Welcome to Technonia where technology serves people. We automate the ordinary so that we can live out the extraordinary. In Technonia we coexist in harmony with technology in order to live life to the fullest potential.
Welcome to Technonia where automation is key for compliance. People serve technology in order to maintain conformity. Technology has enabled us to reduce individuality and streamline humanity.
This online game User Inyerface is an online game or challenge that includes poorly designed elements of web design meant to deceive, distract, confuse and frustrate you.
Right off the bat the game tries to get you with the big green button that your instincts lead you to want to click, despite it saying “NO” instead of “GO”. This task reminded me of the tests that you may have seen before where the first instruction is to “read/go over the test prior to doing anything”. Most people just dive right in but then when they get to the end, the last thing it says is to return the test without writing anything, which for most people it is too late at that point.
I made sure to read things thoroughly before doing anything as my competitiveness wanted to “beat” the game. The first issue I got trapped at was the “time is ticking” pop-up page I couldn’t escape it until I realized there was a cancel hidden where it said ©ancel2021. The next piece I got stuck at was the fact that you could scroll down to find the “.com” where it asked for your email address, I had put “other” which was resulting in me not progressing to the next page. Part of me was feeling untrusting with if I had to put a real email in or I could just do a fake one, I ended up using a fake one with a gmail.com domain. I found the first page the most difficult to move past, once I got to the rest of the pages I didn’t find them as challenging. This in a way is kind of like a virtual escape room – but you’re mostly trapped just due to bad design.
The pop-ups were the most frustrating. As you’re trying to figure out what you’re supposed to do there comes the time is ticking pop up or the “help” window that blocks the button to move on or make other selections. On the first page when you had to go through the terms and conditions it was very slow to scroll which was a little annoying, and then you had to make sure you unclicked the box which is the opposite of what you would normally do. On the second page, the main issues that stood out to me were the reverse order of the date of birth years, the random order of months, and the “wrong” colour for male and female which made you think you had the opposite selected than you actually did. By the third and fourth page, I found I was in the rhythm of knowing what it was expecting, although, it did have one trick that the first row of checkboxes were hidden so at first, I had checked off the pictures underneath instead of above which meant I needed to go back and switch my selections. The last page was the easiest as everything was a “check”. In the end, it took me 13:15 to complete the challenge, which could’ve been worse but also better if I didn’t get stuck on that first page for so long.
This game serves to include all the components of what NOT to do for good design. We’re so used to just clicking without thinking or really reading, scrolling through terms and conditions without reading and automatically accepting no matter what it said. Like dark patterns discusses, deception is the name of the game, they want to pull us into clicking that big green circle because we are conditioned to it. This is a similar idea to the “Stroop Test” – which I have included a video below.
How does your brain perform? Do you find it easier to read the word or notice the colour?
I will admit that when I loaded the data it was overwhelming at first. The web/graph of data is an interesting way to represent all the connections that exist within the data. This network represents an extensive amount of information from our previous task.
In looking at the data table of curators there were 21 individuals, who chose 10 songs from a possible 27 pieces. Now forgetting my probability calculations from the finite mathematics course I took during my undergraduate, I can’t tell you exactly but I know that would lead to a very small probability that someone would choose the exact same combination of songs. However, using the formula for combinations (where the order does not matter) we can deduce that there are 8 436 285 possible combinations.
Where n = 27 songs/ r = 10 chosen songs
Each person has at least a few different commonalities with our peers. It makes for a good metaphor that you can find some sort of connection with anyone. In analyzing the data further, I played around with the different communities first as that was the default facet dimension.
The community I was a part of was the second one and consisted of four other people and myself – Anna-Marie MacPherson, Vera Xiong, Justine Johal, and Maurice Broschart. Maurice was the only one who shared every choice with one of us while the rest of us had 1-3 unique choices that no one in our community shared with us. Dark was the night was the only song that all 5 of us had chosen – represented by the larger node in the middle. With only their names as the main source of information, I can make the assumption that we are mostly females in our community and that our names come from different heritages. I am unable to assume age, or where they may live, or any emotional connections to the music they may have based on their personal experiences. This leads me to the part of the picture that is lacking – the reasoning behind our choices. In our own blogs for Task 8, we described the ‘why’ or our approach to choosing our 10 songs but looking at the data we can’t make those assumptions on others’ choices. There are many contributing factors to someone’s choices – gender, age, culture, religion, where they live as well as something as simple as their taste in music.
From the collective data, the largest node or most chosen was Beethovens 5th symphony and the lowest chosen were Men’s House song and Kinds of Flowers – both options I did not choose. The graph shows connections between people based on their commonalities, but how would the visualization differ based on our differences?
