Week 4 - Studio

In our contact last week, we were required to bring 4 - 5 ideas which were presented to the rest of the contact group. From this we formed our project groups and decided to pursue a particular idea present in the contact.

The idea that we decided to pursue as a group was a map showing the occurrence of natural disasters aimed at high school students. The concept consisted of a map of the world/Australia with pins placed in the locations where natural disasters have occurred. The user will be able to pinpoint the exact location of significant events of the disaster by zooming in. When the pin is clicked on, more information will be available including stats, year it occurred as well as some newspaper articles relevant to that particular pin. The resource is targeted towards high school students (15-18yo) to give them a visual representation of natural disasters while still providing effective resources through newspaper articles.

Before this week's contact session we had to develop 3 of our concepts so members of the class could evaluate it through the '6 hats of thinking', in doing so identifying any strengths, weaknesses and improvements that could be made. Our 3 concepts were, Australian Natural Disaster Map, Celebrity Frequency and Guess the Year. Celebrity Frequency is a catalogue of Australian celebrities and provides various information about them such as; rises and falls, money earned, interesting facts, characteristics and others. Guess the year is an interactive game which a historical image of a famous Australian landmark (such as the opera house) is displayed and the user needs to select the correct year in which the photo was taken from 4 possible choices. Once an answer is pressed, information about the image is displayed. The faster the correct answer is pressed the more points the user gets and they are award no points if it is wrong.

A couple of us went around to different groups critiquing their ideas while others stayed and wrote down feedback from others about our concepts. I went to other groups and found some of the ideas very interesting and also gained some further ideas that we could use.
Here is some of the feedback that we got on our ideas:

Concept 1: Natural Disaster Map

Zoom In Functions -> To see more Pins, to be able to see more locations
If there are more than 1 disaster at a location, put like a directory to see if one they can choose
Link the newspaper/articles for more information
Audience: People who wants to travel?? (Could be too broad)
Changing the categories of natural disasters

Concept 2: Guess the Year

More like a guessing game than a learning
Spending little time on the game (How to keep user attracted)
Help people learn about discoveries
Its Okay but idea lacks depth
Just a guessing game
Have a blurb that is about something that happened in that year swell
Range the year
Dates of discoveries, Get dates from published articles , More information if needed

Concept 3: Celebrity Frequency
Heaps of digging for information
Initial Thinking: Its got potential, Alright
A lot of people can use this information, large audience
Would be interesting if this concept comes out
Comedic writing would be good for the rise and fall of celebrities
Take a lot of work to set up like too big for trove to automatically
Hard to pull out all Celebrities information (Narrow down to certain celebrities)
Leaderboard (for who has appeared in the most movies for actors/actresses)
Next Step: Research each point, if there is enough information on trove -> concept can be down

We decided on a time for group meetings will be meeting on Monday to discuss exactly what has to be done. The concept design document as been started and we also need to make a poster to present our idea next week to the contact.