of geeks and interfaces_2

Born Digital

26 Sept 2011

Progress has been made on the interface design. Born Digital, a digital creative agency in Newcastle hosted a workshop for me to firmly conceptualise the interface— what I need in it, what it has to do.

I contacted Born Digital first at Thinking Digital 2011 in May when they replied to a tweet I sent asking if anyone was interested in talking about an interactive digital storytelling interface. As it turned out they were only able to attend one day of the conference and we didn’t meet then, but we exchanged emails. I met with members of the team (Simon and Ellie) whilst they were in Berlin over the summer; we discussed the ideas I had about the interface. They then suggested that we do the formal workshop.

The workshop was held at their offices and present were Alison and Simon from Born Digital as well as app developers from Gospelware. In the afternoon, the business development manager from Newcastle University Steve Erdal dropped by to speak with me about possibly co-funding the venture.

When I met Ellie in Berlin she asked that before the workshop I make a list of everything I needed the platform to do and then translate that list into a MSCW exercise. The previous blog post I wrote about what I wanted in the interface is here and you can read the MSCW exercise I made for the workshop here.


Below I will discuss points of friction or points that are still a question, as well as unexpected revelations from the Born Digital workshop.

Idocs as apps:

Alison invited app developers from Gospelware to the workshop. This was not something that I had asked for, but having thought a lot about ‘the market’ for the documentary, she said that people would be more likely to consume it on the go, if it was on a tablet rather than sitting on the internet and watching films.

This is something I hadn’t thought of, but I suppose makes sense. I’m still not certain how I feel about publishing it in an app form, though her reasoning to me seemed sound. The key to the app would be that it would have to have to utilise wifi connectivity in order for people to contribute both their journey through the narrative but their own story as well .  

We did agree that the focal point for distribution is the web— which in the media ecology  should not be distinct from apps, but that apps can be consumed offline. The idea is contribution and that’s why I’m hesitant to have it be an app at all: contributions are film based or button based (see the discussion of annotations) but not text based (some tablets will have video camera capability, others will not and I’m concerned it would skew the participatory nature of the idoc). I want to keep the idoc as film centric as possible.  Idocs explore the participatory nature of storytelling and part of the discourse is to treat the public less like consumers and more like co-participants in media creation.  My feelings might be different if wifi was more pervasive, but it isn’t.

We also talked about whether people would be charged to download the app, which I am against. One of the developers said that Apple (for the iPad) doesn’t much like ‘free’ apps. But this is an exercise in journalism and knowledge should be free. Additionally, one of the things I’d like the project to explore through randomisation of clips is putting people behind others eyes which will be less likely, I think if people have to pay for something.

On the other hand, as I said above, tablets are points of consumption. And idocs, especially ones that are public message orientated might be more conveniently consumed on rich media enabled personal devices. Many idocs today are web-based but the app permutation is something that seemed to be very natural to Alison, like it wasn’t even a thought: that’s how people consume media.

Some dissonance during the workshop over what’s fair for suggesting to public next video to see:

Should the platform be helpful and say if you liked that then you will this— in other words, suggest the following film based on previous categories or should it just pull up random films and people can decide based on — what criteria?

This lead me to really think about the categories and my determinations of process authorship of the idoc. In Clay Shirky’s discussion of Flickr (also the Tummelvision discussion) what is clear is that Flickr was so successful as a social media platform because it let people self-organise. However, on multi-authored blogs there becomes the nature that people will refer to things differently (i.e. Overlap will occur in categorisation). But my categories, there is the danger that I’m overstepping my boundaries and limiting co-creation by only providing a list of absolute categories.

However, as the idoc entry point is conceptualised, people will be able to begin their narrative journey by selecting categories of sectors that people work in and then they can filter by demographic data from there (Alison suggested that rather than provide the four categories at the outset as that might be too complicated, to select from the most relevant or interesting categories). Perhaps if I carefully construct the categories and when I am present for collecting the stories as people to say which sector they work in, and use those as a starting point, maybe I can solve this problem fairly.

The films will also be tagged with maybe up to 5 tags based on the subject matter of people’s contributions (i.e. Parenting, health and wellness, psychology) but again with limited tags and a master set that I organise: when people contribute their own filmed story, for example, they may be able to tag their own films subject to editorial approval (moderation is a requirement of the platform) and in that way I can better organise the films.

I am thinking that people should also be able to make their own headline for their films.

One concern I have in displaying films for selection randomly, with no text (but without making the idoc too text heavy) is that people will choose the next film they watch based on appearances. A headline or title seems necessary for this reason, as does presenting films not just in the same sector category but also with the same tags.