I had never heard of the Golden Record so I found it very intriguing when I read a little more about it and heard some of the background behind it in the podcast. It was interesting to hear the sampling of miscellaneous sounds they deemed representative of earth – whales, tools, a heartbeat, “hello” in various languages etc. They were limited in how they formatted the record in order to make it sustainable overtime as well as include a complete sampling of work. More is not necessarily better, but they focused on thoughtfulness to create a “work of art”. The songs aren’t considered “classics” for the most part, but more of a sampling around the world of different types of sounds. It would be overwhelming to be inclusive in creating a representation of the human species as a whole while curating different types of sounds as well as trying to figure out what “message” we want to send in case of extraterrestrial life and how they may interpret them.
I was drawn to the less obscure sounds for the most part, prioritizing sounds/songs that were familiar to me but also new sounds that I enjoyed or elicited some sort of emotion or memory. Here are my top 10 from the “Music from Earth” playlist with a few of my initial impressions.
To start off for this task I was pretty blocked creatively. I didn’t want to just do something standard like verbally list the contents of my bag but I also was drawing a blank on how I wanted to give a “voice” to my bag.
In my brainstorming I found it is hard to isolate only one mode, often things naturally are multimodal, so for this task, I went with it and tried not to force myself into only one “box”. I started off thinking about doing an animation or an interactive photo giving the items sound effects but I found I was spending more time on the visual component than the sound so I scraped it and decided to go with a song/rap.
For some reason, the Fresh Prince of Bel-Air song came to mind to try to remix. It was definitely harder than I thought to change the words but keep the flow and rhythm of the song. As my original “What’s in your bag” photo was based on my diaper bag I wanted to center it around that and what I really use it for.
I utilized an online audio recorder on my computer and had the instrumental music playing off my phone. I had to practice a few times to get the beat and timing right – listen below.
Now this is a story all about how
My life got flipped turned upside down
And I’d like to take a minute, just sit right there
I’ll tell you how my bag became an essential of care
In West Canada born and raised
In Penticton is where I spent most of my days
Chillin’ out, maxin’, relaxin’ all cool
Meetin my husband outside of school
A couple years later at the alter we stood
Started makin’ plans for the baby that would
Then came a blue-eyed girl which we shared
We often like to take her out for fresh air
We went for a walk, at the lake that’s near
We started out fresh or so it would appear
A rumbling happened that gave us a scare
So I thought “Grab the bag – the essential of care”
I pulled out the bag, grabbed a wipe or two
Cleaned her up while she let out a coo
Rolled up the diaper and said “smell ya later”
Looked at my girl, my little tater
Thanks to the bag – the essential of care
Simply a day in the life, I’ll leave it there
Twine reminded me of the Goosebumps books I used to read as a child. It was always exciting to be able to “choose your own adventure” and see what different endings you could have. It is definitely harder than I thought to actually create your own. I enjoyed the combination of storyboarding and coding and definitely see myself trying this with my students. The hardest part was thinking about what to do the “game” about, but since it is almost Halloween (and continuing the Goosebumps idea) I decided to go for a bit of a spooky feel. My husband and I bounced ideas off each other in regards to the plot of the story and what I wanted to happen. There were a few main things I noticed in the process:
Overall it was a fun process and I could see how it could quickly snowball into quite an involved adventure so I tried not to get too big too quick. I hope you enjoy it and good luck!
For this task, I chose to use my own name for my potato stamp – Katie. I utilized capital letters in order to create straight lines as much as possible because I knew that trying to do a lower case ‘a’ and ‘e’ would be difficult to get a smooth round edge. I lucked out that all my letters in uppercase had straight edges (no ‘O’ or ‘S’ for example), however, the ‘A’ provided a little more difficulty in cutting out the inside piece. I thankfully caught myself before I made my template by realizing it had to be a mirror image in order for it to print the word properly on the paper. This added a bit more difficulty because I had to visualize each letter to ensure I was flipping it properly. I created this stamp with a russet potato due to its more oval shape in order to provide me with more space for my letters. I had to try to plan out my spacing in order to fit all my letters on the potato. I used a sharpie to try to make a template, however, the ink didn’t really work so I kind of carved them out instead. I was unsure if it was better to make individual letter stamps from separate chunks of potatoes but in the end, decided to do the whole word on one so that it would be easier to create a duplicated print. It was also difficult to cut out the pieces between the letters without snapping off unwanted chunks of the letters.
I created a timelapse of me creating my potato stamp.
