Screen World w. 49

What we have done
This week we've obviously focused on the final presentation. During our first meeting we discussed how we wanted to present our results in a movie starring our to personas Martha and Filip. Basically the movie will present current issues with second screen usage, and how these will be solved in the future, using our framework as a guideline. During our second meeting we decided the final details about the movie and started to record it.

What we will do
We will finalize the editing of the movie, and start focusing on our power point presentation. When we're creating the PPT presentation we should keep in mind to make sure that there is a clear connection between our movie and the presentation.

Problems
Besides the fact that we all have a lot to do in other courses this time of the year, we haven't encountered any major problems.

Changes in the project
No major changes have been made since last week.

Matroshka - 6:th of December

Matroshka - The Responsive News Concept. Weekly report 6th of December 2013.

What we have done

During this week, all of our focus and attention has been given to the presentation that is being held next week. During our first of the three meetings, we discussed more in detail how we are going to structure our presentation. We have had a lot of ideas, sometimes drifting out of relevance.
During the second meeting, we started to crystallize our idea for the presentation further to something relevant. Decisions were made, we will explain our concept in words and with the help of video and audio, showcasing the functionality of Matroshka.
By the end of the week we were confident enough with our idea to fully start working on the content of the presentation. So the efforts in the third meeting went into collecting video content for a montage, planning what to say, etc.

Captain Philip also went to the meeting with the coordination group during the wednesday which gave us some valuable insights, the biggest might have been the length of the presentation which is a bit shorter than we expected.

 

What we will do

We need to create the presentation graphics during the weekend. Slides will be put together, and we will in further detail plan what will be said during the performance.

 

Problems encountered

We feel a bit pressured on time, but that is expected this time of year. Things have been running pretty smooth.

 

Resources

We have been using YouTube and Vimeo to collect material for a video montage that will be shown during the presentation.

Crowdopolis w.49

What we have done.
 We worked on a presentation structure, trying to make it as simple and illustrative as possible, and also struggled to create a video in a short time.
As far as we decided to include a real-life scenario in our video, we tried to find real footage online, in order to make the story look realistic. At that point we realized that the quality of videos published on public services in not sufficient for our case, and we need to look for alternatives. Also, we struggled to develop a full website design, as we started to discuss the visual interfaces of the future, and it is a serious problem even for futurologists. Obviously, the data consumption habits will change, the new cloud system will push out the old linear website design, also mobile usage will be much more popular than stationary computers, so, does it mean that Crowdopolis must be smartphone oriented? Which type of design should we use in a video? These questions and discussions took a lot of time, so we had issues scheduling our work in a way to finish everything on Monday.

What we will do. 
We need to finalize the video and presentation, and work on our actual presenting, making all three parts coherent, clear and entertaining at the same time. The deadline appeared to be sooner than we expected, so probably we should rethink our video concept and get rid of some creative technological elements.

Resources. 
We checked the links that Victor provided us with, and used some of the advices in our presentation.
Also, we continued watching the inspirational materials and TED talks on the subject of citizen journalism. For example, we can advice everyone to check out this talk about the power of citizen journalism: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9APO9_yNbcg#t=394, or this trust-motivating speech: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kTqgiF4HmgQ#t=307.
Particularly, this talk by Patrick Meier, director of Crisis Mapping for Ushahidi, is about the collaborative mapping platform, and theretofore will be interesting not for our group only: htttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4FvhieMnLn0#t=26

Good luck to everyone!

The Morticians Weekly Report w. 49 (6/12)

  
What we have done 
This week was all about the final presentation. We started our work with having a meeting, during which we discussed the details associated with our presentation. We decided to make two short movies: the introductory one, and the one demonstrating some features of our final product: the news website/mobile application of the future (paired with some pictures, it will be used to show how the site works). 

What we will do 
During this weekend, we will focus on designing our PowerPoint presentation. 

