Matroshka 29:th of Nov

Matroshka - The Responsive News Concept. Weekly report 29th of November 2013.

What we have done

Since there was a deadline for the final report this week we met three times to finalize and proofread the report. We made some changes to the background and developed the results part. Prior to developing the result part however, analysis of the data from our field studies was finished. We also designed illustrations for the report to make it easier for people to understand our concept. There has also been some brainstorming done regarding structure and layout of the upcoming presentation.

What we will do

During next week we will prepare the final presentation, of which the concept we might change a little from what we previously planned. We will probably not make an animated video as planned from the beginning, but instead make a presentation that demonstrates the concept of Matroshka by interacting with the audience through the same media that Matroshka utilizes - text, audio and video. We plan to  switch between these during the presentation, just like in our concept idea.

Problems encountered

Some of the data from our field study was very hard to analyze and present in a good manner, and therefore we had to do some simplifications. The main problem with the data analysis was the sheer amount of data gathered which turned out to be very time consuming to analyze. Even though this might not be as “accurate” as presenting the complete data set it might be easier for the readers to understand.

We had some problems to decide which parts of the report to focus on. Because of the word count limit we could not elaborate every part as much as we wanted, instead we had to focus on the part where we present our concept. This means that the discussion might be a little shorter than what we wanted.

Resources

The field study data.

Crowdopolis w. 48

What we have done.

We continued to aggregate the focus-group survey data while writing our article for the book. As previous groups mentioned, it is a busy time at school, so everyone had other commitments, and we tried really hard to make a good text in short time. Work was separated into stages, as we outlined the initial content, added more analysis, scientific background, and developed few scenarios for the actual Crowdopolis’ users. Then we realised that our article must be less serious and more entertaining, so we deleted some research references and kept one scenario only.

We also decided not to describe too much, both in a functionality of Crowdopolis and its current predecessors, as we wanted to encourage the reader’s curiosity and imagination.

Also, we discussed the appropriateness of scientific terminology and quotes from media scholars and journalists, as some people are not familiar with this background and can find such details distracting. On the other side, we believe that the book will attract specialists or people interested in media theory, so our references will be useful for them.

Next, we shortened our discussions with experts, leaving only the most necessary comments, so in the end we basically have one quotation. We believe it will help to keep the reader’s attention on our project, instead of wishing to learn more about our experts’ activities.

In the meantime we worked on prototype concepts, creating the website’s elements.

What we will do.

We will continue to develop Crowdopolis’ visual design, as we want to demonstrate its usability in our video. As we realised, work on a real visual footage would be less time-consuming than a website design, so our goal is to create the whole pages and evaluate its functionality on potential users. Then we will create a video with both off screen and on screen elements.

Resources.

We continue to read The Nieman Journalism Lab (Harvard University’s blog) on citizen journalism that provides a lot of actual examples of crowdsourcing news websites.
We also took into account the recent Scandinavian research concentrated exactly on our subject: “Re-imagining crisis reporting: Professional ideology of journalists and citizen eyewitness images”; it helped us to even better formulate Crowdopolis’ tasks.

You've got bias - Report week 48

What we have done

This week has been all about writing. We finished our report at our last writing session and we are quite happy about what we produced.

What we will do

Next week we will start working toward making a very good and easy to understand presentation. Our system is a bit complex so we need to make sure to simplify with good illustrations and explanations. We have not yet decided how we are going to present this, whether it will be a movie, illustration, animation or live theatre performance, so making that decisions will be our first priority.

Problems encountered

Doing the final write up took longer than expected (as always with these kinds of tasks) and we confirmed what we have heard somewhere; “Estimate how long you need to work on a given task, multiply that number by and you will have the actual time it will take to perform the task”. Some parts of the report could have been developed more, but overall we are happy with the result.

Changes in the project

We did not make any changes that has changed the scope of our project or in which direction we intend to go now.

Gossip status report w.48

GREEN LIGHT

Gossip 

What we have done. This week we have completed our report, which has also been our single focus this week. Pictures of prototypes has been produced to give the reader a clear image of our product, and to also back up the text in the report. 

