Project 3 Concept & Making Video Research

Good concept video: This video has good sound and background music design. Although there's inter-cut in between ideas, the narrative is clear and moving. 

Good content video: This video has more documentation of project development and production records.

Google Art Project - making video

Behind the scene video of how the White House is operating! Impressive!

Voice Over & Sound

Due to the time limitation, I decided to use quick and easy tool to record my voice over. The explanation of my video concept from previous post will be the guide for me to do my video editing as well. 

The record and preview of the voice memo is quick and easy. The only struggling part is the data transfer part. As it's a little bit complicated for me to sync the voice over files to my work station, I emailed all the voice over clips to my email and then download them onto my work station.

After adding the voice over (VO) into my video timeline, I need to do some amendment from the video arrangement so that the "said" is complementing with the video footages showed.

Once the narration of the video clip deliver the message I intended to present, I proceed to looking for background music to lighten up the overall mood and feel of the video.

From this 50 plus minutes of music compilation, I found that the music from the 6th minute to 9th minutes suits my video timing and narration quite well. That part of the music consist of building up the beat which serve as intro music. The middle have more elements of drums and beats to serve as highlights of the app feature. The final part of the music has some variety of tones allow audience to feel that it has come to an end. So by getting some of these structure prepared, I'll then use some of the fading techniques to make sure the music volume is working well with the voice over

After Effect - Post Production Tutorial

This video tutorial helps me to understand the colour adjustment of the video to make my app demo video more stylish the trendy.

Demo Video Script Writing

Everyday, we express ourselves through our fashion style. Whether sporty, edgy, vintage or unique. To keep fashion inspiration interesting and fun, ASOS would like to introduce "Fashion Blender", a mobile application that share fashion inspiration in a unique way.

Using the dynamic photo tagging system, Fashion Blender allows user to customize their fashion inspiration based on the level of fashion exploration they want. By tapping on the layout mode, then select the items that user wanted, the smart searching feature of Fashion Blender will pull live data from the pool of users' library and form a new set of fashion combination. 

When user found that other user's outfit item are inspiring, simply tap on the photo, the image recognition system will identify the item and add them into user's personal inspiration library. These collected item will then be remix in the blender section. 

The map feature also allow users from different side of the world to share their fashion style and remix with other's fashion pieces. The idea of remix and recreating style allow the fashion item to appear uniquely stylish. 

Getting bored with mainstream fashion style? Use Fashion Blender. Fashion Blender, remix, recreate, restyle street style. 

Prototype Making

The following days will be the most crucial days I had to complete the project within the timeline. I've got the mobile ui 80 percent done. Because of time limitation, I'm considering dropping the plan to produce a demo video and change the submission of app concept through poster design.

Thinking to use poster design to explain the mobile app concept could save me some time, I'm also worry that print images could not illustrate the excitement of this fashion app.

Since making an appealing poster to explain the concept will also take times, plus if my copywriting does not excite the judges, I might not be able to present the project well. And to montage the app and make it exciting is also a lot of work. I need to highlight the detail, display in a dynamic layout, typography treatment and crafting the words to complement the ui... etc.

Example above is a good way to present mobile ui in a pleasant looking and dynamic way. But it's all too quiet and stagnant. With that much of work to do in order to impress the judges, but at the same time the user experience is not being clearly illustrated.

So I decided to stick back to the old plan. Film a concept & demo video.

First of all, I'll have to make a simple prototype of the app using Flash Air to make an android apk file so that the interactivity of the app can be demonstrated. There's a coding work to do and I allocated one full day to complete that. Then I'll have to plan a quick and interesting storyboard so that I can do a quick video shooting to collect enough footages for the editing.

I re-look into the winner's video. After observing how their video narration works, I've got my video content in mind. I borrowed a DSLR camera from a friend and go for a street video shooting around Sunway Pyramid street area. I'm quite blessed and lucky in this case as the students and working adult around this area normally wear fashionable attire. So it's not too difficult to find talents for a quick profile video shoot.

