Today I completed the entire Writer/Design Analysis Questions page for the website PopcornMaker (see attached document). Completing this form allowed me to focus my attention on properly analyzing the site and completing most of the groundwork for this project. I now have a clear direction on where my analysis is going and my next step is to take the basic research information that I compiled in this document and turn it into a presentation. My plan is to create a slide for nearly every category on this questionnaire with a title that briefly describes what aspect I will be covering and using the rest of my information as talking points for the slide. Following a short analysis of the site, I will also make my own video with screenshots walking through how I created my video and what features I used.

 

WriterDesignerAnalysisQuestionsJoe

 

 

I have to say my favorite meme would be the carnist meme simply because the other ones I came across were familiar to me already. Its major downside is that it will generally only appeal to the already veg*n community and those unfamiliar with veg*nisms won’t understand some of the various iterations of the meme.

What I Did

Today, I began working on Project 2: Interrogate an Interface. The tool I am going to be dissecting is “Storify.” To best be able to critically analyze this tool, I am going to create my own story using “Storify.”

I’ve begun constructing the article on “Storify.” The subject of this story is going to be the release of NFL Network’s “A Football life: Sean Taylor.” Since Taylor is my favorite player and this episode aired just a week ago, I felt as though it would appropriate and interesting.

Why I Did It

Creating an article on “Storify” will help me better assess all the aspects of the tool and write a more concise review of the tool. It will also benefit me to simply have an example of a “Storify” article to use for screenshots, etc.

Today I worked on interrogating and using the interface Masher.com as well as taking screenshots of the tool itself while I was using it. I did this in coincidence with my notes on the process and for the presentation I will be giving on the project in two weeks time. All in all, this web tool was relatively quick to interrogate, but I will be going back over it multiple times to make sure I have not missed anything.

I will continue working on both my presentation and my web-essay for the project over the weekend.

What I did:

I played around with my site “Comic Master” and created my own graphic novel. I also filled out a good chunk of the Writer/Designer Analysis Questions.

Why I did it:

Playing around with the site helped me to familiarize myself with its tools and how the site works. This will better help me analyze the site. Filling out the questions google doc helped me to sort out my thoughts about the site and will be a great benefit when I go back to write the essay.

Here is the link to my Writer/Designer Analysis Questions. 

Today I focused on working with Slipp and seeing how it worked. I worked through the Designer Analysis and filled out the various sections of that sheet while I explored (the document is attached). I downloaded the app and right away noticed a major constraint. The app frequently cancels out. I had to wait 15 minutes after it exited out for me to be able to use it again. For this reason, I was not able to explore the app today. I had to focus on analyzing the website, even though the tool is optimized for mobile devices and meant to be used on one. After exploring the site for a bit and viewing other’s Slipps, I tried making my own to see what it was like. I am still in the process of making it and figuring out how the site works.

https://drive.google.com/a/vt.edu/file/d/0BwMK3mc5r_YjOWhhVkR1RkZiV3c/view?usp=sharing

What I Did & Why I Did It

WeVideo is being put into trial mode at the moment. I’ve been using its features like uploading some media content in order for me to create an “example video” for my project. I also plan to record a demo video of how I edit my video in real time because I feel like this project would be flat without visual components to help get my point across to the audience. In addition, I’ve been taking notes on a separate word document of my first impressions, advantages and disadvantages that I’ve come across while using the interface.

What I did

I explored Infogram, which is a site dedicated to making infographics and charts. I took notes on the usability and began making an infographic. I started with a graph at the top that will ultimately show Virginia Tech’s enrollment from 1872-2008 based on information I found on the Virginia Tech website. I plan to add information about college enrollment, war influence on enrollment (it drops significantly during the world wars), the growing female presence, and the racial breakdown.

Why I did it

I chose to start with the graph because it was at the top. I chose to do the Virginia Tech enrollment over time because I couldn’t change the chart type to a bar graph, so I could not use my original idea of the number of students in each college/major. The enrollment over time lends itself well to a line graph.