What we will do. From now on we will of course put all our focus on the presentation. We already have some ideas, which we presented on the mid-crit presentation, and we think we'll stick to that idea and develop it. And we are also going to take a look at the material Viktor sent us as inspiration for the presentation, to get a better view on what's good to place emphasis on while presenting. 

Problems encountered. We have had some problems with the text. It was a bit tricky to get it coherent and to create a good flow between the different paragraphs. Hopefully the text is now understandable and easy to read, while we also hope it is not too formal.

Changes in the project. This week we havn't done any major chenges, just some fine details that has been determined and/or adjustment. 

Resources. There has not been any more new sources, however, the ones all ready investigated have rather been rogued out during the writing process, so that the report is based on reputable sources. 

Other Here is a first drawing of our product that we did at a meeting one about two weeks ago. 

The Morticians Weekly Report w. 48 (29/11)

What we have done
This week, we concentrated on finishing both the book chapter and the website/mobile app design before the deadline. The process went quite smooth, as our group shared the same vision regarding our project, and therefore very few uncertainties have occurred. Still, it’s been a week full of writing, rewriting and rechecking that our data is correct. We also made some changes to our product’s design: we added some elements and came up with new functionalities, such as voice-based navigation (represented by means of a microphone icon) or symbol-based tooltips allowing users to quickly navigate through various news stories in “News in 100 seconds” video section. It’s been a busy week, but everyone did their part and we are satisfied with the result.  

What we will do
The next step for us is to start working on our presentation. There are few things that we have to decide before we can do it, though. As our plan is to create a PowerPoint presentation without any words, we need to think very carefully about how it's going to look. During next week, we will also decide whether we will create a movie or not, and if yes, we will have to come up with ideas regarding its presentation and structure.

Problems
No severe problems right now. However, the creation of movie might be somewhat problematic due to the time constraints and “nature” of our final product (it’s a mock-up, and not the fully functional website/app).

Changes in the project
The main assumptions about our project remained the same. The only thing that has been changing a bit over time was our product's design, because so far we have been mainly focusing on the overall quality of our proposal. However, the design process, despite being time consuming, didn’t prove to be particularly problematic, as we have been adding new elements over time.  

Resources
During the weekend, our group will be watching movies similar to the one posted below in search for inspiration:

http://youtu.be/c4Jo8QoOTQ4?t=11s 

Have a nice weekend!

Newsify w.48

What we have done

This week most of the time went to finishing up the paper. We had meetings every night up untill the hand in where we revised and discussed what to add and remove. We also had to do some images to better try and illustrate our idea. After the hand in we have begun discussing the typ of presentation we want to do, and eventhough nothing is set in stone, we feel that we have quite good understanding of what we want to accomplish.

What we will do
What now remains is working on the presentation and trying to make it as good as possible. For this we will meet and begin the work for real on monday to try and get going as soon as possible. As I mentioned we have a fairly clear view of how we want to present it to be able to get through with our idea as best as possible.

Problems
For our report we sent out a couple of e-mails to gain better knowledge about some of the technical parts in our idea. Sadly ee didnt recieve any respons from one of the emails and another one was very late to arrive. So even though it didnt hurt us that much, it was unfortunate that we didnt recieve responses from all our emails.

GISMO Weekly Report 29/11

What we have done:

The group has completed the work of the report, which was easier said than done due to some issues that appeared quite late prior to the deadline a couple of days ago. Some of us started with their part of the paper relatively late since they had a lot of other activities scheduled. Further this delayed a lot of the work, given that other members were more or less dependent on their parts to be able to advance. In addition, it was hard and particularly time-consuming to make the report coherent since we all write different. Overall we had a lot of information from the previous literature study, interview, focus groups together with added information like scenario, description of functions, discussion and so on as well. Actually we had some difficulties keeping us under the limit of five thousand words which where rather unpredictable. So basically a lot of time was spent discussing which parts we should keep and which parts we should thrash.

Also we had a group meeting quite recently regarding the final presentation. Three different ideas considering the video recording where discussed carefully and necessary aspects like how hard, time-consuming and relevant each idea really is, was pointed out. Finally we managed to determine an idea that everyone feels comfortable with.

What we will do:

Full focus on the final presentation and try to get started as soon as possible. Some parts of the script are still left to do and we need to use the time carefully in order to make everyone be able to work simultaneously, partly because of the limited time left, but also due to other courses and activities. One positive thing is that everyone seem to have more spare time the next couple of weeks, so hopefully we can accomplish something we could be proud of.

