Bryce's ETEC 540 Webspace

Task 10: Attention economies

User Inyerface

The first thing I noticed when I opened User Inyerface was the ticking clock. This immediately caused me to flashback to playing Mario Brothers on Nintendo where each level had a time limit. When I saw the clock on User Inyerface, I automatically assumed there was a time limit, which increased my stress level. The next thing I noticed was the irregular wording of certain elements. For example, the terms and conditions box was labeled “I do not accept the terms and conditions” (Bagaar, 2019), which was checked by default and needed to be unchecked (a double negative). What I expected to see based on previous experiences filling out forms online was clearly not going to help me with this task. I needed to concentrate, and the flashing lights, ticking clock, pop-ups, and confusing wording, were making that extremely difficult. 

Online businesses use some of these similar tactics to deceive their customers. For example, about three years ago I opened Outlook, and was met with an alert that my email inbox only had 84% storage space remaining. I got worried that I wouldn’t be able to get new messages so I started deleting old emails and anything with a video attachment, to try to free up space. I then refreshed the page and again saw that I still only had 84% storage remaining. 

I then clicked the button that said “free up space”, and it took me to a page with three paid subscription options. I decided to forget about it for the time being and revisit the issue when I got closer to completely running out of space. Over time I realized that the 84% wasn’t changing. Three years later I’m still getting the alert, and it still says I’m at 84%. 

Outlook is clearly using a dark pattern (Brignull, 2011) to deceive its users into buying a subscription they don’t need. Why do I accept this? The email company that I trust with personal and private messages is essentially telling me a lie everytime I visit their site, but even though I know they are doing it, I ignore it. I recognize myself in Brignull’s (2011) article as a customer who knows the company is subtly deceiving their customers, but does nothing about it. Probably because they don’t always know what to do. 

It was refreshing to learn from  Brignulls’s (2011) article that there are communities of concerned consumers who call-out companies for their deceitful practices. And in some cases, it has resulted in the companies changing their practices to being more honest and transparent (Brignull, 2011). 

Lastly, the good news is that our brains are adaptable. Once we know what we are looking for, we can pick out these deceptions and not be fooled by them. For example, I tried User Inyerface a second time. When I knew what to expect, the pop-ups, flashing lights, ticking clock, were hardly able to capture my attention at all. This is why groups like the deceptive patterns community are so important. The more of us are aware of the dark tactics used by online businesses, the fewer of us are likely to be deceived by them. 

References: 

Bagaar. (2019). User Inyerface [web game]. https://userinyerface.com/game.html 

Brignull, H. (2011). Dark patterns: Deception vs. honesty in UI design. A List Apart, 338.

Task 9: Network Assignment Using Golden Record Curation Quiz Data

When I first loaded the data into Palladio, I found the graph to be fairly dense. A dense network graph, according to Weingart (2011), is a network where “almost everything is connected to almost everything else” (p. 1). The more dense a network becomes, the less useful it is (Weingart, 2011). 

Figure 1: Graph with large amount of density

Sizing and highlighting helped to make the data much more meaningful. Sizing the curators didn’t reveal much, as each curator chose the same number of tracks (except one who either missed a question on the quiz or was adamant that only 9 of the 27 tracks were qualified to be shared with extraterrestrial life). But sizing the tracks helped in visualizing which tracks were chosen most compared to least. 

However, I didn’t find sizing the nodes to be as clear as I would have liked it to be for visualizing the data. I decided to view the data in Palladio’s table function, copy it into google sheets, and then create a bar graph showing the frequency each song was chosen as well. 

Figure 2: Network with the frequency of tracks chosen highlighted 

Figure 3: Same data as above (frequency of tracks chosen) in a bar graph format

The limitations of the bar graph are that it doesn’t show connections between the tracks and the curators. However, I like the linear and step-wise nature of the bar graph in order to see a clear progression from the most chosen to the least chosen song. 

I found the facet filter to be the most useful analyzing function in Palladio. By selecting myself, and one other person in the class, I was able to easily identify which classmate I had the most (7 out of 10 tracks), and least (2 out of 10 tracks) matches with. 

Although there is no information in the graph itself as to why I had more matches in common with a certain classmate over another one, I would use this information to determine which classmates post I would read to get a better understanding of the criteria they used to choose their songs, and to find out what makes our choices either different or similar. 

