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Transmedia Analytics

Team

Stefania Bercu

Embedded Researcher

stefaniabercu@gmail.com
Yannick Diezenberg

Designer

yannickdiezenberg@gmail.com
Geert Hagelaar

Designer

info@geerthagelaar.nl
Sieta van Horck

Researcher

sietavanhorck@gmail.com
Anne van Egmond

Researcher

vanegmond.anne@gmail.com

Commissioner:

Description

Data, Data, Data.

After a week of exploring Google Analytics, this prototype reflects on our findings concerning Submarines needs. We are now looking forward to next week, the week wherein we will start familiarizing ourselves with data visualizations! The link to this prototype can be found here: Prototype1

 

Prototype1_v2

Clearance

We ended last week with a new goal for the upcoming Friday: a first ‘prototype’. There were no strict restrictions attached to the format of this prototype. Looking to the process, we could say we were still in the process of clarifying the problem situation, so a real ‘touchable’ prototype was no option.
However, we gathered already a lot of information about the project but we may need some extra structure in this information to get a better overview. Thereby, our knowledge of Google Analytics, the main tool in the project, was near beginner. These two problems were big enough to manage in one week and could be formed into a realistic goal for the end of the week.foto 5We decided to use the briefing and the input of Stefania as a starting point. During the week we split up the two main tasks into subtasks:

– Playing around with GA to get a better understanding of the tool.
– Trying to understand the data of UNSPEAK in GA.
– Trying out some correlations with the Query tool.
– Comparing the interface of UNSPEAK with the possibilities of GA.
The outcomes of this research should give us a better overview of the project and process. So we decided to deliver a structured ‘schedule’ as a first prototype.imageThursday morning we got a workshop in visual thinking by Miren Ferdandez. During this workshop we worked on some basic skills in illustrating that could help us in visualizing concepts during our project.

foto 1

Scrumming, spurting and workshopping

Hello world!
So, it’s friday again: time for an update about all our second week! A week fully loaded with very interesting and inspiring workshops, which gave us new insights about how to work at the MediaLAB, but also about how we should work with each other. Earlier this week we all filled in a Belbintest; which tells you a lot about your personality in a group dynamic. Geert turned out to be the explorer of the group, he’s investigative and is always developing new ideas. The expert of our group is Yannick, he has the skills needed to complete the tasks at hand. Surprisingly Anne and me are both drivers; strong motivators that will challenge everyone to succeed. Oddly enough, nor Yannick, Geert, Anne or me turned out to be a teamplayer, which worried us a bit at first. But after a very open and honest talk with our coach Loes, we all felt like we complement each other, which will help us work better together during our time at the mediaLAB!

Scrumming
Wednesday morning we had a workshop on scrumming – the act of a homeless man or woman having an orgy inside your vehicle (according to urbandictionary.com). But don’t worry, that’s not what we learned during the workshop. Scrumming is actually a working method for groups which involves kilometer of post-it’s. Scrum is a process framework that is being used to manage complex product development. It’s not so much a process or technique for building products; rather, its is a framework within which you can employ various processes and techniques. Scrum makes clear the relative efficiency of your product management and development practices that you can improve. The scrum cycle will help us to work in a transparent way and focusses on ‘getting things done’. This week we started our first scrum meeting, in which we defined the tasks that need to be done in order for to deliver the first prototype next friday.

Scrumimage

As described above our first Prototype is due next friday the 21th. To try and get a better idea of what we want to deliver on this date, we met up with Bernhard Rieder – Stefania’s supervisor and the leader of this research from the UvA -, Stefania, Gabrielle and Tamara. Gabrielle Colombo is an expert on data visualizations and will help us in this area. Tamara Pinos will help us with the technical parts of our project. Because we did not really know where we should begin our research, we all decided on a starting point for our project, which would be the ‘ Troubled user’. On the one hand, we will try and identify the problem’s the enduser runs into when visiting the unspeak website and on the other hand we will try to stand in the shoes of the producers and figure out how we could possibly improve the data that Google Analytics gives them. Our prototype for next friday will then entail an infographic of a visualization of the problem we are going to solve during this project.

 

foto

Problem definition 

To help us better understand our problem, we attended a workshop given by Charlie Mulholland named ‘problem definition & requirements’. First impression of Charlie was something along the lines of ‘nutty professor’; with wild ginger hair and contagious enthusiasm for his discipline he inspired us to think outside of the box. The assignment was to brainstorm about our project to try and see the project from  all the different stakeholders point of view. He also asked us to summarize the problem in one sentence: ‘The data tool that Submarine uses to try and understand their user engagement doesn’t provide the data in such a way that is is actionable for Submarine’. So all in all we can say it was a really fertile week with a lot of fun workshops, new insights and hard work! Now it’s time for a beer and team building, have a nice weekend!

 

Tinkering away

10th of february, 9.30: time for workshopping! Namely ‘Tinkering’, facilitated by Tamara and Loes, which meant  conceptualizing, going crazy with thin foil and building an interactive installation. Tinkering is all about finding new applications for material of everyday use. To achieve this we were given two Makey-Makey’s, which we could connect to any object we’d like to use. These Makey-Makey’s are actually little hacking interfaces, which would enable us to create a working electronic circuit.

