Week 13 (October 31)

I am reminded with the upcoming USA presidential election how a variety of people can look, see and hear the same thing but yet interprete a message so differently.

In any design we make it there is always a chance of it being narrated and interpreted differently that its intended message. We see this time and time again in advertising and commercials when companies release some work that is found to be affensive by some people. I remember when Selena Gomez performed at a MTV music awards show with a hindu bindi and many people backlashed calling it culturally offensive.

Read more at this link:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/04/16/selena-gomez-bindi-mtv-movie-awards_n_3092129.html

Designers have a large influence especially in media production and media has a large influence of perspectives and opinions in communities, we need to be very intentional with every detail to ensure the message we intend is maintained.

Today in class we were specifically talking about photography and the narrative of the viewer and the maker. I know this can be applied to all design products however I feel in Specialist technology Perspective in particular their has been a favouritism towards the photographic stream but I know this is Dans passion and expertise.

I remember back to one of our first perspective classes when we walked around with a paper frame to see the perspective of the camera, I still use this technique today especially  with editing as I am not very good at taking the photos.

Perspective Week 10 (10th October)

This morning in Specialist technologies we explored the various types of camera shots that can be used to make an effective scene.

Camera shot wether extreme close up or extreme long shot the way in which a director decides on what camera perspective to use is for the purpose of revealing something to the audience about the character and the world they live in. When directing with every scene which should reflect on the techniques used and ask our selves Is this revealing something new about the character and their development, perspective or environment?

Here is a brief explanation of just a few camera shots that we learnt today that I found interesting:

We also learnt a ‘master shot’ and the 180 degree rule. The master shot is used in for the audience to see all characters including the environment in one shot, they see the entirety of the scene in the master shot – it also shows the audience where they should focus.

‘A master shot is a film recording of an entire dramatised scene, from start to finish, from an angle that keeps all the players in view. It is often a long shot and can sometimes perform a double function as an establishing shot.’

Chris-Evans-The-Avengers-Captain-America

DSCF8669.RAF

The rule of 180 degrees was demonstrated in class with Ed and Stuart where the 2 characters are lined up.

I appreciate classes that are practical in helping up during class to practise the learnings instead of being sent out to do it for homework when we don’t have the guidance and assurance of knowing we are doing it correctly. Also with the demonstration of it class helps too.

Although I don’t think I will get into photography as a profession I understand how much it comes into play in every creative specialisation and knowledge in the area can be helpful. I am however, really interested in film editing as well as social media and its content which I know includes various graphic and photographic knowledge. I have found this information very helpful however, now I am analysing movies that I watch which isn’t very relaxing.

 

 

Perspective Week 9 (19th September)

If someone asked me how does google or search engines in general work? My answer would be its beyond me, its too complicated and plainly I just don’t know.

However, after this class I feel smarter, proud of myself that I can understand on a very simple level a very complicated thing. How search engines work.

This video below was super helpful for me, I find it funny that in order to explain something that is digital we use the comparison of paper and files, we relate it to something that we know I guess but in reality we are trying to explain its opposite?

Anyway.

 

I recently made a website for a small business I have started and SEO Settings were something that I had no idea about, after this class I have realised its necessity.

Since this class I have forced myself to spend a lot of time going through my website and putting in key words and changing my SEO settings. However, I still need more help with this.

Week 8 (12th September)

Todays lesson was a follow on from last weeks web design coding lecture. Todays lecture focused more around the user experience. This was an idea that interested me and I would love to follow up with more research.

As designers we have the capabilities of shaping someones experience of a business, item or product without them actually using the product. For example the website https://www.uber.com can which promotes an actual taxi like service. The user in this case the internet searcher can have an experience of knowing and feeling Uber without actually getting to their cars and using their service.

One idea we focused in on today was visual heirachy in the context of web pages. This is when the web designer will place more emphasis visually on particular information points of interest or importance.

This idea of visual heiracy was so relevant to me and I found it such a practical thing to investigate and implement. I investigated the Kroad website to see what their heirachy was. what we would is events was their main pull and draw card, it is easily labeled, large and bright red. They then showed their art and fashion further down showing other businesses and lastly profiling their app. This was very beneficial to me and showed me what Kroad already knows their views and attractors are. It also showed me how you can shape a culture through a websites visual heirachy. Notice that the Kroad web designers thought it better represented them to present a event calendar, fashion, art and dinning all before it advertised its life night which is somewhat contradictory to its stereotype. They are shaping the way they want people to see Kroad. We have the power in our projects to pin particular areas we want to focus in on too.

http://www.kroad.com

Together Kate and I came up with some rapid prototyping ideas for a food directory of K road website.