Figure 4: Seven tracks in common

Figure 5: Two tracks in common

Is the visualization able to capture the reasons behind the choices?

The fact that we were able to make our own criteria for choosing songs makes it hard to create meaning from the connections in the data. If we all had the same criteria for choosing songs to follow, the data would have been more meaningful. If we all followed one set of criteria for chosing songs, there could have been opportunities for interpretation (i.e, what is a more technologically advanced instrument, a panpipe or a drum?). These could have been analyzed based on the variations in our song selectionsl. When we are all working with different criteria on the other hand, the same song could have been chosen by two different people for completely different reasons. As Weingart (2011) states, “as the sorts of things a node can connect to increases, the utility of simply counting the connections a node has decreases”. 

Reference

Weingart, S. (2011). Demystifying Networks, Parts I & II. Journal of digital humanities, 1(1). https://journalofdigitalhumanities.org/1-1/demystifying-networks-by-scott-weingart/

Mode Bending: What’s in your bag?

Express meaning through a different mode of output 

In my redesigned version of “what’s in your bag”, I categorized items into groups. I then weighed each category separately by kilogram (kg). For example tshirt, gym shoes, shorts, and hand grips were grouped together into the category workout gear. This category weighed a combined total of 1.09 kg (25.8% of the total weight of the contents of the backpack). 

The total weight of each category of items was then entered onto a spreadsheet, and then converted to a pie chart. The pie chart represents what percentage of the total weight of all items each category represents. 

How is the meaning represented differently?

The first time I did the assignment, the energy snacks (trail mix and protein shake) seemed insignificant compared to the ski and workout gear, which took up the vast majority of the visual space. Taking up a lot of visual space seemed to give them a large amount of importance. In this redesigned mode of representation, the energy snacks become the items that represent the category with the most weight and suddenly become seemingly the most “important” items.

What happens to meaning as it moves across modes? 

This mode of representation gives more visual importance to items that weigh the most. However, these are not necessarily the most important items in the bag. This redesigned mode of representation could start a discussion about how we determine an item’s importance. Is it by weight? Is it by what it costs? Is it how hard it is to replace? The wallet with credit cards, cash, business cards, and government issued identification is the hardest to replace, but it also weighs very little. Does that affect its importance? Similarly, something could have large sentimental value, such as a photograph or gift from an important person. How do we measure the importance of these items?

What benefits or challenges emerge from this shift? 

One of the challenges to this mode of representation (weight in kg) is that it doesn’t have any context. For example if you are planning on rucking to build muscle, then loading your bag with the heaviest items possible is a benefit. However, if you are planning to hike the pacific crest trail, then you want the lightest of everything. Weight is important in both of these contexts but for opposite reasons. 

One benefit of this mode shift is it could start a conversation about how the importance of physical items can be measured in many different ways. This could challenge students to think about the value of things in their own lives. It could help them to determine which ones are truly important, and which ones seem important even though they might just be taking up a lot of space.

Image of items in backpack from first assignment:

 

The Golden Record

Smith Rumsey (1999) provides several criteria that can help us to decide what pieces of the historical record we should keep. According to Smith Rumsey (1999) we should keep anything with a lot of additional information may not seem currently relevant but may help us to adapt to unfamiliar environments later on. In musical terms, this could mean songs with a wide variety of instruments,  or songs with many different musical layers tracked on top of each other. 

Smith Rumsey (1999) goes on to state that the value of something could be determined by an event that hasn’t happened yet. She therefore recommends collecting with as much depth as possible, and that both winners and losers should be represented. 

Lastly, Smith Rumsey (1999) recommends collecting from extremes on the right and on the left, and then find a way to link those two contrasting items together. 

I came up with the following songs: 

1. Puspawarna (kinds of flowers)
2. Wedding Song

Puspawarna is a commemoration of an Indonesian prince’s nine concubines and wives (Wikipedia, 2026). The Peruvian wedding song on the other hand is about a woman lamenting about getting married too young (Twenty thousand hertz, 2019). I found these themes to be contrasting as one is from the perspective of a man who has the pleasure of being with multiple women, versus a woman who presumably missed out on many experiences her life had to offer in exchange for the premature betrothal to a single man.