Changes in the project:

No major changes have been made lately.

Resources: 

We have an unfinished script but clearly, that´s nothing we want to reveal yet. Good things come to those who wait!

DEAFining news (Surdi Screen) - Weekly report - Week 48

What we have done

During this week almost all time has been put into writing and finishing the final paper for the book. However, we did some finalizing research in the beginning of the week, by collecting and analyzing the last answers gathered from our survey. Additionally, we called Johan Hartman, head of sustainable development at SVT, to gather some last input regarding SVTs responsibilities and their view of if they are fulfilling them. We are satisfied with the paper and feel that we have framed the problem and come up with an end solution that would be beneficial for the deaf community in a future scenario. We also feel that our solution is grounded on developing technology and will be able to realize in the coming 20 years.

What we will do

After finishing the final paper, we immediately started planning for the last part of the course by preparing for the presentation. We have booked group meetings for early next week where we intend to plan the final presentation. Firstly, we will decide on a storyline for the video we will have in the presentation and then we will create a storyboard before actually starting to record scenes. That way, we hopefully will be more time efficient and be able to spend more time on the video editing, which usually is more time consuming than recording the video.

Status

At the moment, we feel that everything is under control and we are comfortable with the plan for the coming two weeks before the presentation. The biggest obstacle for us moving forward will probably be for the whole group to meet all together. Until this point, we have been able to work around it by assigning work to the ones who have not been available and then meeting up later to discuss it together. For the coming weeks, we have booked meetings where as many of us as possible can attend. We have also had in mind and planned the video and presentation work so that we will be able work around possible clashes in schedules.

Matroshka - Weekly report nov 22nd

Matroshka - The Responsive News Concept. Weekly report 22nd of November 2013.

What we have done

During the past week we have met two times. The first meeting was on November 18 where we talked about how our report would be structured and set up headlines for it. We also decided upon who should write what and for the rest of the week, the writing is being done individually for now. We will then follow up this writing process with a group completion and integration of all texts into a cohesive report. The other meeting was on November 20 where we talked about what had been said during the group leader’s lunch meeting. This had given us some smaller tasks, which we went through during the meeting. We decided that Simon is responsible for the text and we filled in the form for trend wishes. The first trend we are seeing is that the number of devices are increasing and in the future we will have a bigger need for synchronization between them. The second was that people will keep living a hectic and stressful lifestyle within urbanized areas, which we see as pretty much a straightforward extrapolation of what we already observe today. We have found that the Reuters Institute Digital Survey provides us with an interesting source on device use and news consumption. We have studied it in order to support some of the claims that we will make in the report, especially in the Background section. On top of this, data from the studies the were conducted last week has some some extent been analyzed. The studies involved setting up Wi-Fi hotspots which enabled us to monitor traffic and thus identify browsing trends and their relations with the hotspot environment. The analysis of the data has turned out to be time consuming due to the large amount of data gathered. The challenge lies within writing a filtering algorithm that will extract relevant data from the data noise. As of today the results of the studies seem to be good, but the filtering algorithm needs more time in order for it to turn fully reliable.

What we will do

In the next week we will finish the report and compile it before the deadline on Wednesday. We will also have to come up with a corporate identity and a sketch for the graphical user interface, both for the end users and the media companies that are using the service. We need to discuss if this should be in the report or just for the final presentation. After we have handed in the report we will start to sketch on the animation and further plan what to do for the presentation. It will likely present the functionality of our concept and illustrate this through graphical representations of devices and situations.

Problems encountered

- Hard to analyze the data from the field study

- Unclear idea of what the report should or should not contain

Resources

Reuters Institute Digital News Report, www.digitalnewsreport.com

The Morticians Weekly Report w. 47 (22/11)

What we have done

This week, we mostly worked on structuring and writing the book chapter. And on develop the website/mobile app design, which is going well. The logo is finished and all of the features should be decided by now, we might only do some last minute changes on the design.

Some further research have also been done around the underlying technology of having a news provider without any text and discussions about what already exists and what have to be developed if the news creation will not simply be replaced with movie-making.

