Journal #2

Even though it's not required this week, while I have a moment, I thought I'd share my progress this week. First, I have firmly decided that I will move forward with my previous project idea: to create video tutorials for the OnMyCalendar site. I sent a survey to all the teachers in my school to gauge what types of tutorials would be most beneficial to them, and WOW! Some even said they need help logging in. This will be quite the challenge, but hopefully this will prove to be a useful project for the teachers at my school (and will look good in my portfolio when it comes time to interview for LSTC positions).

Also, I have found (and almost finished) my community service project. My boyfriend's father is a police officer for the city of Maumee in Ohio. Every year, he presents to a group of citizens about some aspect of the police force. This year, he is presenting on accident investigation. He originally called his son (my boyfriend) for help with video editing for the PowerPoint he needed to make for the presentation, and I jumped at the chance to help him! I am compiling his pictures, editing his videos, and putting it all together into a PowerPoint presentation. While I'd love to go a bit more advanced and put it into something like Prezi, I quickly realized that I had to tailor the project to my "client." He is not as technologically advanced as I consider myself to be, and I think Prezi might be too much of a jump for him. Great lesson to learn! Just as Moggridge (2007) mentioned in last week's reading, it's important to consider your people and even go deeper by shadowing them to get a better understanding of their needs. While I am not able to shadow my client, I am able to take my knowledge of his technology capabilities and use that in my creation of the project. Tonight, I finished phase 1 of the project, which included editing all of the videos and putting everything into a PowerPoint. I consider this my "prototype" of sorts. I'd like to make a prototype every day, as Moggridge (2007) suggests, but I'll have to settle for sending him the PowerPoint for him to make suggestions for modifications because of the distance. (See pictures of me working below.... one of all the CDs I had to go through, the other of the 2 computers I was going back-and-forth between!)

From this project, I really learned to consider the needs and capabilities of my client. I had to consider the technical abilities of my client, as well as what hardware/software/internet would be available to him. I got more practice with iMovie and video editing. Overall, it was a great project and learning experience, and it was beneficial to my client, as well!

I feel confident that I have a good start to the Studio class!

Moggridge, B. (2007). Designing interactions. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.