Problems 
The only problem we faced was associated with an unexpected malfunction of the external microphone that we used for recording sound for our movies. Fortunately, the microphone in our camera was fully functional, so we could rely on it instead. 

Changes in the project 
Nothing here! 

Have a nice weekend!

DEAFining news (Surdi Screen) - weekly report w.49

What we have done.

This week we have spent all our effort into making our design representation, which we have decided to be a short movie. We started out the week with thinking about how to create this movie and we also made a storyboard for it. We didn’t have the best technological artifacts for filming, we only had mobile phones. So therefore we decided to borrow an awesome camera from Leif Handberg and a stand from Delfi in order to make a professional movie. We spend all wednesday evening with filming all the material that we needed (hopefully), which was very fun.  

What we will do.

Next we need to work further with the movie, make all the editing and putting the material together. We will also continue with making our final presentation and prepare for the execution of it on wednesday/thursday.

Problems encountered.

The major problem we had this week was that a cable was missing to the film camera that we borrowed. So we could not transfer the material from the camera to the computer at first. So we looked with Leif if we could find the cable but it was nowhere to be found. Then we also checked with Delfi to get any cables that they had that could fit. We got three cables from Delfi but sadly none worked, so we decided to bought one instead and finally solved that problem.

Changes in the project.

No major changes have been made since last week.

Resources

Here below are two photos of the filming session this wednesday.

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Gossip status report w.49

GREEN LIGHT

Gossip 

What we have done. This week we have started to put together our ppt and fixed with some additional stuff for the presentation. We have also divided the work amongt those who are gonna present and they will now, based on the almost ready ppt, write down some manuscript notes to next weeks meeting.  

What we will do. On monday next week the two representants will rehears infront the rest of the group, so we can decide what works and what doesn't. Those who are not presenting will think about possible questions that could come up during the presentation. Hopefully we will be well prepared on wednesday so we can get as useful feedback as possible.

Problems encountered. We have just faced some technical problems concering our ppt. Some animations didn't work out exactly how we wanted them to. Otherwise it has been cool so far. 

Changes in the project. This week we havn't done any major changes, except cut out some parts of the presentation that we think is uncessesary to mention, which was good since we then get more time for the most important stuff.

Resources. Resoruces this week has been those two linkes that Victor wanted us to look at before deisgning our presentation, which was really good. And also, we have looked at some typical examples of how an entertaining news report, about a celebrity for instance, could look like in detail.

You've got bias - Report week 49

What we have done

This week has been all about the presentation. We have done most of our filming and have started editing our material together. To aid the filming of our product video we have also developed a HTML-prototype of our system, (http://jakobflorell.se/bias/). We have also begun work on the actual script for our presentation and our work will continue over the weekend and on monday.

What we will do

We need to finish editing the movies, finalize our script and make our final powerpoint. After that we have to practice, practice, practice.

Problems encountered

We have realized we will hardly have any time to practice our presentation before the rehearsal next week. While there is not much we can do about that, we should be able to adjust any problems before the final presentation.

Changes in the project

While we always had it in mind, we finally decided to do films for our presentation (design representation). We did not make any changes that has changed the scope of our project or in which direction we intend to go now.

GISMO Weekly Report 6/12

   - What we have done: During this week the group has totally focused on the final presentation and especially the preparations concerning the recording of the video. We completed the script at the beginning of the week and discussed carefully if we have the time to visually accomplish this particular idea? If we are able to do it in terms of skills and knowledge within the group? And finally the most important thing of them all; if we are able to visualize our concept as good as possible by means of the recording and thus make it coherent with the report? Further in the middle of the week, we started to record on our own and made some progress but it´s still a lot of work ahead of us. 

   - What we will do: We will continue working with the recording of the video and hopefully be ready as soon as possible with the basic stuff, in order to have time to add different features to emphasize our concept and make the whole video coherent and understandable. Even though the deadline is pretty close, we try to divide the tasks among the group as fair as possible. 

