A close reading of WoW tear-jerker

So I decided to look at a bit of machinima made from WoW clips set to the song “Here Without You” by 3 Doors Down. It has been an interesting journey. It is incredible to think that some clips from World of Warcraft set to a cheesy late 90’s love-rock song could make me misty-eyed. I dare you to watch this video multiple times and not be moved at least a little bit.

Semiotics without Phenomenology?

So I asked this in class, but I wanted to open it up on the forums.

“Can we do semiotics, can we talk about it, without using phenomenology to explain our understanding of the text?”

Jeff’s comment was that’s how they thought about it in the 60’s but they realized there was a missing piece is assuming the signifier connected directly to the signified in an obvious way. But we now know that way is not so obvious. Yet, I believe there were some people who maybe disagree and that there is a bit of separation. If that’s true, please let me know because I’m having an impossible time of separating the two ideas in my head. I feel like at this point semiotics is just a way of looking at phenomenology, you know: things as symbols or representation that connect meaning and message from a supplier to a receiver. Like how UPS delivers my birthday ( november 12th ) cookies from my mom to my house.

..jaMEs

Cheat sheet!

If we were to create a cheat sheet for Interaction culture, what would it look like? (all the fancy terms, with a two line simple explanation and a bull’s eye example). I propose that all of us do this as a class.

Currently struggling to understand these three terms – structuralist view, hermeneutic view, phenomenological view! What’s the difference? How do they fit with each other? Please provide comments or feel free to add your own terms (with or without explanations). Let’s cheat!

Here is a video from one of my favorite movies – Ratatouille. For those of you who have not watched it yet (please do), Remy (the protoganist) makes ratatouille (a vegetable stew). Anton Ego is this big shot food critic who is a hard ass, extremely critical, hard to please and is very skeptical about the stew. The below scene is when he tastes it and is completely floored by the taste since it reminds him of his mother making him this dish during his childhood.

Now let’s try to put on different goggles and see this video again.

Structuralist goggles – The stew was good because it had tomatoes, carrots, beans, etc, cut and cooked perfectly. What is the ingredient? How do we identify it?

Non-phenomenological hermeneutic goggles – The stew is usually prepared during summer. This is because most of the standard ingredients grow during summer. No lifeworld involved.

Phenomenological hermeneutic goggles – The stew is considered as a poor man’s dish since most of the standard ingredients are not expensive.

Non-hermeneutic phenomenological goggles – Anton Ego’s experience is the perfect example for this. Tasting this stew transports him back to his memories.

Am I right? Please correct me if I am wrong.

Quadriplegic Elite WoW Player

Here is something you don’t see every day: a quadriplegic WoW player who’s among the elite (progression raiding is sort of the top of the food chain in WoW–it takes months if not years to get to the point where you can even start doing it; RL issues notwithstanding, this guy is good).

Besides its human interest and inspiration for all of us, this kind of computing at the extremes can be a very informative case study. Obviously, this is a great example of emergent uses of technology.

But from a phenomenological standpoint, it is really amazing how similar this player’s experience of WoW is to any other elite player’s. I mean, other than the physical mechanics of how he plays, he talks about raids like I do. That says something not just about him, but it also says something about WoW as a technological environment: it is able to create similar–and very successful–interactive experiences for an incredibly diverse base of users. And phenomenological theory can help us explore and articulate the characteristics of those felt experiences in rich ways.

Moar Brain Dumping

So I also am going to put up what I have been thinking about for the mock outline exercise. The interaction (again) I was thinking about looking at phenomenologically is the Rock Band character creator:

So I won’t be able to give the “whole” outline here, but the topic I would be talking about is that creating rockers are a painful and reflective experience. The “pain” and “reflective” aspects are the things I would like to attempt to work out phenomenologically. In terms of the actual game experience, the pain comes in through what type of controller you are using to create/edit your rocker, how much time you can dedicate to your rocker, when/where you play Rock Band, and also if you can actually find anything in the rocker’s closet that will please your tendencies.

In terms of a reflective experience, I find this interaction to allow one to reflect on what it means to be a rocker for his/herself, reflect on the achievements done in game, listen and take action on other players’ comments about your rocker, how one can continuously keep reforming their “rocker identity” to the world, and how one can keep pushing themselves to make a better rocker.

So I’ll have to go back to my notes and see if I can find anything to support this (which I believe so, as this came from a reflection on my notes), but I was wondering what the class thinks of at large about how to pull this off in a written form.

(^^)V

WWE Technical Semiotics

So after reading this first introduction about semiotics, and while watching WWE’s Monday Night Raw, it got me thinking about how the theme music they use is loaded with semiotic cues for us to gain insights about the lifeworlds of the wrestler we’re about to watch. I thought it was kinda cool, so I thought I would try some explainin’. This is an older video (from 2007), but the first 2:30 is what I’ll be talking about and worth looking at from a semiotic-ian standpoint.