At the end I manage to get some of the diploma year three students and some TOA working people to be my talent instead of getting stranger on the street to help me film the street fashion scene.

UI Design Concept

Because ASOS product has variety of colour, print, patterns and fabric texture, the app ui design that display such dynamic fashion photo will have to be simple and easy to recognise. 

The hipster style of black and white (grey), design treatment with minimal lines and shapes give a trendy yet clean environment for the target audience to browse through their fashion inspiration easily.
Below is one of the sample hipster graphic style guide board I found online.

Hipster graphic style reference

My app design - colour palette and testing with ASOS fashion item side-by-side

D&AD New Blood Winner Entries Analysis

All of the winning work, submitted video demo presentation with approximately 1 minute duration. Not all of the entries supply with poster image. 

One of the best entry format: Clear video concept, the submission of visual montage successfully explain the use case of the project. Link

From my observation, the winning works doesn't really have very detail information architecture and ui connectivity. The shared common points are the innovation and behaviour changing concept that reflected ASOS aim in connecting the target audience with the feature of mobile network. The usage of camera function allowing them to publish themselves into the social media channels every now and then. ASOS products will need to be featured with the look and feel that is in line with the ASOS brand and aesthetic. It must be viewable on a smartphone. But it’s not a must to actually create an app or site, but must clearly show how it would work, look and feel. 

From the direction of how the judges define winning work, I will need to produce a clear summary of the reasoning behind my idea and creative solution in answering the brief. The submission of research references and/or moodboards will help to explain my creative solution. A clear presentation of understanding of the proposed user experience is also an important criteria for the award judging process.

The Big Idea [ Fashion Blender ]

The Mobile App will serve as a remix platform for the fashion lovers to break apart street style fashion items around them and recreate style from there. This app is location aware. With the statistic of users collection of items at different locations, the recommendation of style will be prioritize depends on the statistic collected. Since ASOS product position aim at UNISEX level, the possibilities of mixture and blending to recreate style will enable more fashion possibilities for both male and female audience. The recommendation system allows personalized setting to create variety of inspiration. User can also set the blending modes provided in the app for customized recommendation content. Every style found will be labelled with product info and
price to allow a easy online purchase for the consumer.

Target Audience - Hipster

After observing ASOS's fashion style and the trending colours, it has very strong character. Instead of formal and neat, most of the time, ASOS target audience appeared to be bold and daring, adventurous in choice of colour, texture and material. They reflect the hipster behaviour of being different.

Then I did some research on the "Hipster" fashion attitude and behaviour. The style and personality of hipster. I found these resources online:


The Evolution of the Hipster from 2000 - 2009

Hipster Fashion Cycle:

The 2 info diagram above helps me to see the pattern in the Hipster culture. I decided to use the different stages of Hipster fashion cycle to represent the level of Blend in the app. The strongest contrast mixture of content will be the Outsider who felt bored with the conservative fashion and wants to break away from the norm. 

In the Fashion Blender app, user can set their adventure level to allow the dynamic data management system suggest to them the outfit mixture. 

Competitor Analysis [function benchmark]

Olapic
https://www.olapic.com

#DynamicContent
With the advanced technology in visual content display and dynamic integration of user generated content, Olapic enable brands to be recognized in users’ everyday photos. The dynamic content display enable better brand appearance and business opportunity for new customers to see their products and purchase it.

Some of the key features of Olapic
1. Collect:
a. Automatically gather relevant photos from Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, Vine and Tumblr

2. Curate:
a. Easily approve on brand photos
b. Collect directly from users via site, email and mobile

3. Display:
a. Showcase customer photos within product detail pages, galleries, Facebook pages, email campaigns and elsewhere
b. Customize to match and enhance your online presence
c. Integrate into your chosen ecommerce platform

4. Measure:
a. Track performance with clear and comprehensive sales and engagement metrics

ASOS - Client Study

From the official channel of client's online presence, ASOS has shown it's dynamic design look to suits the current fashion trend. One of the 3 major sections of ASOS.com, fashionfinder, is a section where target audience gets fashion inspiration and tips. 

