I laughed at this “User Inyerface” as my husband works in eCommerce with a company that makes those annoying pop-ups and “suggestions” for retail sites. This site demonstrates deceptive design and design that is frustrating to the user. Examples of deceptive design included buttons to close a pop-up were hidden and examples of frustrating design included the age slider bar and date of birth drop downs that were difficult to manipulate. These frustrating items also lead to a lack of accessibility in design (a person with Parkinson’s is unlikely to be able to accurately use the slider bar).The “not a robot section” had unintuitive design where the clinking boxes were above instead of below the boxes. The “how can I help” bar and hurry pop up were stressful and caused some cursing the 5th or 6th time they showed up (example below). The deceptive design website provided a good example of how the hurry messages on booking.com increase sales through manipulation of FOMO (fear of missing out), which I have definitely fallen prey to on that site before (Puschak, 2018).

Both TED talks this week emphasized the need for company accountability to prevent or limit manipulation online through social media and ads (Harris, 2017; Tufekci, 2017). Tufekci (2017) specifically notes the ability of dark posts to target specific users with messages and how YouTube AI push viewers to extreme content which leads to her question of how public debate is possible when the two sides lack equal information. We have struggled with this in Alberta through the pandemic with the “alt-right” insulating themselves further by using limited media sources like AI curated Facebook and Rebel news. Timothy Caulfield is another speaker and author who has been working recently on health misinformation and manipulation online similar to the TEDTalks in the readings.

References:

Harris, T. (2017). How a handful of tech companies control billions of minds every day. Retrieved from: https://www.ted.com/talks/tristan_harris_the_manipulative_tricks_tech_companies_use_to_capture_your_attention?language=en 

Puschak, E. [Nerdwriter1]. (2018, March 28). How Dark Patterns Trick You Online [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kxkrdLI6e6M&t=210s

Tufekci, Z. (2017). We’re building a dystopia just to make people click on ads. Retrieved from: https://www.ted.com/talks/zeynep_tufekci_we_re_building_a_dystopia_just_to_make_people_click_on_ads?language=en

I was surprised to see myself in a smaller community. I chose the top three most popular songs and seven of the top ten songs. It seems that community four is more based on the unique songs we chose compared to the larger group. We all chose track 15: Bagpipes (Azerbaijan) which is outside of the top ten (and only one person outside our community chose it) and track three: Percussion (Senegal), which is number nine for the whole class. It is interesting that I chose based on diversity and Emily Wu (2022) chose based on “Exploring and Adventure” and we still chose 5 songs in common. I also found it interesting that in the class graph my dot is not adjacent to those in my community (maybe due to graph best fit).  Below are screenshots of the class top eight songs, my dot within a part of the class graph and my community graph.

Visualization can allow us to see what songs are in common and assume potential rationale but cannot allow us to know the rationale behind the links as this requires an explanation of the rationale from the person who made the choice (which we handily have from task 8). This assignment also reminded me of an article where they created a similar graph of teen romantic and sexual relationships in a rural high school and found 52% of the students were interconnected (Bearman et al, 2004). Similarly we might infer things from the graph but unless we got further information from the students we cannot determine the true rationale. I wonder if we all picked songs based on the same criteria, it would lead to more interesting discussion on whether or not a song was included.

Null choices could be visualized in a closed data set like this one but not in an open data set where choices are limitless and rationale could be assumed or inquired about if we chose to focus on it. I was surprised that only one song was chosen by only one person (Pygmy Girl’s Initiation Song). I could infer that this was due to the short length, the lack of instruments or simply that other songs were preferred. For myself I was trying to get a song per continent and preferred track three from Senegal as it had instruments and I had already selected other chants.

Using Palladio to visualize data was helpful and I liked the ability to filter and switch between graph and table formats. I think connections would be more insightful if we did this on the “what is in your bag” assignment as the items are more personal or chose the music solely based on what we personally liked.

References

Bearman, P. S., Moody, J., & Stovel, K. (2004). Chains of affection: The structure of adolescent romantic and sexual Networks1. The American Journal of Sociology, 110(1), 44-91. https://doi.org/10.1086/386272

Wu, E. (2022, July 7). Task 8 – Golden Record Curation. Text Technologies: The Changing Spaces of Reading and Writing. https://blogs.ubc.ca/etec540emilywu/2022/07/07/task-8-golden-record-curation/

To condense the Golden Record down to 10 songs I tried to get a blend of sung and instrumental songs, from various times and cultures. I think music is highly cultural and personal making it very difficult to curate an album like this (so maybe the extra-terrestrials wouldn’t even appreciate the golden record). I felt like classical European music was over represented so cut it down to two songs (one instrumental and one opera). I tried to pick at least one song from each inhabited continent as well. I feel like recorded poems or oral stories from around the world would have fit well on the record as a sample of what earth has to offer in addition to the music.

10 songs

1. Beethoven, Fifth Symphony, First Movement, the Philharmonia Orchestra, Otto Klemperer, conductor.
2. Mozart, The Magic Flute, Queen of the Night aria, no. 14. Edda Moser, soprano. Bavarian State Opera, Munich, Wolfgang Sawallisch, conductor.
3. “Johnny B. Goode,” written and performed by Chuck Berry.
4. “Melancholy Blues,” performed by Louis Armstrong and his Hot Seven.
5. Senegal, percussion, recorded by Charles Duvelle.
6. Peru, wedding song, recorded by John Cohen.
7. Navajo Indians, Night Chant, recorded by Willard Rhodes.
8. Azerbaijan S.S.R., bagpipes, recorded by Radio Moscow.
9. Australia, Aborigine songs, “Morning Star” and “Devil Bird,” recorded by Sandra LeBrun Holmes.
10. Java, court gamelan, “Kinds of Flowers,” recorded by Robert Brown.

For my task seven, I struggled to decode the assignment and took a look at what some of my fellow students did  to complete the task. After watching Erin’s and Marie’s I decided to do a fake TikTok Challenge format. Since I chose the alternative assignment in task one and went through my digital bag I wanted to bring it closer to the original task by trying to replace my phone apps with physical objects. However the objects I found were not able to fit into a bag.

I think its important to challenge students to engage in mode-changing to expand their creativity occasionally.  Though it is important to encourage students to engage in mode-changing, I like the idea of allowing students multiple options to engage in the subject matter in a way that fits their learning style best rather than insisting on an even mix when their learning preferences don’t align. Group work can also be a good way to allow students make a whole product while being able to showcase their speciality in a particular modality, such as the more artistic student doing the diagrams for a lab report. Another challenge with engaging in mode-changing can be ensuring feeling of safety while experimenting though low stakes assignments (i.e. the task worth 6% rather than a final assignment worth 50%) and allowing students options within the mode-changing.. This follows Powers and Moore’s 2021 research on failure within game-based learning where they found if the penalty is too high it will demotivate students and discourage protective failure (failure being more likely when experimenting with mode-bending initially). I think there has already been significant shifts in the last 30 years to encourage multimodal texts through the expanding availability of technology and realization by educators of the need to focus on more than just the “3 Rs.”

References

Powers, F. E., & Moore, R. L. (2021). When failure is an option: A scoping review of failure states in game-based learning. Techtrends, 65(4), 615-625. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11528-021-00606-8