This was a very interesting exercise in UI and attention. Something I noticed was how important it is to actually read what you are clicking on before you do it, for example the big green “no” button and the check box that said “select all” which wiped out all my answers! This reminded me of going to the grocery store with my mom not too long ago where she was trying to use the self checkout for the first time and did not actually read the instructions on the debit machine before she clicked the button. She assumed the machine was asking if she accepted the transaction and wanted to proceed, but it was actually asking if she wanted cash back (which she did not) and we had to cancel the transaction and start over again. The “roadblock” on this site that stumped me for the longest amount of time was when the box saying to hurry up and showing my clock popped up for the first time. It took about two minutes for me to figure out where to click to get rid of the box so I could continue with the task. Something I noticed on this site, as I have seen on other sites recently that can be confusing is where there are two side by side buttons to choose from (eg. male/female, on/off, yes/no) where one is in colour while the other is white. It is hard to tell whether the one in colour is the one selected or if it is the one that is white. This exercise is a good way of finding out what design aspect we are used to and expect when using online sites and technology, and what happens when best practices in UX and UI are not adhered to. We don’t often notice these small details until they are gone. 

This experience makes it clear how important it is to use predictable, expected, and recognizable buttons and elements in websites and forms. This is an example of a time when it is best not to reinvent the proverbial wheel and think outside the box- because your users are most definitely looking inside the box (literally). Having a site with unclear expectations and confusing mechanics is bound to create high rates of frustration and drive away users.

All Data

After having a look through the data as a whole as well as each of the four smaller “communities” there are a few key points that I found interesting about the song selection data. When looking at the four different communities, I was mostly interested in looking for the outliers- the songs that were only chosen by one person in the group. Each community features members who had all of their songs selected by at least one other person, as well as at least one member who had at least one outlying song that did not connect to any other group members. However, looking at the data as a whole which included all four communities, I was pleasantly surprised to see that there is not a single outlying song. 

I wanted to see which, if any, of the 27 songs on the master list had not been chosen by anyone at all. I used the search function (command + F) on my computer to make sure I was not missing anything within the web of data and I searched each song and was very surprised to find that all 27 songs were present in the data AND, as previously stated, all were chosen by at least two people as there are no outliers. 

The three songs that were seemingly the least popular choices which were only chosen twice are Track 8: Men’s House Song, Track 17: Well-Tempered Cavalier, and Track 27: String Quartet No. 13 in B Flat. I, like most people, did not include any of these songs on my list. My reason was that I was looking for only one song from each continent and there was another song I liked better from these songs’ continent of origin, but I am curious to know what my classmate’s reasons are. Did these songs simply fall through the cracks or are they more or less disliked? 

Community 3

One thing that stood out to me when looking at each community separately was how Selene did not seem to fit in where she was placed in community 3. When looking at only community 3, Selene has 9 songs that are outliers that do not connect with anyone else, which makes me wonder why she was placed in that group. When you look at the data all together, Selene is right in the centre showing that she had very common selections to a lot of our classmates.

1. “Melancholy Blues,” performed by Louis Armstrong and his Hot Seven. 3:05 
2.  Mexico, “El Cascabel,” performed by Lorenzo Barcelata and the Mariachi México. 3:14 
3. Peru, panpipes and drum, collected by Casa de la Cultura, Lima. 0:52 
4. Beethoven, Fifth Symphony, First Movement, the Philharmonia Orchestra, Otto Klemperer, conductor. 7:20 
5. India, raga, “Jaat Kahan Ho,” sung by Surshri Kesar Bai Kerkar. 3:30 
6. Senegal, percussion, recorded by Charles Duvelle. 2:08 
7. Solomon Islands, panpipes, collected by the Solomon Islands Broadcasting Service. 1:12 
8. Navajo Indians, Night Chant, recorded by Willard Rhodes. 0:57 
9. Bach, Brandenburg Concerto No. 2 in F. First Movement, Munich Bach Orchestra, Karl Richter, conductor. 4:40 
10. “Johnny B. Goode,” written and performed by Chuck Berry. 2:38 

The first seven songs on my playlist represent the seven continents of Earth and the final three songs represent the progression of music over time. In order these songs represent: 1. North America, 2. Central America, 3. South America, 4. Europe, 5. Asia, 6. Africa, 7. Oceania, 8. ancient music, 9. classical music, 10. modern music. Much like the full track list of Music From Earth, this playlist includes a wide variety of sounds and musical styles- instrumental, vocal, wind, strings, orchestral, brass, percussion to represent Earth’s cultures and time periods. 

https://www.tiktok.com/@changey0urusername/video/7107430722817821957?is_from_webapp=1&sender_device=pc&web_id=7107432696850941446

I chose to redesign this task using Tik Tok for several reasons. One reason is that it is such a popular platform, being used by millions of people around the world to create and view a multitude of content for educational and entertainment purposes. Being a user of Tik Tok, I see so many talented people doing amazing things with this type of content creation and wanted to try out some of the features the app offers.

For the auditory component of this assignment, I spent quite a bit of time researching (aka scrolling through Tik Tok) the perfect background sound to go with a voice over for this style of video. I had to consider the mood I wanted to set, time length, as well as something without words to not get in the way of the voice over. The other aspect of the auditory component is that I chose to do a voice over of the written text using the text-to-speech feature in the app and chose a voice that I most associate with this style of Tik Tok video. For the text component, I chose a few key words for each item to describe a sentiment without actually saying what it was. I enjoyed getting to learn how to set a time duration for each piece of text so it would appear and disappear at the right times with the voice and image. Lastly, for the visual component, I wanted to try a trend that I see often on Tik Tok that was simple, interesting and focused on the items. I set my phone up on a box and a laptop stand to keep a consistent field of view and filmed each object being zoomed out and zoomed back in, matching the next item.