What we will do

We have to concentrate on finishing the book chapter for the deadline and making the design on the website/mobile app enought finished for being published in the book. We will make the design on more parts of the website/mobile app, and replace the placeholders with pictures. After the book deadline we will have to start make plans for the final presentation.

Problems

No severe problems right now. Just some headache with finding enough pictures created by ourselves that are “newsworthy” enough to be used in the design of our final product.

Changes in the project

The main assumptions of our project have remained the same. When discussiing the aspect ratio of the design we realized that off course the handheld devices will look different in a couple of years. This video is a good inspiration for how they might look like (meaning that everything can be a device) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kv-71NH6bQ0

Resources

Logo(please note that it’s work in progress!):

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/13997175/dor_logo.jpg

Found a site with different video clips with Marshall McLuhan:Marshall McLuhan speaks

And an interesting article on how the post-literate age might me nearer than we think:

Patrick Tucker. The Dawn of the Postliterate Age

https://www.wfs.org/node/1000

Happy weekend!

You've got bias - report week 47

What we have done

We have had further discussions on how we can present our idea in the best way possible. We do need to continue working on this as our system is quite complex and requires an easy to understand approach. However our presentation will most likely include a news article that we do a scan on and show what our system will present to the user.

We divided the work between us so that we can write individually between our meetings.

What we will do

At this time our main focus is to produce the report and will continue doing so until wednesday.

Problems encountered

Sadly, we have realized that we will not be able to interview our journalist nor Joel Brynielsson in time for the report to be handed in. We have, however, gotten a lot of helpful information from Joel that we can use. As for the journalistic part, we have to rely on literature to get a deeper understanding of the journalistic processes of news writing.  

Changes in the project

We have decided that it would be good to choose a few aspects of bias and work with them more thoroughly so that our final product will be more concrete and less of an abstract concept. We have chosen three specific functionalities: comparing sources used in an article to other articles, comparing the labels used on an entity in an article to other articles and simple fact checking, by extracting numerical values from articles and comparing that with data from government databases.

The aim of our project will be to make the readers aware of some common ways bias is expressed in news articles.

While it feels like we have decresed the scope of our project a bit, we believe what we have now is both focused, usefull and realizable within the next 15 years or so.

Gossip status report w.47

YELLOW/GREEN LIGHT

• Gossip 
• What we have done. Since last week when we conducted our focus group and interview we have now started to distibute different resbonsibles concerning our book chapter. There has been a process of transcribing the focus group and interview. We have also stared to think more about how a prototype of our producs should look like and how it will function. These ideas are in the process of designing so that the interface can be presented well in the chapter.
• What we will do. The most important thing for us now is to collect all the infromation to our chapter and also to make sure it is readable for someone external. Also the text needs to be coherent. After the 27th we will focus on the presentation.
• Problems encountered. We have not faced any major problems but there has been some issues trying to figure out what to actually write about in the chapter. Both by content but also from a angle that is coherent with everyone elses' thought of how the text should be presented. So our biggest challenges is to get the text together before the 27th, with a high quality as possible. 
• Changes in the project. The changes is that we now have decided totally which type of techniques and emotional response we want to measure, to make the whole project "plausible" at least. 
• Resources. We have in addition to standard literary studies also completed a successful focus group and an interview. Since we have narrow down the techniques and emotions there has been a lot more easier to find good literature online. 
• Pictures. Here is a picture from one of our working sessions at the KTH library, a couple of weeks ago. 

GISMO - Weekly Report 22/11

        What we have done:

- The project group has successfully conducted two focus groups during the week, both with a lot of interesting feedback and suggestions of improvements. The process was audio recorded and carefully analyzed afterwards.

- An interview has at last been made with Ambjörn as well. Obviously he had different point of views on features and functions in relation to the focus groups which we appreciated.

- Furthermore has an additional literature study been made. Some connecting and interesting articles have been found but generally speaking it was difficult to find content that would gain value somehow to the project.

- The trend assignment is done and has been delivered.

- Finally the group has divided the headlines with content among the members in order to make it as fair as possible.

        What we will do: Obviously the report writing will dominate the upcoming weekend and week. We need to start working on appropriate mock-ups and decide how the final interfaces will look like. Hopefully will we be able to create some kind of script or structure for the upcoming presentation and video recording as well. The sooner we get started the better!