3. Izlel je Delyo Hagdutin

4. Dark was the night, cold was the ground

Izlel je Delyo Hajdutin is a bulgarian folk song about an unkillable rebel hero (Twenty thousand hertz, 2019). I found this to contrast thematically from the Southern gospel song Dark Was the Night, which contains no actual lyrics but instead “sounds of fatigue, sorrow, pain and death, and are meant to convey the anguish of Christ the night before his Cruxifiction {sic}” (O’dell, 2010). 

5. Johnny B. Goode

6. Melenesian Panpipes

I chose these tracks because of how much they contrast musically. Johnny B. Goode is played by a full rock band complete with electric bass, electric guitar, drums, piano, and vocals. Melenesian Panpipes on the other hand is played with only one type of very simple, acoustic instrument. The two songs also contrast dramatically in terms of the geographical location that they represent (the North American continent vs. small oceanic islands). 

7. Tchakrulo 

8. Flowing streams

Tchakrulo is an “ancient drinking song from the country of Georgia… [which] dramatizes preparing for battle” (Twenty thousand hertz, 2019, 15:12). I found the strong vocal harmonies, as well as the battle theme of the song to starkly contrast with the song Flowing streams. Flowing streams is played on a Guqin, a chinese stringed instrument traditionally “played by noblemen and scholars in intimate settings” (Unesco, 2003, p. 1). Thematically, Flowing Streams is intended to capture the sense of continuously moving water, an image that is much more synonymous with peace than battle. 

9. Beethoven’s 5th 

10. Navajo Night chant 

Beethoven’s fifth symphony, part one, along with several other tracks on the golden record album, consists of a full orchestra of musicians. However it also stands out because it the longest musical track on the album at 8 minutes and 52 seconds. In contrast, Navajo Night Chant is one of the shortest tracks on the album at just over one minute in length. It is also one of the simplest songs on the album consisting of mostly chanting vocals over some light percussion. 

 

References

O’dell, C. (2010). Dark Was the Night, Cold Was the Ground”—Blind Willie Johnson (1927). The library of congress. www.thelibraryofcongress.gov 

Taylor, D. (Host). (2019, April). Voyager golden record. [Audio podcast episode]. In Twenty thousand hertz. Defacto Sound. 

Smith Rumsey, A. (1999, February). Why digitize? Council on Library and Information Resources. Retrieved August 12, 2022.

Unesco. (2003). Gukin and its music. https://ich.unesco.org/en/RL/guqin-and-its-music-00061

Wikipedia. (2023, December). Puspawarna. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Puspawarna

Emoji Story

Discussion

Before deciding how to tell the story, I looked at the emojis that I was working with to see how detailed I would be able to be. I quickly noticed that there were not enough emojis to tell certain important details of the story. I have read the book that this movie is based on and it became clear in this exercise very quickly that “by the standard of phonetic writing… picture writing lacks narrative power” (Bolter, 2000, p. 9). Bolter goes on to explain that the broad range of verbal meanings that can be associated with a picture give it too much meaning as opposed to too little (Bolter, 2000). 

This realization made me decide to make the story as simple as possible, while still hitting enough of the plot elements for someone to recognize it. 

I decided to tell the plot by breaking the story into separate “scenes”. Then I asked myself how I could explain each scene in one sentence, and tried to depict that one simple sentence with emojis. To make the chronology clear, I placed each scene on its own separate line.

I began with deciding how to use the emojis to depict each important character, event, and object. As I was doing this I copied and pasted emojis onto a word document so I could see only the ones I wanted to use in one place before deciding how to arrange them. I then realized I had created a collection of “salient recollected entities” (Kress, 2005, p. 14) from the movie similar to the student who was asked to draw a picture to depict their recollection of a recent field trip to the British Museum in London (Kress, 2005). 

An experiment I would like to try would be to submit the chronological emoji story to one group, and the random assortment of recollected entities to another and see if the chronology has a benefit to helping people recognize the story or not. 

I do think that this story has many striking visual elements to it that will hopefully allow someone to recognize it from my emoji story. What do you think? 

References

Bolter, J. D. (2001). Writing space: Computers, hypertext, and the remediation of print (2nd ed.). Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.

Kress, G. (2005), Gains and losses: New forms of texts, knowledge, and learning. Computers and Composition, 2(1), 5-22.

