the table to introduce our concepts to two members of other teams (who will be providing feedback on our concepts), while our other two members visited other teams to give feedback for their concepts. Since one member in our team was away, Soobin volunteered to be the member who would go off doing the tasks himself. The first stage saw China and I staying back to explain our concept to others while Soobin left to visit other teams. After this, China and I went to visit other groups while Soobin stayed back to explain our concepts to visiting team members. 

Feedback from the session that China and I led:

• first thought the ideas were very interesting as it used audio tracks instead of other media (red)
• liked that the games are a simple and easy to understand procedure for children (our main audience) (yellow) 
• for Animal Growls, there can be too many similar sounds - like there are many types of different bird sounds and this can confuse users (black)
• when asked how to solved the issue, said this could actually be a good thing as the harder or more complicated sounds could be used for harder levels (green) 
• mentioned if there will there be a reward for completing each game
• for Guess The Location, the technique of making the levels harder is effective 
• Both users favourited Guess The Location 

Feedback from the session that Soobin led: 

• asked how the sounds would be referenced - meaning, is it possible to actually attain the audio tracks from Trove?
• all ideas were 'pretty fun' (red)
• Animal Growls seems a little complicated (black)
• Whats That Sound seems the best presented (yellow)
• For Whats That Sound, a bit too easy - most users will know the difference between the sound of thunder and a dog barking (black) 
• For Animal Growls, cut it down to be more easy (green)
• For Guess The Location, lacks difficulty (black) 
• Suggests different concepts as they are all based on sound
• Both users suggest merging Animal Growls and What's That Sound - the merge to be both of their favourites 

I'm not sure what Soobin encountered while he went off to visit other groups, however he did mention that half the time was spent discussing how the hats worked, some thought they had to take the hats back to their groups, some thought the hats had to be placed on the concept that applied to its colour most etc. Anyway, what China and I discovered when visiting other groups was that they did not have a main concept that all their concepts were based around. The group we came to had three completely different ideas using three completely different contents from Trove.

Moving on, if you've actually read this whole day's post so far - firstly, wow, i am impressed since this is so boring. Really, im touched. Secondly, if you remember me saying in the very second line that we did so much today but everything came to a waste, well it all started an hour before the class ended. Our group was naturally happy and felt on top of things since we were given so much useful feedback and felt that we had everything under control. We even arranged our deadline for choosing our final idea by tomorrow night (so we had time to explain to Bill everything from today's contact as well as hear his opinions). Anyway, we were having a pretty good time until Lorna came over in the last ten minutes and asked us on our ideas. She then asked us if we could actually use Trove's audio tracks. Well duh, we're not that unprepared, of course we could. Hahaaaaaaa no, no we actually can't. It turns out we need to sign up for something of which i forgot the name in order to use Trove's audio content. And well what do you know, all our ideas use Trove's sound files. So we had two options:
1. Change our idea completely and not use sound and be boring little people like everyone else and use normal Trove content or
2. Choose one of our ideas that uses images and other information that can be obtained from Trove (such as Animal Growl's images of animals, their habitat as well as geographic info on where they live). Use all these contents from Trove and obtain the audio tracks from somewhere else.

Since Lorna gave us her opinions and everything and left as soon at it was time to leave the class, we literally spent another two minutes frantically searching up any websites which offered free sound tracks for the public to use (in case we went with option 2 of using sound effects from somewhere besides Trove). This was successful. We found quite a few. So now all we have to do is report everything in today's class to Bill and decide very carefully on our final concept.. and start the pitch and poster and documentation by next Thursday. Oh so fun. Anyway, I think today's post has gotten a little lengthy so i shall now rest your innocent eyes and stop writing.

One last thing, Six Thinking Hats image sourced from: debonoforschools.com/asp/six_hats.asp

Ideas for our idea

Earlier today another group member had posted onto our Facebook group a brief concept map regarding our ideas and what sounds we could incorporate into our application. I added more to it and also included in what we could use the ideas for despite the difficulty of having to produce some of them.

So far we have three potential concept  cards excluding the one i said earlier on in one of the posts about guessing sound effects. At the moment, we're not sure if were supposed to print them out or draw them in our diaries or have them on a USB to present.. 

I think we're just going to print them in case theres nothing else we can use. 

Today's Workshop 20.08.14

Today's workshop worked to enhance our Photoshop and Illustrator skills. Our tutor spent the first 20 minutes in class introducing us to grids and columns (960.gs) which ideally got us to think about a more structured/evenly proportioned design to our projects, including "one which we will need to do next semester". During this time, we also discussed contact related tasks that we would need to give in in the near/distant future, such as the three concept cards, pitch & poster and project documentation. Our discussion on 'What makes a good poster?' was more in depth as it involved more class participation and writing on the board. Eventually the board was filled with different aspects that made a good poster including visual appearance (colour, space (spread out and balanced), text vs. images), context (purpose of ideas, audience, aim) and incorporated Trove content.

Finally the class was free to work individually on either a Photoshop or Illustrator tutorial  from ow.ly/AvOjm (Photoshop) or ow.ly/AvOpF (Illustrator. Many others in the class as well as myself couldn't open this one). Compared to the previous tutorials in the workshop, these tutorials were  much more advanced and required more effort, skill and time to complete.

This is what the final result should look like after we finish the photoshop tutorial..

..and this is as far as I got. On the left is what i did and on the right is what its supposed to look like. Ashamed to say, throughout that hour and a half i only completed adding the background which is pretty much the first step (and you can see that one box isnt even the right colour..or the right height..) In my defence, i worked on Illustrator last time and using photoshop confused me. The guy next to me only got this far too which makes me feel better. 

