Outline, need suggestions!!!

Hey guys.  So unfortunately I am way behind schedule on pumping out this paper (I’ll admit it).  I left it for last out of the three big ones.  Anyway, I have a pretty rough outline that I’m working with right now, and I could use some suggestions on theories that you think apply well or examples of video game power ups that do not fit well within a game would be great.  Unfortunately, my outline format got really messed up in the transfer, but hopefully it is still understandable.  Thanks guys!

Research question:  What makes this power-up such a fun and appropriate addition to the Super Mario Bros Game line?

Thesis:  The propeller power-up in the New Super Mario Bros Wii game is an entertaining and appropriate addition to the Super Mario Brother’s game line because it is effectively phenomenological in its effortlessness.

help please!

So for my MA thesis which I have to write next semester, I am going to research youth subcultures but in particular focus on an understanding of how hip-hop features in youths everyday lives. I’m interested in the idea of place as previously music ‘scenes’ were geographically located to a specific location (for instance the Manchester music scene in the 1980s or the San Francisco rave scene). However, with the digital revolution, music scenes went from being local to virtual. Instead of hip-hop being tied to a location, now people can interact online, share mix tapes, videos, raps and lyrics etc.

It would thus make sense for my final I590 paper to write an interaction critique that is somehow related to all of this in order to develop my thesis ideas. So, does anyone have any ideas on an online interaction that is somehow linked to hip-hop or subcultures? There are various forums out there but the ones I’ve found don’t seem particularly appropriate for this project. I just thought I would ask if any of you had any thoughts as I seem to be hitting a brick wall and rapidly running out of time. Thank you!

‘Creativity in Amateur Multimedia’ reading

I really enjoyed Jeff’s article Creativity in Amateur Multimedia: Popular Culture, Critical Theory, and HCI which was the reading for Tuesday. The tactic of bringing together three theorizations of creativity to talk about amateur multimedia I thought worked really well. However, I had a few questions. In the telecommunications department, the big buzz words for some time seem to be ‘convergence culture’ coined by the MIT professor Henry Jenkins which essentially refers to the media phenomenon of producer and consumer lines blurring to the extent that media using equals media making. Many of my students take for granted that they are not just passive consumers of media, they update and add information to their facebook profiles, upload videos to youtube and add photos to flickr. These websites wouldn’t exist unless users produced content for them.

I was therefore wondering whether ‘amateur multimedia’ is essentially the same as ‘convergence culture’ or is there a difference? It struck me as slightly strange that departments at IU are talking about the same things, albeit using different approaches and discourses, yet not combining or sharing ideas and concepts with one another. Similarly, I know in CMCL there are many classes which talk about fan culture which machinima and other examples in Jeff’s paper would definitely fit into. Does this mean that informatics, Telecom and other departments are necessarily exclusionary of other discipline’s oeuvres? This is why I really appreciate and respect Jeff bringing critical and cultural studies to HCI because as the paper demonstrates, different theories from seemingly disparate disciplines are actually wonderfully useful and illuminating in one’s own field.

What is meaning?

Some of you missed it, but last week I inadvertently did a really mean [sic] thing when I probed for a definition of the word ‘meaning’. It’s a term that gets bandied about a lot, perhaps even abused, especially as we as designers begin considering how our interactions are situated in a culture.

The operating definition we used for ‘meaning’ in Experience Design last semester was ‘the perception of a relationship’ between two things. Now, with the rising importance of hermeneutics in HCI we’re beginning to ask deeper questions about interpretation, and considering the importance of subjective knowledge and experience when dealing with interactions. The work of Gaver, Sengers and Boehner in the last few years considers such issues as multiple interpretations in an interaction, ambiguity, affective design, and ludic engagement.

So really, what I’m attempting to disentangle in my own mind, is what is meaning? What does it mean [sic] when we say something is meaningful? What does it mean when we say one Hello Kitty backpack is more “meaningful” to us than another Hello Kitty backpack?

What do we call the act of creating meaning? Does it even make sense to call it an act? Is meaning created instantly, or does it emerge over time? Is meaning making the same thing as sense making? What’s the verb at work, here? To sense-make? To meaning-make? How do we conjugate it?

Jalou

Full disclosure: I ♥ Dolce & Gabbana and I am going to be unabashedly biased towards anything that has a D&G tag on it.