I have been so in love with the block:stories from a meeting place navigation it seems that all my ideas are inspired by it at the moment. (http://www.sbs.com.au/theblock/#) We thought a cool idea would be a animated map of Kroad but using contrast to show the visual heirachy of food stations. Similar to the block interview stations as seen below. However a greater heirachy could be represented through higher contrast colours or through varied icon sizes.

Lastly, I played around with web layout prototyping on some of the resources that the guest lecturer provided us with.

 

Week 7 (5th September)

I was very excited to enter into this weeks lecture on web development. Web development is something I am very interested in but I find completely confusing and out of my depth, however, I understand the importance of having an effective online presence in todays day and age.

The guest lecturer was very helpful and went through a step by step guide to HTML basics and web coding. It was an interactive lesson as we were able to create our own settings.

I felt like I learnt so much during the lesson and found the work reasonably easy even though I know in reality is takes a lot of time and patience.

I was particularly interested in the CSS. The CSS stands for Cascading Style Sheets which is the coding responsible for all the visual presentation of a webpages’ content e.g. the font, colours ect. I wish we had had more time to play around with this but I understand this was just an introduction lesson.

Over the mid semester break I decided to make my own website using wordpress and pre made theme. These themes have all the presentation settings for you to add all the content in yourself. However, I always wondered why it came up with a warning alert every time you entered into the coding web page as they didn’t advise you to alter any of it. I know understand how complicated this is if you don’t not know what you’re doing.

After researching coding more and reading the following articles about teaching coding to children in school, I feel that I am a bit behind. I wish I had learnt this in school. The one particular headline that stood out to me was People would ‘rather learn coding than a foreign language.’ It got me thinking about my sisters and their compulsory iPad learning primary schools, the rate that their learning is advancing and how a 7 year olds knowledge may be greater than their parents. I only finished school 1 year ago and find myself out dated even though I am studying a technology course. What will this mean for us graduating? We may specialise in creative technologies but in 5 years time will we have jobs because the primary students can make websites from scratch in their lunch time.

http://www.stuff.co.nz/technology/digital-living/63118089/why-kiwi-kids-should-learn-to-code

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/british-columbia/new-school-curriculum-will-teach-bc-students-computer-coding/article31686610/

https://www.teachingpersonnel.com/news/people-would-rather-learn-coding-than-a-foreign-language–62462135356

Week 5 (22nd August)

Len Lye’s wind wand New Plymouth

Today we had a guest lecturer who shared about a kiwi artist Len Lye who died in 1980, Len deigned many things in his lifetime however some where not realised in time for him to see them. Our lecturer challenged us with this thought:

The resources for the things you envision may not be possible at this time but that doesn’t mean you should give up on the idea.

We were challenged to dream beyond our capabilities but even the capabilities of our world at this time. This was definitely my domain, my sort of challenge. I may not be the best maker, the most talented artist however I would consider myself quote good at dreaming.

Our challenge was another mash up of three household items, mine was a fridge a kettle and a scale. My mash up was a drink bottle to cool your water. Secondly, we had to stretch our brain to re-envision our mash up products with an opposite material. This is where my side became wacky and I fully emerged myself in the state of dreaming products up that were insensible but sounded really cool as well.

As I thought about the most obvious absurd material possible to develop a refrigerator drink bottle with I imagined my way into the spillanardo. A cup that does not have any physical structure but instead a device that creates a mini tornado cup. A very high pressure wind whirl pool that would be able to hold water as a cup and cool it at the same time, The air also always faces upwards so is impossible to tip over.

We then developed our ideas more into a children’s playgroup. Mine became a water park diving pool that used water and high pressure air in order to created a peter pan attraction, where you could jump off diving boards into clouds that would support you as you jumped between them and fell into a diving pool.

Imagine if we had the confidence to take the risks creating the weird, wacky and wonderful ideas that are usually filter through the too hard, too extreme or unrealistic of our brain. If we had the boldness to create the dreams we had for ourselves in spite of criticism and difficulty I wonder what kind of would we would live in today.

There were many people in history who created new products and theories that at the time seemed illogical but yet are common knowledge and use in our society today, but what about the people who were to scared to present to people their ideas and in turn vanished along with their time on earth. Oh the possibilities, the opportunities, but what is the key? Bravery.

Week 4 (19th August)

Our guest lecturer Simon Che de Boer was passionate about his business and expertise.

Here is what I learnt from the day:

Firstly the difference between VR and 360 cam. Simon was very clear in showing its differences saying that it is “night and day.” In VR you can walk around and look under a table go through a door way, you are in the environment, in contrast to 360 camera you are stuck in the same position “you are a head on a pole” said Simon.