   - Problems encountered: Well since all group members more or less counted with that the final deadline of the presentation and the embedded video is on Wednesday the upcoming week, due to the reason that we have our rehearsal that day, thus the deadline is probably then. However no one has mentioned that the actual deadline is on Monday evening before the last project leader meeting we had the last Wednesday. Nobody in our group expected that, so at the moment it´s kind of difficult to arrange meetings when everybody are available and hence fix everything in time. We have learned so far that in order to be so effective as possible, everyone have to participate simultaneously in the same room and not over Facebook and similar, but that´s impossible in such a short notice, especially over a weekend. In addition the last days have been used pretty much as well within the project.

   - Changes in the project: No particular changes have been made lately.

   - Resources: No additional resources during this week. 

The Future of Ads - Weekly report (week 48)

What we have done

A lot is going on now as the project is approaching its' end. This week we have:

•  Finished, proof read and handed in our book chapter
•  Filmed and begun to edit our "future scenario"-video
• Structured the final presentation

There is still quite a bit of work that has to go into the final presentation, so we have divided the workload between group members in order to make the best of the time we have.

What we will do

The upcoming week will basically revolve around the presentation. As the concept that we are presenting is quite futuristic, we need to make sure that we can present it in a comprehensible way in the time given. We are aiming to make one or two animated explanation videos with recorded voice-overs to help us get the idea across.

Problems encountered

It turned out finishing the final stages of the report was more time-consuming than expected which means we fell behind a little bit with planning the final presentation. Time that we have to make up this week.

Otherwise things have been going OK. We are aiming to get everything finished by the end of this week.  

Matroshka 29:th of Nov

Matroshka - The Responsive News Concept. Weekly report 29th of November 2013.

What we have done

Since there was a deadline for the final report this week we met three times to finalize and proofread the report. We made some changes to the background and developed the results part. Prior to developing the result part however, analysis of the data from our field studies was finished. We also designed illustrations for the report to make it easier for people to understand our concept. There has also been some brainstorming done regarding structure and layout of the upcoming presentation.

What we will do

During next week we will prepare the final presentation, of which the concept we might change a little from what we previously planned. We will probably not make an animated video as planned from the beginning, but instead make a presentation that demonstrates the concept of Matroshka by interacting with the audience through the same media that Matroshka utilizes - text, audio and video. We plan to  switch between these during the presentation, just like in our concept idea.

Problems encountered

Some of the data from our field study was very hard to analyze and present in a good manner, and therefore we had to do some simplifications. The main problem with the data analysis was the sheer amount of data gathered which turned out to be very time consuming to analyze. Even though this might not be as “accurate” as presenting the complete data set it might be easier for the readers to understand.

We had some problems to decide which parts of the report to focus on. Because of the word count limit we could not elaborate every part as much as we wanted, instead we had to focus on the part where we present our concept. This means that the discussion might be a little shorter than what we wanted.

Resources

The field study data.

Crowdopolis w. 48

What we have done.

We continued to aggregate the focus-group survey data while writing our article for the book. As previous groups mentioned, it is a busy time at school, so everyone had other commitments, and we tried really hard to make a good text in short time. Work was separated into stages, as we outlined the initial content, added more analysis, scientific background, and developed few scenarios for the actual Crowdopolis’ users. Then we realised that our article must be less serious and more entertaining, so we deleted some research references and kept one scenario only.

We also decided not to describe too much, both in a functionality of Crowdopolis and its current predecessors, as we wanted to encourage the reader’s curiosity and imagination.

Also, we discussed the appropriateness of scientific terminology and quotes from media scholars and journalists, as some people are not familiar with this background and can find such details distracting. On the other side, we believe that the book will attract specialists or people interested in media theory, so our references will be useful for them.

Next, we shortened our discussions with experts, leaving only the most necessary comments, so in the end we basically have one quotation. We believe it will help to keep the reader’s attention on our project, instead of wishing to learn more about our experts’ activities.