To try and understand how these Makey-Makey’s work, we were given 20 minutes of ‘ free play’  with them, which already led to some pretty funny interfaces. Then, inspired by the Olympic games, Tamara en Loes challenged us to build our own game the with Makey-Makey’s. Using Scratch – a visual programming language – we were able to build our own designed ice skating game. The game was a twist on ‘dance dance revolution’. Our game exists of two players who have to jump from one leg onto the other as fast as possible to move the avatar on the screen. The player who crosses the finish first, was the winner. Apart from the fact that we had a lot of fun making the game, we also learned that it is very helpful to put your ideas on paper while brainstorming, to break down the production process in pieces and to test your prototype throughout the whole production process, instead of testing it once, just before you deliver it.

Group

Thinkering

 

It’s a wrap: our first week

Kicking of and creating our user scene

YES! Our first week as a team is a fact. It was love at first sight when we first met while kicking off last wednesday. To get to know each other, everyone was asked to prepare a Pecha Kucha, which we presented in the morning. This was a fun way to learn more about everyone’s personality. After these quick introductions we had lunch outside. This might sound weird in the middle of the winter, but since the sun was shining it was actually really nice – okay, and because the studio was fully loaded-.  With new found energy we officially transformed into MediaLAB employees by signing our contracts and a Tour through the maze that is called HvA. Gijs showed where we could find what and gave us insider tips about where to get the best coffee. After the Tour, it was time to get to work.

In order to clarify which problem we exactly need to tackle for Submarine, we developed a ‘user scene’ to get an better understanding of the  context of the project and our particular task in it.  In doing so, we met our embedded researcher Stefania Bercu with whom we worked out our first ideas. Stefania has already been working on the project for half a year and filled us in on her work and progress. . Defining the problem turend out to be quit a brainteaser.  Falling in to a already up and running research was pretty challenging at first, but  after an intensive brainstorm session we defined the problem to the best of our ability. Which turned out to be the following:

When it comes to interactive documentary, Submarine is a leading organisation. Their web based documentaries are opening up a new range of possibilities. On the one hand it provides a richer experience for the viewer, and on the other hand it enables the producers to monitor user data. Google Analytics seemed the perfect toolkit for mapping this. Although Submarine can now see data like users locations, visiting duration and click rates. They can’t translate this endless sea of loose pieces of data into meaningful information; Google Analytics doesn’t present user data in a way that allows the producers to get an understanding of how users engage and interact with their creation.Which would accordantly enable them to enrich the user experience. To make meaning out of all these separate fragments of data, embedded researcher Stefania conceptualized a way to transform these standalone dots into potentially meaningful packages of information. Namely by correlating them. Although this already is a big step, in order for this data to become actionable for Submarine, another sea has to be crossed: making these packages readable.

Geert  Yannick

Yannick and Geert worked there asses off while  animating  the user scene. The result – if we  may say so ourselves -is quite amazing:

Digging the social

Digital humanities lecture Armed with a notebook we attended the last lecture in a series of three: ‘ Digital  Humanities: hype of revolutie?’ at Spui 25. Guided by moderator Sandra Rottenberg,  different scientists gave their views on developments in the digitalization of  science. This consequently means new research questions, analyzations and new  possibilities in applying research. On the 6th of February 2014 social media as a  valuable source of information for traditional media formed the central theme. Piek  Vossen (VU), Eric Borra (UvA) and Richard Rogers (UvA) were asked to speak, and  we were attending.

Piek Vossen discussed the way flows of information are changing; on the one hand  news gets spread faster than before and gets spread through multifarious ways.  Although news gets transferred through these multiple channels, evidently these  channels all rely on the same sources and opinion leaders. Which is notable  because the general conviction is that anyone can be a new source, but apparently  everyone is just copying from the same sources. Therewith, this means that  information is much more vulnerable for subjective changes.

Also editors of Pauw en Witteman, Wieneke van Vucht en Herman Meijer, joined the conversation. In collaboration with the University of Amsterdam they are constantly asking themselves how to incorporate social media in their established format; would it really be of additional value? And if it is, how should they use it and in what form? Borra and Rogers developed a social media analyzing tool in order to answer this question. Analyzing twitterers in terms of demographics, finding who functions as opinion leader, and analyzing the nature and sentiment of messages should show how to use social media in its most efficient way.

Digital Humanities Not every implementation proved to be successful. Real time Twitter messages  appeared to be very disturbing on multiple levels.  Distracting when showing up  meanwhile broadcasting and therewith predominated by abusive and vulgar use  of language. Although adding a second screen doesn’t seem to be Pauw and  Witteman’s cup of tea, crowdsourcing as a specific digital tool proved to be  successful when used in a specific form. Surprisingly the outcome of the  imbedding of social media proved to be more difficult than just implementing a  digital layer. For once and for all this case proves that social media aren’t  standalone miracles that improve traditional media formats. They have be  accommodated to specific needs and changing media ecology and together  morph into a more integrated and balanced whole. Overall, the lecture was very  informative, although we had slightly different expectations. We namely thought that the lecture would be about an exploration in the new scientific field in Digital Humanities, on the level of new research techniques, data management and visualizations.