I also created a pinterest board to record the past design appearance of ASOS mobile app. Some of them shows the graphic style, colour mode, some shows the content architecture and some show's it's promotional design in order to look appealing to the audience.

D&AD New Blood Award - ASOS, Restyle Street Style

To fulfill CFE Module requirement of project outcome which is to demonstrate the ability of creative ideas development, having contextual awareness through digital media practices, and emergent technologies and technical contexts, the chosen competition brief is carefully studied. Among the competition briefs I came across, New Blood Award by D&AD is the most suitable option for me, as it is designed with specific client needs, branding position, well measured objectives that allow students to show case their creativity in order to solve the communication problem stated. Besides that, there are many client briefs within the New Blood category, range from fashion, product to services. For my case, I’ve chosen ASOS’s brief. The reason my that decision is due to the nature of that sets their target audience of the future generation of global 20somethings who are permanently connected and live on their digital devices. This has given chance to work on rich experience design for such target audience at the same time explore the creative opportunity in the social and creative content display. Furthermore, the requirement from the brief has heavier weight on the creative idea communication and the innovation of media technology instead of the completion of artwork. With the estimated working hours available in CFE module, this brief allows more time for creative strategy development and user experience design without the burden of artefacts completion. So this brief fulfil the project requirement completely.

Chapter Break - Post after this will be CFE project journal

I've Learnt Many Things in Level 5 Studies

I've learnt the importance of listening.
In managing conflict, if one of the party could bring the doubts into the light, confusion could be lesser. I very appreciate those who listened to me. Even to confront me or to correct me so that I could extend my point of view.

I've learnt things from my failure. Fail to clarify the doubts, fail to make smart decision so that things can be easily done, no need to go through tough time getting difficult works done.

I've learnt that it's not bad to have 2nd best idea. If our group were like other group, stick to the initial, not the best idea, but it's safe and it's manageable, then I won't need to reach the stage of making things incomplete. Then even though tutors are not happy with the idea, they can still see a complete outcome. Compared to an idea that went through deep thoughts and research, yet not complete functions, me and my team will have lesser stress. We could also spend more time for other module's assignments.

I've also learnt how to understand the brief better, manage my expectation towards how I view tutors' support so that I would not have misunderstanding of tutors' expectation.

I've also learnt once again the feeling of failure. As a student, I learnt not repeat the same. As a teacher, I learnt to understand how a student's failure feels like. It makes me a better teacher in the future.

Lastly, I learnt to view the new technology in a new way. No longer thinking from the last decade of seeing media and use today's media to integrate. It also helped me to better measure how to teach my diploma students about new media from a practical and achievable way.

And my classmates taught me whole lots of things in BIMD Level 5 journey. I indeed have fun learning together with them.

#10 Live Event

To be honest to myself, I felt that I lost the direction in how I should communicate to my guider. The tutors seemed not able to accept whatever we have done. As if whatever hard work we've been through is not important at all. If the work is not fully, bugless-ly completed, our work is not acceptable, it's a failure.

I tried very hard to manage the team work to get everything done as well as we could. But my team members seemed to be at their lowest productivity mode. Rushing through their Essay, and the past few weeks of sleepless night working on this project and other assignments has affected their brain working speed. We're at our lowest point of productivity. I'm very guilty of not able to give the team a complete interactive product. But with the limited resources and time, I manage to work out a finger gesture controlled ui plus a separate skeleton detection hole-in-the-wall game ui.

Most of the primary functions are working fine. Sound and instruction are included this time. I felt that I have not failed completing the tasks in such project timeline. While we working on furnishing the exterior looks of the vending machine, I'm working on the final testing and interactive setup of the machine. While I am adding in the final set of animation slides into the Processing program, the software crashed at the final 2 hours before the presentation.

My face got pale. All the files couldn't work at all. I restart my computer, reinstall the program, controlling my anxiety, take away those slides and maintain the software capability so that the overall product could still work fine in the presentation. I almost break down, but I know that I need to be professional, and responsible to the team. So finally things work out well again.

