I saw this Talk by Eli Pariser about how Facebook and Google manipulate without consent the information you are exposed to on the internet.
It’s great if you are interested in the politics of the web and the amount of control that companies like Facebook and Google have over information that we as users freely give them, although they would palm it off by saying ‘it’s relevant information targeted at you.’ what they are in fact doing is editing the information we are offered. The user builds the mould with their likes, dislikes, hobbies and interests and are then restricted within it.
While looking at the vehicle of information i came across this article, at first the well designed data visualisation caught my eye but the article itself is an interesting read.
The article is from Baekdal.com and is titled Where is everyone? it gives data about the way people interact with information.
Because i have been researching this area to see such an easy to interpret graph is great but the information in the article is also to a high standard.
It is interesting to see how the access to information has evolved over the years and how it is possibly going to develop in the next few years.
So as to get an idea of what my website is going to be like I have been looking at some websites that are about climate change. Some of them are a little on the dull side and others are actually quite good. I’m not designing my website just yet but I have got a rough idea of what I think it’ll look like and have began sketching out some ideas. I want my website to be simple looking and easy to use and readability is key. As said in my proposal I am aiming my website at people aged 18-25 years old that is students and young home owners. Here are a few of the sites that I have looked at.
This website is full of information and is one of the better designed websites I have looked at. This website is mainly concentrating on “carbon footprints” which I think is why the designers have opted for the use of black in the website this is very affective and emphasises the key themes of the website but I want my website to be lighter and although I feel green would be a bit of a cliché I will most probably settle on a green themed site as one of the ideas the site will be conveying is green living. Friends of the Earth
Friends of the earth is a charity that do a lot of work outside of climate change but I have mainly looked at the climate change pages at I want to get a feel for the imagery used. This website carries on the theme of the whole site and looks quite good. I found a lot of information on this website and may use this as a resource when I come to write the literature for the website.
Christian Aid is another charity that do work around climate change. Their colour is red and their website is designed in accordance with this, the colours of the previous websites are down to branding I think when I come to design the elements of my website I will brand my website as if it was a company because I feel it will have more of an effect when people view the site.
While looking at virtual reality technology for research for the current project I saw this article on sciencedaily.com and I was intrigued as to what it could be. To really get it you should read the full article but it looks into why the Internet is sometimes slow, websites go down for unknown reasons this article posses the question: Are Internet ‘black holes’ to blame?
The VirtuSphere is in short a 360˚ treadmill and is the next step towards full physical immersion. the VirtuSphere is a large sphere for an individual to get in and allows them 6 degrees of movement which when the user is wearing a wireless headset and is exploring a virtual environment I’m sure this product really comes into its own. Although the brief asks us to produce a virtual environment it is always tempting to look at the products that put what we produce to use. Having never heard of the VirtuSphere I don’t really know what it would be like but judging from some of the images and video footage I can image it is an experience. They apparently are being used in military training although I haven’t heard of it over here. They mentioned that in time they will be put to use in people’s homes and used as exercise which sounds interesting but would make rounds of Halo very tiring.
The brief for this project is to produce an interactive interface for a location related kiosk and to apply the use of phidgets. This company design kiosks>> I began by looking at what kiosks can be used for. This image is of an Easyjet kiosk used for checking in which could save time. Kiosks can be used as a replacement for human to human interaction, this can be seen from a business side it can cut down costs of staff. While looking at kiosks I found that kiosks can be applied to any context, some companies use them to present information for example NCT (Nottingham City Transport) use a touch screen to help commuters to easily view travel timetables. Interactive interfaces can be used as a means to present information, for this project I would like to try using an interface to give the user an experience that they can takeaway and possibly reflect on so in other word a piece of interactive art.
Interactive kiosks have become a part of everyday life and millions of people use them everyday, ATM’s (automated teller machines) are a perfect example all of them offer a similar service and follow a basic structure but some still tend to be better than others. This is due to the person designing it having the user in mind, so on the brief for the interface design it must be readable, easy to use and clear to the user what does what. Although each of those points could be interpreted as the same thing they are different. The first being readability, the user must be able to read and absorb the information being presented. The second point is usability, the user must be able to interact with the interface with easy. And finally the interface must be clearable. The user must know what each option is and what input corresponds to that option.
I have written my questionnaire and have used www.polldaddy.com to create it and make it easily accessible online. I am hope for 50 responses to my questionnaire so as to get a good insight into peoples feeling regarding social internet tools.
Sound Recording When gathering sounds for this project I used an Edirol R0-9 which is a portable MP3 and WAV recorder, it’s a pretty cool bit of kit and is really easy to use it has a better a directional microphone that plugs into the to so you can get some high quality sounds.
Flash Music players Although there weren’t many there was one or two mp3 players created in flash these were very basic and just played and mp3 that was imported in to an exported flash movie using Actionscript.
I also looked at an mp3 player I had created previously I created it using Actionscript 2.0, and as I want to use the new syntax I didn’t use any of the elements from it.