Mode-bending is a great exercise to get out of your comfort zone, try new things and be creative. It forced me to think about many possibilities that I normally would not pursue and work out the creative details of different ideas until I found one that would fit the criteria and that I could execute. While it was challenging having to figure out how to film and edit, starting over, and having to replay the video over and over and over again in the editing process- it also was fun and creative.

For this task I chose a movie I know the best and that many others would know as well to make it easier to follow along and understand the plot. I tried several different movies before deciding on this one but was surprised with how limiting the emojis are even though there are hundreds to choose from. I mostly focused on the concepts from the movie to try and show what was happening rather than focusing on trying to use the emojis to sound out words like a game of charades. I started with the title and as you can see I did not try to sound out the word, but chose two emojis that embody what the movie is about. From there I tried my best to think of the movie chronologically and not jump ahead to the main events. It was difficult to decide what scenes to include or omit based on their relevance in the story or whether or not there were emojis that I could use to represent the scene. It was interesting to see that some very long segments of the movie could be represented by one emoji while some very short segments required several lines to get all the important details across.

Alien Invasion.html.zip

Click on the link above to access my Twine game- Alien Invasion.

What I thought would take maybe an hour turned into a full day’s work trouble shooting, watching tutorials and asking for help. I started by spending some time thinking about what I want my game to be about and what I want it to accomplish. Thinking back a few days to a PD session held at my school on Social Emotional Learning (SEL) which will be one of my school’s main focuses next year, I wanted to create something that would fit into SEL in some way. The idea behind this storyline is that communication is key to solving your problems and understanding each other.

Building the story was quite easy and fun to decide what options to include and where I wanted the direction of my game to lead players to end up at the same place- a solution through simple communication. My difficulties began when I tried to insert images into my Twine. After some trial and error I finally found a strategy of selecting the right line of code from the image worked very well and it was easy to repeat the process for each passage. The real difficulty I face was how to download my game so it could be played by others. After much frustration and trying work around after work around I finally found what was wrong (hours later). My browser (Safari) was not compatible! It was quick and easy to copy and past everything into a new Twine in a Chrome browser and finally everything worked as it should!

I learned a lot about simple coding, trouble shooting and creating Twines during this process and would like to look further into adding sound, movement and changing colours in the future.

I spent quite a while deciding what word to choose from for this task. After spending so much time playing Wordle, I had a lot of five letter words coming to mind. Ocean- too curvy. Green- no double letters. Liver- too random. I decided to do the word “world” for my stamp because the letters contain mostly straight lines…plus I was staring at a globe. The first stamp took me longer to carve out than the second one because I learned a few tricks after doing it once, and in total it probably took about 15-20 minutes to carve them both out. Luckily my neighbour is an artist so I was able to use some of her paint so I could actually see how well my stamps work…not realizing until after that my word comes out backward! Of course it does! I was so wrapped up in the process of choosing the perfect word and carving the potato that I completely overlooked the most important aspect- will my stamp produce what I want it to- a legible word.

This made me think back to the days of the printing press and wonder, did they have to place all of their letters backwards in order to produce their prints? They must have, and it would have made the already arduous task of hand laying and pressing each text that much more time consuming and difficult. What about typewriters? Are all of those letter stamps backwards too? I think I’ll stick to handwriting and computer typing.

Hello! My name is Erin Duchesne, a grade 1 teacher in Edmonton Alberta and here is what is in my bag!
Items: current book (The Alchemist), extra mask, reusable bamboo cutlery, reusable collapsable metal straw, cell phone, car/house/mailbox keys, hand sanitizer, reusable water bottle, school keys, wallet, extra headphones, lip balm, lunch bag, laptop.

This is the bag that got me through four years of undergrad and now acts as the bag I take to work everyday as a teacher and my carry on bag when I travel.  These items subtly say a lot about me- light packer, efficient, reader, apple user, Albertan, and cares about sustainability. My tendency to travel light is very much the same when it comes to other aspects of my life. For example I do not keep anything in my car, all of my teaching resources are digital so I do not have any paper copies or binders in my classroom, and I have only a few apps on my phone. Most of the time when I am out and about I only take my cellphone with my license and debit card hidden in the case and my car keys- so this depicts the most that I would ever carry. The bag itself is also a very conscious choice. I love using a backpack because then I always have two arms free and don’t get a sore arm or shoulder from carrying a heavy purse on one side of my body. I specifically bought this bag (ok well actually I got it as a Christmas gift) because it has so many compartments! A fleece-lined pocket specifically for a laptop, waterproof compartment for food, water bottle holders with straps so it does not fall out, small pocket in the front for my wallet and keys, and so many little pockets for everything!

My text technologies (literacy and digital literacy) include my laptop, cell phone and book which show that I like to have means of entertainment and information readily available in multiple forms. I believe the items in my bag represent me quite well in that I do not like clutter, I love reading and using technology on a daily basis and also reflects my past self and what I would have carried for the past 10 years or so.  If a future archeologist were to dig up this bag and contents in particular, they would see that in this time period our society values compact technology, reusable items, and being socially connected. They would also see that I still cary around my University of Alberta ID from when I was 18 in the front of my wallet that expired years ago. Why? 1. it used to be my bus pass, 2. the photo is much better than my license photo, and 3. it gets me student pricing to museums and other experiences when I travel! (they never actually look at the expiration date).