Classroom Behavior Scenario

Discussion

I created this classroom behavior scenario as a training tool. It is designed to teach what classroom management strategy a teacher should use based on the behavior that a student is displaying in the classroom. The scenario is designed as a sort of “choose-your-own-adventure” story. Each passage describes a student’s behavior, a teacher’s strategy to deal with that behavior, and finally, two or three hyperlinked possible student reactions to that strategy. Teachers select the students’ reaction (or lack thereof) to their behavior management strategy to know what to do next. It is designed as an interactive version of a classroom management flowchart. 

As Bolter (2000) argues we think associatively, not linearly, therefore hypertext allows us to write the way that we think. Similarly, classrooms are not linear environments. They are dynamic, unpredictable environments full of actions and reactions. This classroom behavior scenario is an effort to create a user experience more closely aligned with a classroom environment.  

Bolter (2000) would argue that a drawback of this method of conveying information is that we are not actually giving control to the teachers, but only the illusion of control. By giving the choice of two or three options for teachers to choose from, we are actually taking away the many other possible behaviors that could happen in a classroom, and the causes that lead to them. Although this could be a useful tool for teaching behavior management, it is very limited in the behaviors it identifies. Teachers know that there are a many reasons for the behaviors that students display in the classroom, and a prescriptive tool like this one, while helpful as a guide, will never be able to encapsulate all of the behaviors, and behavior management strategies that may or may not be effective on on any given day in the classroom. 

 

Reference 

Bolter, J. D. (2001). Writing space: Computers, hypertext, and the remediation of printLinks to an external site. (2nd ed). Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.

POTATO PRINTING

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Challenging aspects of the task: 

1. Carving curved letters

I found getting around the corners of an “S”, or taking out the inside of an “R” was really difficult with a knife. As I went I started making a series of straight cuts instead of trying to make curves and eventually my letters became block letters. You might be able to see this change between the first “S” and the last “S”. Additionally, letters such as I, V, W, X, L, are much easier to make a potato stamp for than S, R, B, G, and so on. 

2. Realizing that the carving had to be backwards

I carved the letters from left to right as if I were writing, but afterwards realized that the stamped word would be backwards. This is where modern technology saved me. I made the prints, put them on the shirts and then took a photo. We were then able to do a mirror-image flip of the photo within the phone’s camera app. That is why the printing appears the correct way in the photo. 

3. Making the letters small

Similar to Guttenberg, the first letters I cut and designed were quite large (Clement, 1997). Although they were easy to see, you would not be able to fit many on a page if you were trying to write a book. According to Clement (1997), smaller and more compact script is a more economical form of writing. This would be very difficult with the potato stamp as you need to carve it with a knife. Your knife would need to be very sharp to cut smaller letters, and it would be much more difficult to get into the little spaces. 

4. Stamping the letters

When applying my stamp, I stamped straight down. When I lifted up the stamp, certain parts of the letters did not appear. I realized I had not cut the face of the potato perfectly flat before carving the letters. I then had to rock the stamp side to side and back and forth to ensure that all edges of the lettering contacted the paper. To prevent making uneven stamps in medieval times, the woodcutters would use a saw and planer to get their plank surface flat before carving away the spaces they wanted to leave blank to create their text or image (Clement, 1997). 

Analysis

I feel that writing is something that we take for granted (like so many things in our daily lives). This week’s readings, listenings, and viewings reminded me that it has been a long, slow evolutionary process for writing to become what it is today. My potato stamp was a lot like an early version of the premolded, reusable wood and metal letters used by the letterpress technician at the University of Plymouth (Cooke, 2012). Over 500 years later, I am able to make those same images with the flick of my fingers on the keys of a laptop. I am also able to shrink, enlarge, change color, alter font, or delete entire thoughts at the click of a button; all things that would have taken incredible planning, time, and physical effort at one time in history. 

After completing this week’s task, I have a much better  understanding of the need for symbols like the ampersand, designed to take the place of a commonly used three letter word. Anything that would have saved the letterpress workers time and energy must have been a welcomed advancement. It makes me wonder why more symbols weren’t developed to take the place of other commonly used words like “the”, “with”, “for” and so on. 