I used an acrylic craft paint in black that I applied with a paintbrush in order to try to consistently apply the paint so that I could try to replicate my “word.” I tried using a fairly heavy coat of paint each time I applied it to the stamp in order to make a more consistent print. I used cardboard to apply my stamp which in hindsight wasn’t the best because it isn’t a smooth surface and some of the cracks resulted in ‘blank space’ from the stamp. It took me 5 prints to get two stamps that I felt were close enough to be identical. Once I starting trying to make my print I also realized that it was essential the letters were level or it wouldn’t show up on my print, part of the E for example seemed a little sloped which resulted in a less crisp print.
It took me 7.5 minutes to create my word and then another 8 minutes or so to get close to identical stamps. I felt the two bottom prints were the most consistent. If I were to consider this in terms of words per minute it would work out to 0.67 wpm. This is incredibly inefficient In comparison to the 80-90 wpm I can type or what I can write by hand. The mechanization of writing was a way to increase the efficiency of creating text. If you think of how long it would’ve taken to make a book by hand vs after the printing press and then now with digital printers we have been able to become faster and more efficient at creating text and on a larger scale. Instead of the ~15 minutes, it took to create 5 stamps, I could’ve probably printed 3000 “stamps” (considering 5 stamps per page, with a printer with a speed of 40 ppm). Along with efficiency thanks to mechanization is consistency. Having to create this stamp by hand had a lot of variability between the letter spacing, size, and alignment. Applying the paint or “ink” by hand also resulted in variability in my prints – something mechanization would also improve. They say time is money and in the world of printing, the mechanization of writing has allowed for greater output in little time.
Talk to text is something I occasionally use while driving as well as if I am going to tell a story to someone over text because it is faster and easier than trying to type it out on my phone. When I was trying to think about what I would talk about during my 5-minute story, and after looking at the article about the new Indigenous language app, I decided to utilize a prompt that we did in a talking circle at a staff meeting while learning about the Okanagan protocols of talking circles. The question was “who do you come from?” – The people, the places, the experiences where you came from. I utilized this to tell a little bit about my history. Below is my unedited, unscripted, 5-minute voice-to-text story:
I decided to follow the prompt of who do you come from? It is a promise that I have used in a indigenous talking Circle and it basically considers where you come from in regards to the land the people and your experiences. I grew up in kaleden BC which is in the Okanagan and I came from my parents Nicole and gored reham I have a sister named Brittany and over the years we have had various pets. I lived in this house until I was 11 where we moved to priddis Alberta which is outside of Calgary. I lived here while I went to Junior High grades 7 to 9 and then when I got to grade 10 we moved to Okotoks Alberta. Is also outside of Calgary. I played a lot of sports and because my bus ride from the country where we lived was an hour and a half each way it was one of the reasons we moved to Okotoks so that it was easier on my parents when they needed to pick me up from my sports and I didn’t have to spend three hours a day on the bus on a day where I didn’t have any sports. After I graduated I went to University of Victoria and I completed my Bachelors of Science in biology and psychology. I lived in Victoria for the four years during and stayed for an extra year after. I really enjoyed being back in BC and wanted to go back to where I came from as that is where most of my family is currently. I moved back to Kelowna and completed my Bachelor’s of Education ubco and after I finish the program I came back to Penticton. My parents and my sister have all come back to contact in as well from Alberta. And now I live here with my husband Graham and my daughter Remy. I work at a middle school just down the road, however this year I am on maternity leave and am home with my daughter.
When I compare my text above to something I may have typed, it deviates mostly with the grammar and spelling. There is no grammar unless you say it – “period” “comma” etc. I made sure as much as possible while I was telling my story to include grammar, but it was also hard to remember to include grammar as I was thinking of what to say. Spelling isn’t something you can adjust on the fly, you would have to edit it after the fact. I used the website Speechnotes to record my story and tried not to look at what it was recording as I was saying it, otherwise, my perfectionism would’ve kicked in when I saw it misspelling or misrecording what I was trying to say. Typically I find the main spelling errors are locations or personal details, such as names. On my phone I have more trouble with locations such as Kelowna will be spelled as Kelona, however, this website did a pretty good job of spelling the places correctly (minus some capitals). The website still struggled with names however, my husband’s name typically comes up as “Graham” instead of the proper spelling Graeme, my sister “Brittany” should’ve been Brittney and my Dad’s name “gored reham” should have been Gord Reum. I think of my Mother-in-law who frequently utilizes this tool because she can’t see the text on her phone without her glasses. This means she doesn’t proofread before she sends her messages and often there is straight-up gibberish. In some cases where I may not have annunciated, it resulted in broken English or total mistakes such as “contact in” was Penticton.
