Today’s class
1. Refamilizaring ourselves with the big
picture.
2. Debriefing preliminary reflections and
user research.
3. Characterizing the user/audience.
4. Getting familiar with envisioning.
5. Storytime.
Um, what are we doing?
We are designing a collection of videos on the
subject of sustainability.
That was easy!
What does “designing a
collection” mean?
A design is a plan. An architect designs buildings; a
construction team builds them. You are collection architects.
A design can be represented in various ways. Buildings are
represented with blueprints. Your designs will be represented
through three documents, which together form your
blueprints:
• A set of personas and scenarios.
• A design strategy brief.
• A “sketch” of your collection using the open video toolkit
environment.
What does “designing a
collection” mean?
A collection, for us, is more than a set of documents. A
collection is a set of documents that is selected, described,
arranged, and made available through a digital library
interface. The documents, metadata, information architecture,
and various user features are all part of the collection
experience.
You are designing, or planning out, the entire collection
experience. Your particular challenge in doing so is to use the
collection to articulate a unique point of view on the subject
of sustainability that is persuasive to, and satisfies the
information needs of, a particular audience.
How are we doing this?
As we discussed last week,
our work is structured
through an interlocking set
of activities.
Each class session, we will
both discuss the activities
we pursued the previous
week and prepare ourselves
for the activities of the
following week.
Where are we now,
and where are we going?
Last week, we discussed the preliminary reflection and learning
activities in class. You were asked to work on these and bring your
products to class this week.
This week, we will share and discuss the work we did—the
preliminary reflection and user research. We will also prepare to
undertake the envisioning activity, where we create personas and
scenarios (one of your design documents).
Next week, we will prepare to begin the strategizing activity, where
we create a design strategy brief. We will also be introduced to the
sketching environment, the open video toolkit.
What will our final product look like?
The “sketch” component of
your final product will look
like one of these samples, but
totally customized for your
collection.
The “sketch” illustrates your
ideas in one way. The
personas and scenarios also
illustrate your ideas, but in a
different way. The design
strategy brief explains the
rationale behind your
approach.
What will our final product look like?
For example, let’s say that you want your collection to emphasize
the importance of reducing waste to the overall idea of
sustainability.
Your brief might describe your idea of the audience as being more
easily interested in simple techniques for individuals than in more
elaborate long-term policy and citizen action. But you, the author,
think that both are important. So your plan is to feature videos with
simple ideas for home waste reduction on the home page while
creating subcollections that link both topics.
What will our final product look like?
Your sketch might show a featured video on home composting and
a subcollection that combined videos on topics like reusing grocery
bags and on corporations that purify and sell their waste carbon
dioxide. The descriptions you use would emphasize your rhetorical
points in language suited for the audience.
Your personas and scenarios would show how a particular person
might interact with your collection; what might lead that person to
investigate composting videos or what might send that person
screaming into the Internets. Any features that you can’t implement
in the sketch would also be described here.
Clear as mud?
Oh yes, now I am so excited to
challenge all my creative and
analytical faculties on this
fascinating problem!!!