Even though i literally just added five coloured boxes to a canvas, i admit that i did gain some photoshop skills today. I actually did do more than what the photo captures. I added a transparent background pattern behind the coloured boxes (which means i actually completed 2 steps). This may not seem like much but this took me more time and skill than you may think. Anyway, the workshop was concluded after we all signed our name on the roll sheet. I dont remember being assigned any homework but considering my current photoshop skill level, i think we all know what i need to do. 

The Contract & Concept Cards

Our team contract and three concept cards are due this week. The contract is fairly basic and only requires our team members' names, signatures and agreement to team rules and so on. The due date for this is this following friday.

               

The concept cards on the other hand, involve slightly more effort into completing as they will need to cover three different versions of the current idea by exploring in detail aspects such as the concept purpose, audience, and features plus an additional description, storyboard and brief Trove content. 

While checking my Google+ notifications the other day, i was forwarded to the following image which outlines what the concept cards should contain. The image was from the 'Blog for teaching staff of DECO1800/7180 Design Computing Studio' (preeetty sure im not a teaching staff member..) but i found the image to be useful nonetheless.

Outline of concept cards. 

Sourced from the blog for teaching staff of DECO1800/7180. 

Our idea, 'What's That Sound' is basically a game targeting young children to match up audio sounds to its corresponding name/image. It has been confirmed after various amounts of checking from all team members that yes, Trove data does contain a very wide variety of audio tracks, ranging from thunder and racing cars to animals and their sound effects. 

The idea at the moment would seem to prove more than just a game, but also aid in the child's hearing and responding skills. This idea itself has enough to provide for one concept card. It has been agreed on by all members that this idea will go forth to have a card of its own. At the moment, all team members have obliged to posting all individual current ideas (revolving around Trove's audio tracks) in the team group on Facebook. Before Thursday, two of the best ideas will be chosen in order for the completion of the remaining concept cards.  

Second Contact Class

If you're wondering why/happened to forget why i don't have a post about this week's workshop, its because it was on the same day as the ekka holiday, so no, no one attended classes. Despite this loss, others in the course as well as myself have downloaded the 30 day Illustrator and Photoshop trials to complete the exercises that we started on in last week's workshop.
In the contact session today, everyone was made to write their 4-5 trove ideas on sticky notes and stick them on boards. We were then asked to categorise every idea on the board based on their topic or performance. During the hour or so, the whole room's boards were eventually all combined and were categorised as a whole (e.g. all game types on one board, mapping types on another etc).
The point of this exercise was so that we could later walk around the room seeing which idea we were fond of most. This method was used to form the project groups of 4-5 members.
In the end i was teamed up with three other members and we had all decided to evolve our project around an idea which required the matching up of sounds to their names.

Here we have our first board of ideas before everything was moved around. You can't see whats actually on the sticky notes but you can see the topics to get an idea of what we thought of. In case you still can't read the topics, it goes; art, travel, crime/infections/murder, map, education, finder & games.

Another board of bright ideas that go by the topics of tourism, topic/info & timelines.

Media/collecting, map, locator. The photo quality is really poor sorry.

A board on the other side of the room where some of our original ideas had moved to.

Puzzle matching, Misc, Guess, Map (oh, another mapping one).

There were people in the way so my photo is really angled but anyway, Quiz, Sound/Music, Other & Racing. If you look really closely under Sound/Music, you can see our chosen idea with the pinkish writing that says 'What's that sound?'

Our idea has its own individual photo because it's that special. 

Before the class was over Lorna took note of all our groups and declared the group contracts to be done by next friday. Along with this, we as a group have to come up with three concept cards based on our ideas as homework for next class. In the group we all exchanged contact information before finally leaving the class to carry on with our day.

First Contact Session

The majority of today's contact session involved us getting to know everyone else in the room by exchanging names, favourite colour, favourite animal and preferred superpower. This information was then (attempted) to be used to form us all into one single line by connecting all of our shared similarities. I'm not sure if this was successful due to the sudden building sirens that called us to evacuate outside.
Moving on to the work, we were then sorted into small groups of about 8 to brainstorms ideas on what we could use Trove's database to make. We were moved around after about 15 minutes at each board to another to ideally build up on the previous group's ideas.

Our first board of original ideas. Some ideas include matching up images/names with their corresponding sounds, finding friends from the past (much like ancestry.com but for friends), locating past criminal records or natural disasters for their number of deaths, location etc., and discovering historical places to visit. 

When we added more ideas to the second board. Some ideas which were not thought of on our first board involved children and their education/academic values, as well as a map designed specifically for tourists visiting a particular place. 

The third board of ideas (note that the board was erased due to limited space for more ideas). More ideas that werent previously mentioned include searching up foods from the past, a Guess Who game for famous people and work related to astronomy and astronauts.

Our homework today was to come up with 4-5 things that we could use Trove's database for by next week's contact session. 

First Workshop

In the workshop today our work was mainly based around Trove's database. We were taught how to do different tasks with the URL such as changing the keys in the URL with our own individual API key from Trove that we were made to sign up for. Different applications were used for different things, some applications included Json, UQ Cloud, the course blog and TextEdit. The different components making up the URL were also briefly explained (such as the keys included as well as what &, =, n, s, etc. meant/did) while we were asked to deconstruct each of our own unique URLs.
After this we worked at our own pace through either the Illustrator or Photoshop assigned tutorials online to help enhance our current skills. Unfortunately I forgot to save my work on Illustrator because i was rushing for some reason. Even though the tutor reminded us several times so we could post it here on our blogs. Luckily, i was literally just drawing shapes on the canvas anyway (the first few tutorials are really basic).

This was the only photo I took today of the URL so i could continue working on the tutorials at home, and even though its not much i feel that it should be shared in todays post because i have the tendency to document everything.