Lastly, I feel glad that I do not have to go to a drawer and place letters upside-down and backwards into a tray everytime I need to write something. Although, if everyone still had to go through this process every time they wanted to write something, it might limit the number of impulsive emails that I spend way too much of my day responding to, or in many cases, avoiding. 

References

Clement, R. W. (1997). Medieval and Renaissance book production. Library Faculty & Staff Publications, Paper 10.

Danny Cooke Freelance Filmmaker. (2012, January 26). Upside down, left to right: A letterpress filmLinks to an external site.[Video]. YouTube.

 

According to Ong (2002) written text is the residue of oral language which forever locks oral speech into the visual field. This is a perfect way to describe what speechnotes provides with their speech-to-text program. It is a visual residue of the story that was dictated that can be kept for as long as the internet exists, or for as long as a digital or printed copy could be preserved. However, it does not perfectly capture the oral speech. For example, when dictating the speech, I paused several times to gather my thoughts. These pauses are not reflected in the written text because the program simply stopped writing when I stopped talking and then picked up right where it left off when I started again. There is nothing in the text to show these pauses. 

There is also nothing in the text to show the reader what the speaker’s tone was when telling the story. For example, at one point in the story the judge asks “can you pay [the ticket]?” The tone of my voice went up at the end of this sentence when telling the story because it is a question. However, since there is no question mark, the reader would probably not add this inflection at the end of the sentence. At least not on first read-through. This is where choosing the right words is vitally important. I said “the judge said can you pay it” but what I should have said was “the judge asked can you pay it”. This way, even without a question mark, the reader would still know a question was coming and would be more likely to read the sentence with a questioning tone.  

In speechnotes defence, there are ways to add punctuation to the text while dictating. For example, saying the word(s) period, or question mark at the end of a sentence will add that punctuation. However, since the assignment was simply to speak as if we were telling our friend an anecdote (Horst, 2026), I didn’t stop to say comma, period, or new paragraph. Therefore the story is completely punctuationless making it an imperfect recreation of the oral version.  

Scripting the story would have allowed me to add many more details of the story. This dictated version was limited by my memory of the event. If I had scripted a version of this story I would have had time to recall, and add in, many additional details. 

One part of the story that I left out was before the officers placed me into the police van, they handcuffed me with my hands in front of my body. Once I was in the back of the van, I tried to step my feet through the handcuffs and get my hands to the back of my body because I had always wondered if it was possible. I was able to successfully do it and just as I did, the van stopped at the courthouse and the officers opened the door to see me sitting with my hands handcuffed behind me. They then joked about how they don’t like it when people are able to get their handcuffed hands from behind them to in front of them, but they have never seen anyone try to go from in front to behind before. I left this part of the story out because I felt it would be much easier for the reader to understand it if I was able to do the gesture while telling it. According to Ong (2002), gesture is a rich form of communication but it falls short of the deep sense of language that articulated sound provides. I agree with Ong (2002) that gesture alone does not have the depth of spoken language, however I would also argue that spoken language alone does not have as much depth as it could if it is not accompanied by gestures. I believe that gestures help the listener get a fuller understanding of the events that they are hearing about. I believe that the activation of another sense (sight) while listening helps to absorb the listener into the story even more. 

 

References 

Horst, R. (2026, January 24). [3.4] Task 3: Voice to Text Task (Optional task). ETEC 540 65A 2025 W2. https://canvas.ubc.ca/courses/179955/assignments/2325665?module_item_id=8719783 

Ong, W.J. (2002). Chapter 1: The orality of language. In Orality and literacy: The technologizing of the word (pp. 5-16). Routledge. (Original work published 1982).

