Rough Cut Selector Implementation

For implementation I am responsible for how users search and select Trove content to be turned into Rough Cuts. For the moment I've just called this part of the site the 'Rough Cut Selector' page. Since Akanksha and Young are still working on getting the CSS and HTML for the site finished, I've just used bootstrap's jumbotron template to get started.

I looked a bit more into the kinds of results that are returned from both the Digitised newspapers and the Photos, objects and pictures section of Trove and decided to construct the API calls from the digitised newspapers simply because there was not that many results for crafting. I've based the code for what we demonstrated during our progress demonstration on the Trove Basic Search example from the DECO1800 resources site.

A major problem I've encountered is that Trove's API doesn't allow me to directly access the jpeg urls of scans of digitised newspapers, although I am able to access a pdf file containing these images.

Although digitised newspapers have an option to be rendered as jpeg files, I am having trouble targeting the URLs

You would think that the URLs Trove provides for the jpeg option would simply return the image src, but the URL returns a combination of image and text.

URLs for jpeg images return a combination of text and image 

This means that when I try to put this URL into an src tag I get the following instead of an image:

I've talked to Michael about this during the practical sessions and he suggested trying out plugins like FancyBox. I've also looked at trying some sort of image scraping to access the images directly. At this point I'm just going to see what works. Although I could change our content to what is returned from Photos, pictures, and objects, I think that the scanned images are a better fit for the retro/vintage feel of our site.

Paper Prototypes for Workshop

Some pictures of the paper prototypes I created for our team to test user interaction in week 7's workshop. The actual feedback we received from using these prototypes can be found on our team blog.

Wireframes for Communicating Changes

I think our team was a little bit confused after we tried to incorporate some of the changes we made based on the feedback from presentations. To try and communicate some of the changes that were made a bit more clearly I made some very rough wireframes to highlight certain aspects of the concept and communicate some of the changes we made. 

Officially Lisa, Young, and Akanksha are working on finalising the wireframes and then implementing a layout in CSS/HTML based on this. Katie and Mayi will also be using the finalised wireframes to create a style guide and some visual mockups. I think the main purpose of the wireframes I created above was as a communication tool, and attests to the wide variety of uses something like a wireframe can have. 

Project A Documentation

This post is just to document what I did for the presentation we made last week for project A. I think that my role for this part of the project could be described as "compiler". I essentially compiled, edited and added content to what everybody else had worked on.

Breakdown of what I was responsible for:

Document

• Compiling everyone's work into a cohesive document structure.
• Content for the background research section of the document
• Supplementing things like wireframes etc with descriptions (e.g. Mayi created wireframes for us, and I wrote up a supplementary paragraph explaining them in more detail for the document)

Presentation

• Presenting the slides themselves (speaker)
• Coming up with the questions for feedback + idea to use post-it notes as a way to get feedback. I thought that this might encourage more people to provide feedback (not everyone wants to voice opinions in front of the entire class)
• Structuring the presentation slides (Lisa created the slides)

Feedback from the presentation - Lisa has collected and recorded all the feedback that was left on the post-it notes during our presentation and summarised some of the key points in a post on our team blog.

Our presentation tried to focus on presenting our intended users and the type of experience we wanted them to have on our site. I think this was mainly because we were conducting quite a bit of user interviews and persona-creation activities this week and it ended up influencing how we presented.

While I don't see this as a negative approach to take for our project's process, I think in terms of presenting an idea it was not necessarily the best way to communicate a concept. During a service design workshop I took over the winter break, one of the facilitators talked about the idea of the "Golden Nugget" in communicating an idea. Essentially this is a short and sweet sentence akin to a slogan that communicates the core idea of a concept. In terms of presenting DIY Trove, I think our concept could have used this.

Design Exploration - Idea generation

A lot of the reflections and documentation that I have been doing for this course so far have been recorded in a physical written diary, so some of the content from that diary will be displayed here in pictures. I think I tend to work better when I write things down, so to generate ideas for the design exploration pitch and poster I decided to do most of my brainstorming there. The ideas that were written down here built from the initial exploration I did on Trove. They were also influenced by a group brainstorm session I had with a number of other students in the DECO7180 course.

Overview of some of the ideas generated for the poster/pitch:

• Some kind of data visualisation generator - allow users to create visualisations of particular data sets.
• Create your own Trove Spotlight (akin to the Women's Weekly spotlight in the last post) - allow users to customise specific search results and then display them in their own website outside of Trove.
• Scrapbook/End Note for Trove - a collection of customised notes, pictures and articles 
• Printed Tote bags using data from Trove - choose a photo, map or letter from Trove and design a print that can be sent to a tote bag shop. Alternatively, 3D printed jewellery whose designs are based on designs found in the Trove pictures, photos and objects section.
• Story/timeline creation using Trove photos.
• Creating some kind of spotlight on Australian politics using Trove content.
• "Letters of Note" - letters from today that are addressed and written in response to old letters in the Trove database.
• Annotating old stories, locations etc with users' own personal experiences and stories. 
• Movements in fashion
• Cartoons from old newspapers
• Trove as a resource for fashion students interested in different textiles, fabrics and dressmaking patterns. A DIY section of the site that allows users to share how they use these patterns.

These ideas were eventually whittled down to the following as potential ideas to pitch for the poster.

• DIY Trove - turning Trove into a resource for crafters, especially those interested in dressmaking and fashion. Look for textiles, patterns and inspiration from Trove.
• Trove Memes - a tool that allows users to create and share their own memes based on photos from the Trove database.
• Trove Recipes - a recipe database that provides recipes tied to different time periods and thematic groups. Presented to users alongside broader issues and themes (e.g. Recipes from WW2 alongside a history of rationing in WW2, Bush Tukka and Aboriginal/"White Fella" relations, Vegetarian recipes and the global environment)

Design Exploration - Initial Exploration of Trove

Initial exploration for the project began with just going onto Trove and exploring the types of content that the database provided. I also signed up as a member of the site to gain full access to all the features that the website allowed. The one sentence that I had to structure my exploration was: generate ideas that make Trove data interesting.

Using Trove's Advanced Search yielded more ways to segment search results, including by publication and by year.

Although I spent some time looking through all of the sections of the Trove site, I thought that the content that was being returned from the Digitised newspapers section and the Pictures, photos, objects of the site where yielding the most interesting results. Searching within Pictures, photos, objects bought back content like posters, photographs and charts for example. 

With the digitised newspapers I was reminded of microform records of old newspapers. During my undergraduate degree I had often read comics from old newspapers as well as newspaper articles from WWI and WW2 when I had free time, and remember them being incredibly fascinating as a form of content. Going through the digitised newspaper content on Trove reminded me of browsing newspapers in this way.

 

Trove also had a separate website specially dedicated to coloured covers from the Australian Women's Weekly that I thought was an interesting way to present otherwise quite boring content. The interface provided the opportunity for users to search through the covers by topics like the Royal family, knitting patterns, fashion and pets.