I learnt one great lesson from this technical production. I've looked at the new media (Kinect) in an old way. Instead of making the interactivity starting from instruction to game to calculate scores to restart the game, the flash way of thinking Processing and Kinect, I think Processing is used for one single experience that explore interactivity and visual generation of data.

With the cover design of the program it actually signify that the program does more of the data visualizing display and calculation. But because this software has got many libraries that enable Kinect functions and it still stands between the knowledge of Designer and Programmer, so I adopted the technology. 

If I were to explore Kinect the next time, I'll be looking at it from a different point of view. Just like how, one of the assessors today said, it could be a no-brainer game that keeps user interacting with the artifacts, it  doesn't even need to be a complete interactive circle. 

Of course, the requirement of the complete interactive circle comes from the tutors consultation. When the actual capability of media is not well-explored, but we have to meet tutors' expectation of project outcome and there's no enough time and technical skills, students could easily went off track from their project. And it will come to a point when students do not know whether they should listen to their tutors' advice or to remain at their stand so to be responsible to the ability to finish his or her work. 

At this point, I felt that my team work with my classmates, the group members are fine. But I have a broken link of teamwork between the team leader and the module tutor in this particular project instances. 

And because of the frustration of misunderstanding of learning direction and uncertainty of whether I have learnt what I needs to learn, I have another round of bigger emotional break down. As I cannot figure out why if a student has try very hard in working his/her project out, the project outcome still seem unfinished and insignificant to the tutors. Maybe because the focus of this project became aiming to place it in Publika for exhibition, the requirement from the tutors became more than just a learning process. It's also a product building assignment that you need to complete the product. The concern is the project must be completed, no matter you learnt or not. 

Facing my own failure, with things that is unclearly delivered to me, or too much of guessing in what tutors are concern in our group, I have 2 days breakdown after the live event. But after some careful thoughts, I decided to move on and make the final product finishing better so that our team could still show the overall outcome in a complete way.

#9 Total Independant

My group members are still not very active in problem solving. While I am working very hard to figure out the coding of the project, my team members are not actively spot other problems and handle them. I need to literally delicate the job to them one by one. Even the time allocation I set will exceed. Suppose other group could complete a task in a day, our group took 2 days.

The collectively growing pressure to aim at completing the project is getting bigger and bigger.

I finally sort out the ways to integrate graphical UI into Processing. It's a very tough journey to walk. At one point, I have emotional break down at home because I am so worry that after working so hard to develop the ui with the design head, I can't make use the UI at all. I feel so sad. I feel sorry to my members if I help them to sort things out yet at my part of the project I didn't fulfil my part of expectation. It's also very tiring to get deal with so many things at one time. But with no time for emotional, I need to pick myself up wherever I fall. So I press on and aim to put in all the graphical UI into Processing as close as we could, to present the prototype experience.

Today is Beta test.

Our UI is all in the program. But it's demonstrated in 2 parts. The best that I can do, is to customise Kinect's skeleton detection with our GUI. The other part is to get the UI sequence function by coding them line by line. At this stage we have no sound component integrated. But the rough stimulation of the experience is there.

Knowing that we couldn't impress much in the complete usability, we try our best, the research, idea development and behind the scene to the assessors so that we wouldn't be judged just by our finishing. To this point, I'm still very proud with the team. As we know who we are, the personality, the working style, the weaknesses, the struggles and the speed of working could be all vary, but we finally pull through! We've got something to show.

I realised one interesting fact. We can do best at the skills or given talents we have. Sue Min is a very detailed oriented person, has a very strong passion towards architecture. She's been sharing with me many times how much she wanted to study architecture before. With the help of her father, she realised her dream, she helped us build a very solid and easy to assemble and resemble vending machine frame. I had never seen any logistic that could perform so well as she could. She's been telling us that building an actual machine frame is not easy, but I only understand in parts. When her dad fetch the completed machine frame to IIS for us, I am totally amazed.

Evon has very sharp video skills and content research skills. She always help us to record down notes, and take care of all the video filming details, editing till late night also, she's willing to make the best out of our video content.