        Problems encountered: We haven´t received any answers from either Oskar or Kerstin. Oskar responded though and said that he was to busy while Kerstin totally ignored us. Thus thanks to the encouraging participants from the focus groups and Ambjörn we think we have enough evaluation material to walk through anyway. Moreover the project editor meeting the next Tuesday came as a surprise, because that force us to more or less finish our report during Monday evening, which caused problems for some members, since they have a lot of scheduled activities during the weekend. In the end this means that some members have to pull a heavier load than others even  though it was split fairly at the beginning.

        Changes in the project: Obviously we will not receive any answers from either Kerstin or Oskar. Otherwise we haven´t changed the route!  

        Resources: - http://dalspace.library.dal.ca/bitstream/handle/10222/15383/Salimian%20Rizi,%20Mohamad%20Hussein,%20MCSc,%20CSCI,%20August%202012.pdf?sequence=3

http://www.perceptualedge.com/articles/visual_business_intelligence/geographical_data_visualization.pdf

- http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/21670811.2012.740273#.Uo-LFMQz2cc
- https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Ftii2goXBi8E6zTEujH-gX8KCMC0vp8TKWKAZ1Fe52c/edit
- http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/17512786.2012.667278#.Uo-ODcQz2cc
- https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Oth5_F9Su5Ts_XKL8WPpHxpSl4UOmcFDlGEpqNx1kPI/edit

Group meeting during the week

Future of Ads - weekly report

What we have done

This week we've continued to prepare for the shoot that will take place this weekend, by having meetings with the actors and the camera girl and gathering all the needed props.

We've also reviewed the book chapter as well as completed and sent out the survey. Furthermore we've looked into ways to explain the technologies used in our project and made an outline for the final presentation.

Thursday afternoon we met with Linda at INCF for our second study. Linda gave us an introduction to working with neuroscience research and then told us about resent trends in neuroscience, and we especially discussed the potential use of EEG and fMRI for our project.

What we will do

We'll continue by creating the different parts of our final presentation. We'll put together an explanation clip where we use animations to visualize our solution. We'll also write a manuscript and record a voiceover for it. And of course we'll need to do quite a lot of editing for our epic scenario film.

Problems?

Nope, we haven't really encountered any major setbacks thus far but we're aware some of the most demanding parts of our project are yet to come. Since our concept's rather futuristic, it requires a very clear and unambiguous explanation so that the audience can grasp it even in the short amount of time we'll get for the final presentation.

Screen World Weekly Report 22/11

This was a busy week for us. We have almost gotten materials that we need from qualitative and quantitative researches and built the primary framework. Everything is going to be finished.

What we have done:

- This Tuesday, we had an interview with one employee in a social TV company. From the interview, we were inspired very much by his talk on new functionality and idea behind, which promote us on framework design.

- We also used this week to finish the questionnaire. From the analysis, we saw tendency on second screen usage and got suggestions on how to made second screen attractive.

- To discover further insight and tested the market on second screen, we started focus group in this week as well. The focus is on news habits, relationship between the second screen and news, and possible changes in the future.

- In the routine meeting, we shared our analysis and findings in this week, during which, everyone is inspired. Then, we integrated Daniel’s suggestion this week, did adjustment on our core idea, and built the framework with discussion.

What we will do:

- Our group will keep working on our focus group. Focus group works well on expending our sight on second screen usage, so we decide to use this weekend to “go out of building” and talk to more people.

- After getting every researches done, we will discuss together ad finally complete framework. We will also embed our framework into personas to make it more practical.

- Before the deadline, we need to finish the report, for example, ordering our idea in good logic, rewriting it in more audient friendly way and of cause polishing the language.

- After finishing the report, we will start to make transcription for the video. Based on our core idea, we will use that video to show the framework in fun and active way, and engage it into person daily life.

Problems encountered:

- One problem we are facing is that all what we get by now are quite fragmented. We need to understand the result in depth and integrated them in coherent logic so that the result could make sense.

- Instead of discussion on customer behaviors, we need to consider more from the perspective of news industry and find the potential channel for value creation.

Resources:

Our question database for focus group.

Result from questionnaires, interviews, and literature review.