Tue 8 May 2007

Assessment Criteria

Posted by Daniel under Uncategorized
[364] Comments

Wed 18 Apr 2007

Class on 24th April is “on-line”

Posted by Daniel under General Notes
[13372] Comments

Next class session fro 24th April is scheduled as an on-line session. You are not required to come to the class. However, there are several things which you need to do as an requirement of this session:

1. Sometime around 24th April to 1st of May upload a prototype of you final representations and present it in your blog. The prototype is not a final product. However, if must give us an idea what your final product will be like.

2. Ensure that you preview prototypes featured by other students. In addition, you should provide some feedback for at least 2-3 prototypes presented by other students.

3. Monitor feedback to your prototype. If you do not get any feedback, invite some other students to provide some feedback to your work.

4. Try to update your prototype based on this feedback and write some reflection what are the changes

Next time we meet in class will be on 8th of May. During this session, you will be required to present your work-in-progress. We will also discuss difficulties that you are facing an possible solutions.

Wed 11 Apr 2007

Follow-up on Storyboards

Posted by Daniel under General Notes
[32932] Comments

Based on the small number of storyboards previewed in the class, the following points emerge:

1. The project should be kept to a single representation displayed on one go on the screen.
2. If you have created several screens your task should be to merge and represent this information in a single display.
3. Visual and interactive representations are not drill and practice, quiz questions, tests or games. They allow a user to freely explore its content and this exploration is often externally directed (often by a task set by a teacher).
4. Avoid overlap of information, that is, displaying same thing several times.
5. Visual representations are components of a lesson. They are not complete lessons in their own. They are supplied to students, or to some other consumer of information, in addition to some other stuff, e.g., as a part of a web page where this page can contain links to discussion board, FAQ, worksheet, email address, etc. Often, a lesson design accounts for four components: task, resources, support and evaluation. Representation is a only a resource.
6. Watch for copyrighted stuff. Do not include any copyrighted material in your project. It is OK to use royalty-free media but not other stuff. This includes pictures, text, animation, audio and video clips.
7. Animation should be used with caution. Ask if same or better effect can be achieved with different modality. In addition, try to allow a user to interact with animation rather than just to watch it.
8. Do not overload your self with concern with technical skills. Plan your representations first and then later on we will work our details regarding its technical development.

Please contribute adding any additional observation or comment.

Tue 10 Apr 2007

Designing a Slider

Posted by Daniel under Flash
[14518] Comments

Designing slider is another important “trick” to know for effective creating of interactive visual representations in Flash. In the coming class we will explore this process. Below is Flash display showing how dragging a slider can change not just numerical values on the screen but also display changes as in graphical way (bars change size). So changes in visuals tell us about something, in this case, that if a variable represented by the slider increases, something else with also change and therefore some relationship exists.

Click HERE to download source code of this file

Slider can also be used for incremental changes and also control changes in non-liner information. Explore the design below. Once you change slider position, it will lock itself to one or preprogrammed stages and make change in the displayed image.

Click HERE to download source code of this file.

I designed a step by step video showing how slider is crated and used to change some information on the screen. Click HERE to download it.

Tue 27 Mar 2007

Interactive Map of Hong Kong

Posted by Daniel under Flash
[24200] Comments

Have look at this example of an interactive map of Hong Kong develop with Flash.

The files required for this tutorial can be downloaded HERE. Step-by-step tutorial showing how this is done is available HERE. This tutorial will introduce to you basic concept of controlling a movie with a Flash move. Placing a mouse pointer over a hot-spot area with instruct a movie in the Flash move to go and stop at a particular frame. This is a very important to understand if you indent to develop skills to design interactive material with Flash.

Thu 22 Mar 2007

What you want to know about Flash

Posted by Daniel under Flash
[8580] Comments

After the last session I begun to think a bit more about what exactly my students need to know about Flash in order to make effective use for design of visual and interactive representations. To my opinion, by the end of this module my students need to be able to do the following:

1. Use basic drawing tools, import images, create and understand symbols (button, movie and graphics)
2. Create buttons (visible, invisible, animated, with sound effects etc) that can be used to either move to a different location on a timeline or to control another move that is housed on the main stage.
3. Design and utilize sliders
4. Create simple manipulations of variables

At first, let’s make sure that everyone understands structure of a button. A button might have three states (up – as is seen on the screen by a user; over — as displayed once the user position a mouse arrow over the button, and don – as displayed after the user click on the button and before lets off the mouse), and defined hot-spot area (hit area). Here are some examples of buttons:

Let’s hear form you what other things you like to know about Flash…

Wed 21 Mar 2007

Follow-up on Rain Drop

Posted by Daniel under Interactivity
[7156] Comments

Students’ designs of “Rain Drop” interactive representations indicated good development of skills for design of information and present in computer-based formats. A lot of students are brave enough to try to use Flash and I hope that my tutorial will be helpful. I am glad to see that most of the students finally understand that interactive representations are not like presentations which present information in slide by slide fashion. Rather interactive representations present all the information to in one go and then allow someone to interrogate this information by scanning through it and changing its properties through interaction. However, I must add, there the students must try to further develop their skill to explore new information and question its logic and correctness. Here ase some points that come up from discussion of “Rain Drop” task:

1) Getting right information is a challenge
2) Over-reliance on the internet might be problem. Other sources of information might be also considered, e.g., books, videos, discussion with experts.
3) Understanding information is a challenge. Sound self-learning skills are required.
4) Another challenge is how to organize and present all the information in one slide and small screen space.
5) Should design of representation differ based on audiences? I believe we must think in general terms and design for use by any audience (unless audience consists of very young children and unless cultural issues should be considered, e.g., using certain color or certain number might not be appropriate for some cultures).
6) Technical skills and how to implement ideas is also a perceived challenge. However, this should not limit our drive to come up with good ideas. Design should take stages like (a) sketching a storyboard on a paper, (b) designing a non-functional prototype using some easy software like PowerPoint, (c) designing a functional prototype using some authoring tool such as Flash and (d) final product. We should help each others with (c) and (d) however, no everyone should be able to work on (a) and (b) without any concerns for technical skills. Please comment on this by attaching a note to this post.

For you interest, interactivity is even possible with paper, He is a photo from Robert Sabuda’s pop-up book. Visit his web site and you can learn how human creativity to escape flatness of paper.

Tue 13 Mar 2007

Mid-Module Survey

Posted by Daniel under General Notes
[127494] Comments

Click HERE to preview results of the mid-module survey and explore how students perceive issues from the module. In addition, you can see how students perceive their technical skills, learning styles etc. Based on this data, you should explore what kind of partner you would like to have for your final project. Thins strategically and look for a suitable person in the class.

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Provide comment about any interesting pattern that you observe in this results.

Wed 7 Mar 2007

Comments on “Atmosphere” Visual Design Task

Posted by Daniel under Visuals
[27167] Comments

It was great to see your designs of information object (visual representation) on topic of atmosphere. This task was at the higher level of difficulty from the previous task as you were required to work with foreign information rather than with something that you know about. The process of transforming that information from text to visual representation can be understood as high level information work. Here are some points that emerged from your presentations:

1. Overall, you have demonstrated some great ideas for information can be presented in visual way.
2. You have to make sure that your information is not misleading and making a student to construct misconceptions.
3. When you design representation explore your own mental models and consider how a student with different mental model might interpret information differently.
4. It is good to include additional information if you have space on your visual display area in order to: (a) maximize amount of information that is communicated and (b) maximize possibility for the representation to be reused.
5. Having some animation on your visual representation will provide additional modality that can enhance communication of information. However, animation should be used if it is informative rather than just to make things move for fun.
6. Interactivity can enhance information communication capability of visual display and allow for more information to be meaningfully structured. This can further engage a student to interact with the display and become more active that just passively view the display.
7. It is important to consider that visual representation is not meant to explicitly teaching someone something in a ways that computer-base tutorials are attempting to do. Certain literacies are required to effectively consume information presented in this way. A student who interrogates visual representation must have appropriate skills and purpose to do this. In absence of such skills and purpose, a teacher must provide a context for students. This can be done by providing a task or a set of questions to guide an inquiry within which students will be required to interrogate the visual. Visual representations might also be used as teaching aid, for students’ discussion, and delivered via variety of technologies such as interactive white boards, PDAs and mobile phones.
8. Finally, keep in the mind that visual representations are not like PowerPoint presentations. There is always a single slide and all information is row to the user who can then interrogate it and interact with it.

Provide any other point that you thing would add here to this discussion.

Sat 3 Mar 2007

Text to Visual

Posted by Daniel under Visuals
[8135] Comments

Look at this image. Text on the left has been analyzed and interpreted by a child and the child draw a picture based on this content. This has been done recently in a primary school class. How many of such activities are conducted in our classes? What is the purpose of such activities? Let’s see what you think…

Click HERE to see larger image…

Text to Image by a Child

Assessment Criteria

Class on 24th April is “on-line”

Follow-up on Storyboards

Designing a Slider

Interactive Map of Hong Kong

What you want to know about Flash

Follow-up on Rain Drop

Mid-Module Survey

Comments on “Atmosphere” Visual Design Task

Text to Visual

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