I was really impressed with their video of Saint Mathews Cathedral in the city, and their sky tower project.

They believed that VR could also be used to help people conquer fears such as heights by creating virtual experiences like the green chair on the top of the sky tower. I personally wouldn’t like to try it as I can’t handle heights to begin with.

I was recently talking to one of my friends who is studying Paramedicine and he was saying that they have been using VR for mock emergency situations and they are even assessed on how they react and do their job in their virtual reality. I VR can be really helpful in training and in play.

Perspective Week 3 (12th August)

I found it very valuable to hear from Mike Bundock, Director and Founder of Augview today as I loved how his company is using Augmented Reality in a real and applicable way.

Augview mashes geotech and AR and GPS to create a GIS application that can be used on majority of mobile devices for surveyors, geotech and construction workers.

Although my passion doesn’t aline with geographical data I admired Mikes and his idea to create this application that is practical and used in the work force in contrast to many AR applications that are simply for entertainment and gaming, like Pokemon go which is not a very informing application.

This is also helpful in the realisation of our group project and the practicals of how the applications are made. It is very mathematical really. But after this class our team has decided to develop a stationary device rather than using AR, however if our dream was every developed further using AR would be a very cool and interactive technology, however it would clash with the business of the Road Heritage walks.

Our inspiration of the Australian ‘Block- Stories from a meeting place’ would would really well on a AR app on a mobile device. Below is a video I have made of the block and you could see the movement could be paired with AR.

 

Week 3 (8th August)

Prior to this classes we were asked to research a new and evolving technology the interested us. We were to research it and bring it to class in order to do a ‘mash up.’

I explored the http://www.newstatesman.com really helpful and found some really interesting and helpful pieces of technology.

Some of those I would really like to use and have a part of my life

1. Sunscreen pill This is really ideal and could be an amazing piece of technology especially to New Zealanders who suffer from one of the highest skin cancer rates in the world. Maybe if this was released in New Zealand and subsidised we would see the number of those catching melanoma skin cancer dramatically decline.

2. Control your computer using gestures

This reminds me of the old eye toy I played with as a kid

 

Then as a group we mashed up ideas of different technologies ignorer to come up with a new innovative idea.

this is what we came up with:

iwander

This is a device for an iPhone, but essentially a pen that uses hand gesture technology to convert hand written text in to typed text on a synced device. This can be drawn or characters. We think this could be valuable for university students to record class notes, businesses to record minutes and email clients quickly, and doctors as they get patient information to their data bases quickly, efficiently, avoiding double handling and human error.

Pretty cool idea I think.

Week 2 (1st August)

Today was our first class of Specialist Technologies for semester two 2016.We got straight back into it however, I did not feel over loaded in fact it was refreshing to get back into learning and stretching my brain after such a long holiday break.

The latest news in the tech world is Mary Meekers annual internets trend report, apparently its very long and very intense. We had a look at it in class and I found it so interesting, although I had to read the jargon many times to understand.

Our discussion revolved around very similar topics as last semester: What is the big thing now, and what will the next big thing be?

It was so interesting to find out that there has been a decline in shipments of smart phones, we concluded this was because the large innovation and upgrade of the smart phone was between 2007 and 2014. Now however, although not all people may have the latest iPhone 6s majority of people are happy with not upgrading for smaller differences. I believe in this area Apple and Samsung may have let them selves down. They once provided major differences of innovation between their up grades however, from what I have noticed personally is that now their is rounded edges and the iPhone 6E looks exactly like the 5s. I won’t be buying into that. Who as an apple products consumer buys an upgrade that looks like a downgrade? its all about the appearance right? as you can see from the image below, the visual presentation of the 5s compared to 6Se which is 3 upgrade forward there is not much difference at all.

http://tcrn.ch/2arVNBM

The other trend that was realised by Mary Meeker (and this might I say blew my mind because of how genius it is) was the innovation of snapchat (which Mary said is the best messaging app at the moment) In particular their face filters, going even further to advertising through filters, but wait!! they take it a level higher and use advertising filters as a way to create personal, relational advertising. GENIUS!!

Let me explain this in an actual example: SnapChat creates a filter on behalf of taco bell to advertise their restaurant. The filter turns your face into a taco but also has a water mark in the corner of Taco Bells label.

People want social media and advertising to be more personal, relational and applicable to them? what better way than to get your best friend send you a picture of themselves endorsing taco bell. We are doing the advertising to our friends on behalf of taco bell. Brilliant Idea!!

I found the Mary Meekers class fascinating, even though it is a report of the past year it has caused me to be excited to see the advances we have in the next years and following, and I hope we may be part creating it.