In the meantime we worked on prototype concepts, creating the website’s elements.

What we will do.

We will continue to develop Crowdopolis’ visual design, as we want to demonstrate its usability in our video. As we realised, work on a real visual footage would be less time-consuming than a website design, so our goal is to create the whole pages and evaluate its functionality on potential users. Then we will create a video with both off screen and on screen elements.

Resources.

We continue to read The Nieman Journalism Lab (Harvard University’s blog) on citizen journalism that provides a lot of actual examples of crowdsourcing news websites.
We also took into account the recent Scandinavian research concentrated exactly on our subject: “Re-imagining crisis reporting: Professional ideology of journalists and citizen eyewitness images”; it helped us to even better formulate Crowdopolis’ tasks.

You've got bias - Report week 48

What we have done

This week has been all about writing. We finished our report at our last writing session and we are quite happy about what we produced.

What we will do

Next week we will start working toward making a very good and easy to understand presentation. Our system is a bit complex so we need to make sure to simplify with good illustrations and explanations. We have not yet decided how we are going to present this, whether it will be a movie, illustration, animation or live theatre performance, so making that decisions will be our first priority.

Problems encountered

Doing the final write up took longer than expected (as always with these kinds of tasks) and we confirmed what we have heard somewhere; “Estimate how long you need to work on a given task, multiply that number by and you will have the actual time it will take to perform the task”. Some parts of the report could have been developed more, but overall we are happy with the result.

Changes in the project

We did not make any changes that has changed the scope of our project or in which direction we intend to go now.

Gossip status report w.48

GREEN LIGHT

Gossip 

What we have done. This week we have completed our report, which has also been our single focus this week. Pictures of prototypes has been produced to give the reader a clear image of our product, and to also back up the text in the report. 

What we will do. From now on we will of course put all our focus on the presentation. We already have some ideas, which we presented on the mid-crit presentation, and we think we'll stick to that idea and develop it. And we are also going to take a look at the material Viktor sent us as inspiration for the presentation, to get a better view on what's good to place emphasis on while presenting. 

Problems encountered. We have had some problems with the text. It was a bit tricky to get it coherent and to create a good flow between the different paragraphs. Hopefully the text is now understandable and easy to read, while we also hope it is not too formal.

Changes in the project. This week we havn't done any major chenges, just some fine details that has been determined and/or adjustment. 

Resources. There has not been any more new sources, however, the ones all ready investigated have rather been rogued out during the writing process, so that the report is based on reputable sources. 

Other Here is a first drawing of our product that we did at a meeting one about two weeks ago. 

The Morticians Weekly Report w. 48 (29/11)

What we have done
This week, we concentrated on finishing both the book chapter and the website/mobile app design before the deadline. The process went quite smooth, as our group shared the same vision regarding our project, and therefore very few uncertainties have occurred. Still, it’s been a week full of writing, rewriting and rechecking that our data is correct. We also made some changes to our product’s design: we added some elements and came up with new functionalities, such as voice-based navigation (represented by means of a microphone icon) or symbol-based tooltips allowing users to quickly navigate through various news stories in “News in 100 seconds” video section. It’s been a busy week, but everyone did their part and we are satisfied with the result.  

What we will do
The next step for us is to start working on our presentation. There are few things that we have to decide before we can do it, though. As our plan is to create a PowerPoint presentation without any words, we need to think very carefully about how it's going to look. During next week, we will also decide whether we will create a movie or not, and if yes, we will have to come up with ideas regarding its presentation and structure.

Problems
No severe problems right now. However, the creation of movie might be somewhat problematic due to the time constraints and “nature” of our final product (it’s a mock-up, and not the fully functional website/app).

Changes in the project
The main assumptions about our project remained the same. The only thing that has been changing a bit over time was our product's design, because so far we have been mainly focusing on the overall quality of our proposal. However, the design process, despite being time consuming, didn’t prove to be particularly problematic, as we have been adding new elements over time.  