The platform can then randomly pull 2 or 3 suggestions from each accompanying tag.

I am against doing anything with ‘most popular’ or using algorithms that try to predict our behaviour for several reasons: first, that the purpose of the idoc to begin with looks at perspective and narrative. No one will come across something they might not have seen if it isn’t randomised. Second, having recently completed Filter Bubble by Eli Pariser, there is the concern that based on appearances the films watched will be narrowed to only a few.

Simon asked whether randomisation based on common tags really was a fair way to do it, as the participant won’t have the full choice in the matter.

I am conscious of wanting to see how others took the journey in order to allow someone else access to one individual’s perception or interests of the topic. I want people to be able to step outside of their own filters and see others experiences with ‘work’ as well, which would seem to negate tagging and selecting within categories but instead an approach where the next film to be watched was fully randomised.  But then that negates tracking through peoples’ journeys through the narrative.

This is the advantage of a text that is fully physical: there is a higher likelihood that you could just flip through the entirety of the contents to see what there is and stumble upon something. In a physical text you can see all the possibilities available to you— whether or not you read them is another matter. In something that is digital, you don’t know the entirety of what’s available.

From above, this becomes particularly relevant when thinking of the policy perspective point-hypothesis of making the documentary: we are stuck in traditional and possibly outdated ways of thinking about jobs policy because overall we haven’t realised by how much ‘work’ has changed (in relationship to technology, also applied to learning) and haven’t conceived of the necessity to apply these changes with enough depth to the economy, thus policy isn’t formulated with the whole picture and it’s ineffective.

I came to the conclusion that having a fully randomised journey should should be an option— and in that case it would be irrelevant or unnecessary to record to the journey through the narrative that a participant takes.

Breadcrumbs?

Any map of where you are on a website (usually a bar with word-links as you have narrowed your categorical progress) appears across the top. We discussed different ideas for what the breadcrumbs should look like but never really agreed.

At the Berlin meeting, Simon mentioned something like a long tree-timeline which seemed intriguing.
There is the traditional way to do it, with word links.

Using symbols might be a good idea but then there might be a question as to what those mean.

It could be that you are located on something like a small library map of the sectors in one corner of the screen and if you click on it, you can zoom out and see a broad over-view of all the content.

Digital identity integration:

I had some question myself about whether to integrate Facebook, Twitter, Google ID as sign up possibilities or just ask people for their email. When I met with a UX expert, she said that any data collected, I had to have a straightforward and detailed statement as to why I want it and what would be done with it. She suggested that what I could do is test where the sign up happens: at initial entry to the site, after they watch a certain number of films, when they click to exit.

How much information should be in the annotation empathy button?

I had an idea when considering Facebook’s like button one day: very often pundits like to say that they hate the ‘Like’ button because it doesn’t translate to IRL action especially for causes. In the news the other day, they announced that Facebook has now opened the app to developers to use and make into different words. This struck me as pointless. Consider the Weavrs justification, based on the retreat mechanism, it shows empathy or identification (in some way) with the tweet. I think the ‘Like’ button is similar: it doesn’t matter if the button says ‘Like’ or not.  

Some of the common advice is to design for different kinds of participation but also design for pre-established standards (because people are used to them). As I said before, I instinctually wanted this project to be film based and keep contributions visual, rather than have long comment sections. But showing empathy or identification with something someone says in a film could easily be a visual indictor. I thought that the public to place an annotation at a specific time-index when they strongly identified with something that was said.

Then we discussed how it could be represented: what if it showed you a graph or visually by size of annotation circle how many other people agreed, or if you clicked on it there would be a chart that showed you how many people agreed— but realised that that would bias people to agree with certain point. So having this kind of annotation is an open question.

What kind of data extraction do I need?

I’m not even certain but they said that they could remain flexible on this point for a little while. Everything that I mentioned from tracking through journeys to measuring track backs and shares they say is possible.

Who keeps the IP rights?

In meeting with Steve Erdal from University of Newcastle, he asked about the IP rights, who retains those— Born Digital or me, or both? I’d like to use this in other projects, or the basic form of it. Instinctually, would like to make it open-source or look at mechanisms where by it could be used by others for no/low cost because every project will be different and would need some changes made to it. However, do recognise that I don’t know how to think like a business person and I need to if I have any hope of making money at some point in the future.


I think that this was a good meeting because they weren’t too concerned with how much it would cost from the outset— or keeping costs low like the developer I initially went with. Simon is an artist, Allison a creative and at that planning layer rather than going straight to geeks it becomes like a cushion rather than a wall.
Again, above I discussed things that I hadn’t considered before and remain an open question. For the full summary of the platform at this point, please see the MSCW activity here.