Mt is quite unwilling to make changes most of the time. But she's critical enough in idea thinking and user flow consideration. Though she's not taking the lead in the design department, but she's critically enhancing and executing the UI design.

To me, personally, I know that I've tried my best to work with the team that I am given, with the various style and preferences we have, we are able to come to the same direction and move together effectively, I personally are impressed by the outcome we can manage to create.

Since it's only about 8 academic weeks time.

I'm very encouraged. Knowing that as I have to dealt with my incomplete project outcome, as a lecturer, it wasn't easy. But I took the responsibility. Trying very best to explain the challenge of our team, I hope that the focus of the critic can also be given upon the direction of the project and the ideation part. This is the first time since the project started, two of the assessors can identify what we've been through. As I didn't got any assurance from the tutor saying that we're moving at the right direction, or we are learning from the mistakes we've made. None of these comments are given from the tutors. Instead, I felt a bit weird that my tutors seems to avoid eye contact with me outside classroom, and our group seems like receiving a different treatment compared to other groups.

I became very sensitive towards what the tutors expression is signifying to us.

But, I still have the motivation to aim to complete the project as much as I could.

#8 Mission Impossible

This is week 13 of TWP timeline.
Just submitted the AIN project. I didn't complete it well. Most of our time has been given to teamwork.
I feel a bit stress and I can sense it among the classmates. There's even one group that has to change the TWP project idea at very late stage, then went through tough group discussions.

With very little sleeps, I am getting weaker. Weaker in my fighting will, weaker in my rationality, weaker in my hope of making the best out of everything.

We were not doing very well in our last week alpha test. But the following Saturday we got out vending machine delivered to IIS. We're so happy! In the clouds of uncertainty, facing questions and commends from the tutors, we are really worry if we can make it. But we press on and find ways to make it work. When the TV and the vending machine frame came in to IIS, we are on fire again. To boost our hope and motivation in making it happen, I told the members, if we got it completed, we do good documentation and send it to competition! I hope that everything that we do are for the better cause. Everyone then became excited again.

We really hope that this week when we meet the tutors, our effort will finally be seen and they will understand that we are doing our best to make our project work. As last week we really had hard time with the tutors. We got comments repetitively about the colour treatment of the ui. And I took some time to convince the design head to improve the design. And we got no machine to show in alpha, only projection on the wall explaining the experience as much as we can. So, with the vending machine frame, TV and further exploration of Kinect and Processing, we hope that we could show more to the tutors so to assure them that our group are ok.

But I got shock in today's discussion in the meeting with tutors.

With our excitement, yet we see worry and slightly angry faces toward us. Strangely not towards other groups. I felt confused. With what I can observe and critically analyse, these are the below scenario:

To get Kinect work well with GUI design we got, I need to understand the authoring software, Processing, and the way Processing algorithm works. So it took me very long time to source for script library and sources to connect the UI design with Processing. While I'm working in IIS before meeting with tutors for discussion, one of the tutor came straight into my station and asked if I found my technical support to get the program work. I believed it came as a concern and care, although it was expressed in slightly demanding way. I got pressured and offended personally. With the addition of really don't want to over promise what I can achieve, I replied that I'm not sure, but I'll try to show the outcome in the scheduled tutorial hour. And I was directed to another tutor for more technical consultation.

In my heart, I think that I want to learn the technology and programming. I want to make it work. It's just that I'm not familiar enough with the programming language style and it's logic structure, so I really hope to explore further to see it work. I guess my way of reply has also in return offended the tutors. I am confused with the positioning I am in. As a colleague and as a student, I have a point of view. And I think that a teacher will sees the heart of the learner and know that teacher and learner can work together and learn to create an outcome. But I do not know why, the tutors seem to be very unhappy.

I kept thinking that if I can get the project done, the unhappy moment will be gone, because tutors' worry will be gone.

#7 Kinect Wonderland

To confess, I used most of my time to do the reading in my Essay Assigment preperation. I also spend time to work on AIN (thankfully Zui gave us one week allowance that saves our life, without that week time, we can't show the project at all). And I spend time with family and friends in this CNY Holiday. 