Resources
During the weekend, our group will be watching movies similar to the one posted below in search for inspiration:

http://youtu.be/c4Jo8QoOTQ4?t=11s 

Have a nice weekend!

Newsify w.48

What we have done

This week most of the time went to finishing up the paper. We had meetings every night up untill the hand in where we revised and discussed what to add and remove. We also had to do some images to better try and illustrate our idea. After the hand in we have begun discussing the typ of presentation we want to do, and eventhough nothing is set in stone, we feel that we have quite good understanding of what we want to accomplish.

What we will do
What now remains is working on the presentation and trying to make it as good as possible. For this we will meet and begin the work for real on monday to try and get going as soon as possible. As I mentioned we have a fairly clear view of how we want to present it to be able to get through with our idea as best as possible.

Problems
For our report we sent out a couple of e-mails to gain better knowledge about some of the technical parts in our idea. Sadly ee didnt recieve any respons from one of the emails and another one was very late to arrive. So even though it didnt hurt us that much, it was unfortunate that we didnt recieve responses from all our emails.

GISMO Weekly Report 29/11

What we have done:

The group has completed the work of the report, which was easier said than done due to some issues that appeared quite late prior to the deadline a couple of days ago. Some of us started with their part of the paper relatively late since they had a lot of other activities scheduled. Further this delayed a lot of the work, given that other members were more or less dependent on their parts to be able to advance. In addition, it was hard and particularly time-consuming to make the report coherent since we all write different. Overall we had a lot of information from the previous literature study, interview, focus groups together with added information like scenario, description of functions, discussion and so on as well. Actually we had some difficulties keeping us under the limit of five thousand words which where rather unpredictable. So basically a lot of time was spent discussing which parts we should keep and which parts we should thrash.

Also we had a group meeting quite recently regarding the final presentation. Three different ideas considering the video recording where discussed carefully and necessary aspects like how hard, time-consuming and relevant each idea really is, was pointed out. Finally we managed to determine an idea that everyone feels comfortable with.

What we will do:

Full focus on the final presentation and try to get started as soon as possible. Some parts of the script are still left to do and we need to use the time carefully in order to make everyone be able to work simultaneously, partly because of the limited time left, but also due to other courses and activities. One positive thing is that everyone seem to have more spare time the next couple of weeks, so hopefully we can accomplish something we could be proud of.

Changes in the project:

No major changes have been made lately.

Resources: 

We have an unfinished script but clearly, that´s nothing we want to reveal yet. Good things come to those who wait!

DEAFining news (Surdi Screen) - Weekly report - Week 48

What we have done

During this week almost all time has been put into writing and finishing the final paper for the book. However, we did some finalizing research in the beginning of the week, by collecting and analyzing the last answers gathered from our survey. Additionally, we called Johan Hartman, head of sustainable development at SVT, to gather some last input regarding SVTs responsibilities and their view of if they are fulfilling them. We are satisfied with the paper and feel that we have framed the problem and come up with an end solution that would be beneficial for the deaf community in a future scenario. We also feel that our solution is grounded on developing technology and will be able to realize in the coming 20 years.

What we will do

After finishing the final paper, we immediately started planning for the last part of the course by preparing for the presentation. We have booked group meetings for early next week where we intend to plan the final presentation. Firstly, we will decide on a storyline for the video we will have in the presentation and then we will create a storyboard before actually starting to record scenes. That way, we hopefully will be more time efficient and be able to spend more time on the video editing, which usually is more time consuming than recording the video.

Status

At the moment, we feel that everything is under control and we are comfortable with the plan for the coming two weeks before the presentation. The biggest obstacle for us moving forward will probably be for the whole group to meet all together. Until this point, we have been able to work around it by assigning work to the ones who have not been available and then meeting up later to discuss it together. For the coming weeks, we have booked meetings where as many of us as possible can attend. We have also had in mind and planned the video and presentation work so that we will be able work around possible clashes in schedules.