Here are a few facts:

• For those of you who have not heard about Dolce & Gabbana, it is one of the biggest (and one of the best IMO) luxury fashion houses of the world and is based in Milan.
• Sony Ericsson has collaborated with D&G and released a limited edition of their phone called Jalou. The name of the phone is derived from a french word jaloux which means jealousy!
• The D&G edition is plated with 24 carat gold and is faded-rose in color. There are other colors but they are do not carry the D&G tag on them.
• The retail price of the phone is $800 and the price of the D&G edition is undisclosed. D&G is known for it’s notriously high pricing especially since it’s a luxury brand.

Since we have been reading some fashion texts and trying to apply that to interaction design, I thought this was a particularly interesting artifact to talk about. We have talked so much about a phone like the iPhone where owning the latest tehcnology is fashion. So I was wondering how does it work when it comes to something like the Jalou. Clearly it cannot be discarded as “advertising” and “branding”. It gets even more interesting when you compare the advertisements of the same phone – one made by Sony Ericsson and the other by D&G.

Thoughts/comments?

Dolce & Gabbana

Sony Ericsson

some concerns about the final paper

Hi all,

I want to mainly take semiotic approach for my final paper because I think this way of seeing is very important, and I want to get some practice on that since I got practice on phenomenology in the pre-writing assignment already.  However, I’m not feeling comfortable or confident to really do that in this busy semester end.  I feel that we’ve being talking about semiotics for only so short time(far less than the time we devoted to phenomenology) that I don’t feel I have a decent grasp on this.  Also, when I look back at the papers on semiotics now, I do not see how they can be referenced in the final paper except explaining some semiotic terms. For example, the papers on film, I don’t see how camera angle, depth of the field and montage can be applied to interaction…I have another concern which is, I don’t see what my expertise(if I have any) can be drawn upon since it depends on what interaction I pick.  So I really want to know how to pick an interaction that is both interesting to me, not too big not too small in scale, and also can utilize my expertise.

Well, I’m curious to know if some of you might feel the same way?  Or you have any suggestions on how to do this?

Choosing an Interaction

I’m trying to choose an appropriate amount of interaction to choose for the  paper.  I think I want to work with something from the New Super Mario Bros for Wii since I’ve been playing it so much as it is, but I’m not sure what part of the interaction to talk about.  I like the idea of tackling the difference between playing with one player and two players or comparing the interaction to a much older version of the Super Mario Bros saga (Super Mario 1 or 3 for NES).  I’m not sure if such a comparison is appropriate or if that is tackling too much.

I’m also concerned about what part of the interaction to take on.  Do I look at a  level or maybe a world?  Or do I focus on something really small like using what James terms the “whirly-bird helmets”?

"Whirly-bird helmet"

My back up to this choice is working with text messaging on an iPhone.

Concurrent Discourses

In class Jeff was talking about how self is defined by the discourse and that there is no “puppeteer” real version of self that exists inside of us.

Wow.

I know Semiotics is not supposed to be looked at like religion and its a tool and it has holes, but I’m loving it. Call bullshit if you want, but think about how that changes everything when we design. I mean look at how we use personnas or scenarios. We build these tools up to work with a given circumstance. The specific ones are typically the ones that help us the most.

My question is about concurrent discourses (think ubiquitous computing or group interaction). Jeff used the example that he acts differently around his mother than other situations. We act a certain way given the context, but what about overlapping contexts. What about when you’re married to a co-worker. Or drinking with a professor. Is this a whole new discourse, or would you consider that a combination of discourses, and if so what changes?

I may be way off here, but before I was only thinking about a single discourse. That makes sense. But when we have a lot going on (as we often do) what does that mean for semiotics?

Semiotic Chaos

When we semiotically read an artifact or interaction, there are infinite signs, texts, and discourses we could see or that we could talk about.  How do we decide which ones to focus on?  Currently when I look at an artifact or interaction, the signs, texts, and discourses just fly around my mind in chaos.  Are there methods or a process that can give you a focus or help you know where to start?

just for fun…

The Entwistle article got me thinking about clothes and identity and how the clothes one wears communicate a lot about the wearer, whether it be intentional or not. In particular it made me think of a Halloween party I recently attended where one of my friends dressed up as an undergrad. She wore tight black leggings, UGG boots and a low cut top, which of course everyone (only grad students were present at the party) found hilarious. But if there is a stereotype of what an undergrad dresses like (admittedly a certain type of undergrad female), surely there must be a stereotype of what grad students wear also. If an undergrad were to go to a party dressed as a grad student, what would she/he wear? Any ideas?