I only spend 2 days in learning AS3 and Kinect. 

With my working experience and research practise in coding, I can do research faster than my classmates. And make decision faster. I've no Kinect with me throughout CNY break. The first day right after CNY break we need to show our Alpha already (but we just got our equipment collected the week before CNY, how can it be possible? is it human enough?). Anyway, to show that we are responsible to the project requirement, in meeting the basic alpha requirement, we try to get the design finalized, and show some of the exploration of Kinect working with Flash AS3.0. 

Since I don't have Kinect with me at home, all I can do in the CNY is to familiarize the common practise of other users in using Kinect. I learnt that I'll need few third party installer to bridge the hardware - Kinect, to the software - Adobe Flash. I prepared all the files and go into IIS earlier to install the and get Kinect working fine with the computer.

It's not a very smooth process. The college PC given to us has the Kinect driver installed with error. We can't even run the default Kinect application from Microsoft smoothly. With the Jazmi the tutor assistance, we discover that it's not the problem of the Kinect. Other group's PC are working fine. So I know that the software PC needs to be switched or I need to use my personal laptop to do all the testing. I took very long time to familiarize ourselves with the potential problems hardware and hardware could have. 

After I decided to use my laptop, I followed the tutorial online, few of them, and it's still not working smoothly as how the tutorial said. 

Reading through online comments and questions from other people who faced the same problem as mind, I realised the risk of using AS3 is too high. It could lead to a not working final product at the same time wasting too much time to get the basic detection work. So I made a tough decision. Since other Kinect explorer also mentioned Processing as a graphical authoring tools for Kinect, and I have some introduction knowledge towards it, I am willing to give it a try. Picking up C# or other programming language is too difficult for me. Although I really try to understand and consider about it, but I think it's too difficult to relearn a totally new programming language compared to Processing which I still have some knowledge to start with.

#6 Look and Feel

The ideal plan and process of the project development according to the Gantt Chart planned should arrive at the stage of technical production and design production happen concurrently. But we are slightly behind schedule.

I starts to struggle.

There's two side of me that is struggling at different things.

As a learner:
I have other assignments on the way and those assignments are taking much time. I have to effectively plan, day after another, one assignment after another. Every day in the week are dedicated for different assignment. But I'm still behind time.

TWP is a team work process. It involves many discussion and have to come to an agreement. There's no point for us to do things differently and disagree, disconnected to rushing things through. In addition to that, I have group members that are very slow in decision making, inexperience in interactive project process and estimation of project working hour. Many things that we do, my team members have to ask for opinion. Meanwhile, we have punctuality issues. Sometimes, the meeting will delay for at most 2 hours plus. There are also times that team members come together but not focus in the tasks given, easily stray away to chit-chat and checking mobile... The toughest thing in this team work is that they're few times the 2 team members cannot effectively communicate and almost fight. These unstable atmosphere affected the flow of the teamwork. As a team leader, other than the busy production schedule, I also need to keep everyone in the team in the same focus of production, not affect by emotion. I was at once almost fall into the emotional wave in the team.

Besides that, the design production needs many round of improvement. I, personally am not happy with the design outcome, the design lead is struggling with the direction and has no idea how to improve. The initiative of research and problem solving skill is rather low and passive. I faced challenge in convincing the leader to enhance the work. So instead of relying the department leader to handle the department, I need to spend time to manage the department leader. So I can't imagine how Agile working method can be applied in this scenario. At the same time my tutor are requiring us to do so.

The vending machine head, Sue Min is working very hard to measure and calculate the architecture of our vending machine. She's very precise, detail oriented. And we got confirmation from MT that she's willing to borrow us her home TV. So we might be slow, but things are falling in place with the work that we need to do.

Technical research throughout the week has hints me that I can't rely normal webcam to execute the interactivity of measuring human posture. The most possible and workable script research I got, are the capturing and storing photos taken from webcam. No significant measurement is working as how we wanted it.