If I had scripted the story I think there would be more flow and less “thinking” while I was speaking. I was surprised that I didn’t have fillers such as “um or like” which can typically happen when you’re trying to think as you speak. It would also take me much less time to read my story if it was prewritten as opposed to trying to think of what I wanted to say as I spoke. I could have edited it in advance to make sure I included all the details I wanted to because when you are speaking you can’t go back and add a detail to the beginning for example.
Sometimes when I write, am brainstorming or just trying to get my thoughts out I will also utilize this feature, so I can quickly get what’s in my head onto paper and later go in to edit it. It is a useful tool for students who struggle with written language, a way to get their thoughts down without having to worry about the actual writing or even typing.
Oral storytelling is very different from written storytelling. If you have ever heard a story from a great storyteller you’d agree. A good story is told in a way that draws you in and engages you, the tone and tempo varies in order to set the scene or elicit emotion. Although descriptive writing can do similar things, it doesn’t compare to an oral story.
This year my day-to-day bag looks a little different than it did in the past. I typically carry a school/work bag and rarely used a purse, usually just my wallet if I was running around on the weekend. However, I am not working in my usual role as a teacher this year, I now have a new role, as of this summer, which is a Mom. In many ways this has shifted my life, including what’s in my bag. No longer does leaving the house include just grabbing my wallet and keys, a lot of extra baggage is required for my little sidekick. So below is what’s in OUR bag.
This bag contains mostly essentials that we need whenever we leave the house. Along with what’s contained in the bag I always carry water with me, at times it is a cup with a straw so it isn’t actually in the bag, but it is also an essential for me. I typically go through this bag every couple of days to restock things or make sure I haven’t accumulated random items I don’t need.
Bag – I chose a backpack-style diaper bag to be hands-free and for added comfort when carrying things like a cart seat etc. It is also easy to throw in the bottom of my stroller. The green is currently my favourite colour and also matches the accent wall of her nursery. It has lots of pockets on the outside and inside in order to keep things organized.
Essentials – Diapers, wipes, change pad, doggy bags for garbage on the go, these items are pretty self-explanatory
Clothes – An extra shirt for me, two extra outfits for Remy, and a sweater – because spit up and blowouts happen!
Mask – Because we’re living through a pandemic and my province has a mask mandate
Car seat cover – Most days we meet my Mom or a friend for walks down at the beach, I use this so that she can nap and stay out of the direct Okanagan sun.
My “mini” bag – This fanny pack/cross body bag I use if I need to run in somewhere without needing to bring the whole backpack, once again it allows for hands-free. I keep it inside the diaper bag, it contains my wallet, keys (car, house, parents house, library card tag), an extra mask
Airpods – For listening to music, podcasts, talking on the phone etc. They also contain a rainbow sticker that I created using a Cricut which shows my creativity and love of crafting/creating, Remy is also my “rainbow baby”
Health Passport – I carry this for Remy’s doctor appointments and checkups in order to track her measurements, shots etc.
Textiles – swaddle/blanket, burp clothes, face clothes
Extra pacifier in sterilizer case, in case she drops hers that is usually on a pacifier clip attached to her or her car seat
We talk about text being a creation, these items represent the ultimate creation – the new life of a baby. These items serve as text in order to tell a story of a slightly overprepared new Mother and her baby. The contents representing my Type A personality of organized, efficient, and purposeful. Shown also in the way I grouped items together for the photo and neatly put things together – a way I often try to present myself as well.
The main piece of text technology is the piece that is missing from the photo which is my phone. I am obviously using my phone in order to take the photo but it is also usually contained within this bag. Along with this are my AirPods which allow me to communicate with other people, listen to music, audiobooks or podcasts. The library tag on my keychain also serves as a piece of text technology in that it allows me to take out books but also in the way the barcode is coded for my account and allows me to easily check out at the library.
When I think about what this bag may have looked like 15 years ago or even 25 I would’ve been in Kindergarten/Grade 1 and Grade 10. The contents of my bag would’ve 100% been for me vs currently most of these contents are for my baby. In both cases, I would’ve still had a backpack but it would’ve most likely contained duotangs, binders, and a lunch kit. 15 years ago I would’ve also typically carried a duffle bag due to the sports I played.
The presence of not one, but two masks would probably indicate to an archeologist that we were living in a time of a pandemic, or maybe this will be the “norm” going forward and won’t seem odd in the future. They might also guess I am a first-time Mom carrying her health passport around to note every piece of change like her updated weight.