10/GUI critique outline(updated)

My phenomenology account of critique is on this concept design called 10/GUI, reinvent desktop human-computer interaction design.

I found it interesting that there are already many critiques going on in the comment area, and someone even wrote a post to exclusively critique this concept. I think it would be better to write my own before taking a look at others’ critiques, which will be an interesting read.

This video contains both the design and design rationale. So I guess I am going to critique both, but focused on the design. I have so much to say about this proposed new interaction, but I feel I am not there yet. Just post this as a place holder and will come back later.

Here are the clusters I came up from watching the interaction and reading one of the comments regarding to the video. I am not sure if they are good clusters or not. You don’t have to look at the video to tell me that, so here they are,

with ten fingers rest on the pad, the design let me think of playing piano, and I did feel a sense of freedom of operation

but with further examination, I found this design asks a high requirement for the hand/fingers (branches listed below)
• full use of fingers, I cannot as eating as operating for some tasks (ignore the accessibility issue)
• the fingers have to be clean and dry, but my hands (and the commentator’s) are most of the time sweaty, so worried about the pointer “jump” issue
• it could not meet the gamer’s need,
• it is good at general target but bad at small/precise target
• since ten fingers are on the pad, there could possibly be unexpected use (i.e. different finger position, finger joints touch…).

Instead of free, the design restrict the hands (explain)
when use a mouse, the hands stay separate, the design throw the mouse away but also sacrifice the hands position. It bring two hands together in a restricted manner(and it doesn’t have to be that way), to feel naturally, I see “break” the pad while still keep the function would be a better choice.

These are some of the first clusters, and I have some more clusters regarding to the software solution. I know it is too much for now, but there must be some that are not good clusters,

Semiotic Approach to Ne Me Quitte Pas

Expressively the addresser is constructed as begging, strong yet submissive, desirous, desperate.

Conatively the addressee is constructed as stubborn, unforgiving, an object of desire.

Phatically the relationship between the addresser and addressee is constructed as dysfunctional, rocky, loving, romantic.

Referentially, the song leaves out some aspects of the relationship between the addresser and addressee to assist the receiver in an identification with the position of the addresser (phenomenological semiotics?), but also gives enough information to help us understand the phatics of the relationship between the addresser and addressee.

Metalingually this song doesn’t explicitly state any facts of the relationship or situation of the addresser and addressee to leave the song up to interpretation of the listener.

Ne Me Quitte Pas is formally a song.  It’s words vary in meaning and connotation verse to verse, but not so that the story of the addresser and addressee loses cohesion.  The chorus remains the same to emphasize the begging of the addresser for the addressee not to leave.

I have no idea if any of this is right, but I thought I would give it all a try.

Using ‘clickers’ as an interaction critique

Turning Technologies Student Response System

Evaluating the most effective and efficient ways technologies can be integrated into classrooms to promote learning is an essential responsibility of any instructional technologist designer. A relatively new technology I am particularly interested in is the Student Response Systems (aka clickers). As you may know, Indiana University ended the contract with the clicker company eInstruction on August 31, 2009 and started a new contract with Turning Technologies just last month. It seems that one of the main reasons for switching clicker providers was the integration of this technology with Oncourse, which means that professors now have the potential to easily grade participation and attendance of big groups through the click of a button.

For the phenomenological aspect of the critique, I am planning to use a similar approach to Kickasola about focusing on a feeling or emotion to explore the interaction design. I plan to use the feeling of “social inclusion” which is purportedly experienced by students using clickers, especially in big groups.

Unfortunately I do not have any experience using these devices and I was wondering if some of you might have already used them either as a professor or as a student. Even though I will particularly focus in the Turning Technologies brand to write the critique outline, I will greatly appreciate any ideas, insights or suggestions about any other phenomenological approaches that could be applied when using clickers of any brand.

By the way, now that I think about it, I’m not sure if my critique should be from the student’s point of view or the professors’ or both… hhhmmm

phenomenological approach to design critique

I  have to some thoughts here, and please tell me if I’m right or wrong and how.

If phenomenology is concerned with the things situated in consciousness, which is situated in life-world, a phenomenological approach should be concerned with the same things.  So when you take a phenomenology approach to understand visual culture, you are concerned with the life-world of the creator.  And you might even need to reconstruct the life-world of the creator.  We cannot really become concerned about the life-worlds of the viewers because there are viewers during that time when the visual culture is produced, viewers share similar life-world with the creator, viewers 10 years later, viewers 50 years later, viewers in another culture, different age, and so on…We cannot really concern with them all…  However, if we take phenomenological approach to interaction design critique, we can not only concern with the life-world of the creator, but also the users, because the users share more intersubjectivity than the infinite broad range of visual culture viewers…but..users are still kind of a LOT.

My question is:  when we take a phenomenological approach, what are we concerned with?  Do we need to take viewers or users’ life-worlds into considerations?

I feel like it is a weird question to ask….:P