So I have to change the technology to Kinect. As only Kinect allows webcam measure human body joints to allow measuring user posture while interacting with our vending machine. So happened that other groups are changing their ideas at this point and we got spare Kinect to use. So I decided to move on to using Kinect as our main interactive technology.

Worry: We gonna have a CNY break, and we just got the equipments this week, the decision of changing technology is just made, (which means I have no time to try it out as school close and I'm not around), and right after the break I need to show alpha of the project.



As a teacher:
I start to question the practicality of the project design and it's expectation and requirement. Because all my classmates are just high school graduates, with their limited exposure of media and technology, with the equal amount of works needed in other assignments, how can they handle it? I am a teacher and I'm very familiar with the design and interactive production flow, yet I felt it hard to achieve the expectation, and requirement my tutor demand. In my emotional thoughts, I asked, "as much as lecturer are demanding us to do user test in our product design, to see how user interact with it, didn't our lecturer conduct any user test to understand their course/ project brief to understand how their user (students) went through the learning experience?

Of course in this case, I did my part. I make myself remember the importance of doing user test to understand how my students learn and manage my expectation of students project outcome to gage their capability and their time availability so to give them a more encouraging learning environment.

#5 Catching up with timeline

Finally we got our video done.

Flashback:
After few weeks of discussion with the team, I realized that we can't make all decision based on many round of discussion. We do not have the luxury of time. Once the overall idea is fixed, the rest is easier. With all the members being team worker character, it's also important for me to set direction so that everyone could focus on the tasks and no delay on the timeline.

To complete the video in one week time is indeed a challenge. But I think I can handle it. The most important thing to do is to distribute tasks, get everyone working in parts so that we could bring together the video footages and compile into a 3 minutes long documentary.

After showing the references with the team, Evon spend good amount of time to analyse the video sample so that we could later create something similar.

We planned the content that we gonna insert into the video documentary, then we plan for a shooting day and film the video footages that help enrich the project ideas.

We work out the overall flow of how the video content will be, then distribute the tasks for each one of us to do. So MT remain working on the UI design and aim to complete an overall flow of the visual experience, Evon in charge of finding more exercise content and graphic to complete the theme research, and Sue Min working on building prototype dispenser system. And I myself have to start gathering webcam scripts that work exactly like how we proposed. To have codes that detect camera visual, user movement, and measure user's movement so to create the complete "Flex-o-matic" experience.

#4 Take the Challenges - Project Direction and Video Documentation

This is TWP week 9.
During the study break, we had struggled through team forming. Came back from the study break, I've managed to get some other assignments in other module started. Time wasn't enough.

Week before this, we proposed our idea of vending machine to tutor Jazmi. We got the idea of identity theft vending machine, allowing user to see the impact of how online identity or online information could be stolen and through dynamic content presentation integrating with user's facebook account, we wanted to create a customizable interactive experience for user to see how users' online info could be sold for advertising targeting company to flood our social media with advertisement.

This idea got rejected. Although we are very happy about it, and I'm sure that I could work on the Facebook API and webcam features using flash and web technology, yet, we got comment that the interactivity wasn't complete.

We were given direction that if we want to work on Vending Machine, we need to explore the nature of vending machine. What makes the media so unique in its context? Our group had been through so far to come to an agreement of working on the Vending Machine media, even measured and analyze the architecture of it so to make sure that whatever we proposed is workable for us to complete.

research archive of vending machine

So we stick to the idea, and research deeper into vending machine. We had a few rounds of online meeting sharing ideas and thoughts among ourselves so to figure out a better reason of using vending machine. At the end, we come to an agreement to set the issue and direction of vending machine to the idea we had till the end, the vending machine that gives user a quick getaway from their busy schedule and help increase their health awareness of sitting in front of computer for too long.

We have no time to waste, as the following week we need to get the video documentation done. No matter the idea works or not, there's no more time to think.

#3 Negotiation Skills and Team Work Skills

It wasn't easy at all, with the pressure of tight timeline one after another that gives no breaks in between. The pressure within the team, the challenge to get everyone agree in the project direction and the pressure from the brief, completing the work with the limited timeline do make me feel stress.