Speech-to-text story 

Good morning how are you today today I will be telling a story about something that happened to me a long time ago I was living in Saskatoon and I needed a criminal record check for a job that was applying for so I went to the police station and went to the room where you get your criminal record checks done once I went up to the window and told the Constable that I needed a criminal record check he looked up my name and told me that I had an unendorsed warrant out for my arrest and that I would need to go with an officer to another room an officer came and escorted me to another room where he again told me that I had an unendorsed warrant for my arrest due to a traffic ticket that I have not paid he then asked me to put my hands on a Ledge where I was searched and then placed into a holding cell after waiting in the holding cell for several minutes two officers came to the door of the cell opened it and escorted me to an elevator we got into the elevator went down to the main floor and an elevator door opened leading to a parking lot where a police van was waiting I was handcuffed and placed into the police van and told that I would be driven to the courthouse when we arrived at the courthouse I was taken out of the police van and escorted to another cell where several other individuals were waiting for their court appearance I joined the individuals in that cell until my name was called and I was told that I would be going into the courtroom to plead my case in front of the judge when I was escorted out of that cell an officer had me lift up my right leg and he attached a leg shackle to my right leg he then attached the other shackle to my left leg I was now handcuffed and leg Shackled and I walked very slowly while being escorted by an officer into a courtroom I sat down in the courtroom until my name was called and when my name was called I stood up and the judge looked at a piece of paper that she had in front of her she quietly read to herself the charge and with a confused look on her face looked up at me and said this is what you’re here for I replied yes and she said can you pay it and I said yes I can pay it right now and she said okay this officer will escort you over to a window to pay it so I said okay so I went over to the window once my shackles were removed and I paid my fine and then I turned to the officer and I said can you give me a ride back to the police station because I’m a legally parked and they said no you have to walk so I walked back to the police station and thankfully I didn’t have a parking ticket so I plugged the meter and I went inside back to the criminal record check window the officer who I had initially talked to saw me enter and said where were you and so I told him the entire story and he looked at me shocked because he had no idea that that could happen from not paying a parking ticket sorry for not paying a traffic ticket even completed my criminal record check and I left.

Now I will be doing a test of the features of this program if I say. It adds a. If I say, it has a, if I want to add a? I need to say? However what if I’m telling a story about dinosaurs and I’m saying that a specific species of dinosaur lived in the Jurassic. One flaw of this program is that it is unable apparently, to write the word..

I’m Bryce Glendenning. I am currently working as JK-12 principal in a remote community in the Northwest Territories. 

In the winter I often crosscountry ski to work. Although it is a relatively short ski, the temperature can be quite cold so I require animal hide mitts, a toque, a facewarmer, and goggles to keep me fully covered.These go in my bag once I get to work otherwise I will never be able to find them when I need them. 

I also carry my gym gear with me as I often workout either before work or after school. I take a protein shake as well as some trail mix with me to get me through until lunch. I also have my work keys to get into the school, my wallet which contains my work VISA that I sometimes need to make purchases with throughout the work day, and my toothbrush, toothpaste, and deodorant as I try to respect those who might need to be in the same room as me at some point throughout the day. 

The item with the bag with the most noticeable text on it is my workout T-shirt with the mantra: HARD. FAST. No cuddling after, written on the front. The first crossfit coach I had wore the same T-shirt. When the gym had more available several years later I jumped at the chance to purchase my own. I love the mantra because it makes me laugh every time I read it. I also love the t-shirt because I purchased it at my favorite gym in the world in my hometown of Saskatoon. When I workout in faraway locations, wearing this T-shirt makes me feel like I have a little piece of home with me. 

The ski and workout gear are a statement that fitness and physical activity are regular parts of my routine and personality. The protein shake and trail mix convey the point that I need energy while at work in order to perform my job to the best of my ability. 

I think that these are the items anyone who knows me well would expect to see in my bag. They convey the fact that I like to be active, I try to be healthy, and that I am a very simple person who doesn’t need, or want, to carry more than the essential items I need to survive. 

The bag contains a mix of modern and ancient technology. The animal hide mitts are a form of ancient technology. Early humans used animal hide to protect themselves from the elements since time immemorial. The fact that this technology is still useful today is a reminder that it is important to respect and preserve the knowledge and traditions of those who have come before us. I also have some modern technology such as the goggles. They have an elastic headstrap which keeps them in place, padding where they contact the face for comfort, and a tinted shield to not only block wind but also provide better visibility of the terrain in bright sunlight. There are some digital technologies such as the key fob for my truck along with the microchipped credit and debit cards in my wallet. 

An archaeologist examining my bag would discover that people travelled long distances during this time period. The location, Saskatoon SK, is printed on the back of the T-shirt, and they would find a NWT driver’s licence in the wallet along with currency from the Middle East, Europe, South America, and beyond. By examining these items they would determine that this was a time period in history where the world was a relatively accessible place for people to move around, travel, and work in locations far from their homes.