When the team discussed about the project direction, we have our very own interpretation of what it means to be a good idea. No matter in terms if the choice of media, the choice of visual experience, and the choice of theme. We are all very critical in how the final outcome of the project communicates our idea. So I have to change my strategy from discussing the media direction to discussing the issue behind our project. Maybe letting the issue solidify our approach of creating the media product it will help us to share the vision clearer and better.

After lots of research and reading as my previous post has displayed, most of us agreed to work on Vending Machine kind of media solution with the issue hanging, uncertain.

We explore our ideas by thinking through the process and technicality without too much compromising of the excitement we wanted to maintain in the journey of exploring the media artifact.

Most of our ideas are sketched out, explored, critically argued, and then thrown away when not all agreed in the idea. We are still not very happy at the idea. So we do some more research and discussion. 

Ad most of the direction and suggestions are from me, the other members are acting passively, not having much understanding about what I've proposed, I have to make the tasks assigned even more specific. Instead of asking the members to research for direction, I requested everyone to specifically perform tasks as below: 

Then, everyone also very corporative in performing the tasks given. Though some of the members needs very specific explanation and clarification, but we manage to get everyone's input to then re-organize ourselves again.

#2 Norming - Always cordinate so to come to an agreement

With my working schedule and the other assignments in consideration, I really need to plan ahead of all the events and progress. Plus my moving house schedule falls on the Christmas and New Year holiday season, I planned all the team work schedule and study the project brief and timeline very carefully.

I came out with the teamwork style and direction at the 2nd week after the team formed. By doing this, I hope to let the members know the time resources that we had in the coming weeks. Hopefully through this pre-informed timeline, we can get the working pace increase a little bit.

When I present an A3 size Gantt Chart (printed out in colour) or project timeline following the suggested progress listed in the brief, all 3 members of the team got shock and didn't aware about it.

Every student wants to perform, wants to create work that make them feel proud, wants to reflect their skills in the project that they gonna spend longer time in the future. So we put in a lot of effort in setting our project direction.

But before we can come to the direction, we need to sync our understanding about each others' media preference, idea thinking methods, research methods and communication style. We manage to come to an understanding of each other from listing our research in our facebook group so to allow everyone freely express their interest, their preference and their opinions.

As we have individually very unique taste towards media art, below are some compilation to see the kind of various direction we need to listen to, and then organize and bring it all to one agreeable direction before we can further move on.

#1 Group formed - Group forming and synchronizing process

We are all very excited anxious about the new grouping. Semester C has gave us all an overall understanding about each other's working style and preference. Before lucky draw decide out team member, the whole class sweat their way out to the end.

My group consists of 4 ladies, Sue Min, Evon, Mt and myself.

Once we got the group in class, we quickly meet up to form the basic structure of the group - Design Lead, Content Lead, Logistic Lead and Technical Lead. It's also the time we try to get to know once other a little better by understanding each others' MBTI and Belbin's Team Role.

In short, we have 3 team workers and 1 manager and resource investigator combination in this group. It's quite challenging for me to work in this group. My understanding of one another prior to the team work we are going to start might gives me some worries. After thinking very hard, I thought of understanding each other better by conditioning this group to be an honest and free-to-speak style of group culture. No matter what impression we had toward each other, we want to work by understanding each other's concern in order to avoid unnecessary conflict or misunderstanding in the future.

Below are things that we mentioned as what we try to avoid in our group work.

Since we have most of the team worker, and each of us are having very unique way of understanding the project and coming out with ideas, we went through many many many round of meetings before we come to a conclusion.

Most of the time at this stage, I am feeling a little worry and exciting at the same time. Reason because I've learnt from the previous group project the strength and weaknesses of the team leader. Those are also reflection that makes me look into myself, and I realized that I don't have some of the quality my previous leader had. 

But I am exciting as I am really looking forward to see how can our group have fun with such and artsy and experimental project compared to all the boring and restricted interactive brief. Since the main reference we have, website that called Body>Data>Space leave us such a wide room to explore the scope of project, we really want to get the most out of such fun brief.