Every year our Media + Design class gets better as we learn to inspire even more prototypes and iterations out of students. After an intense design gauntlet of mini-projects focusing on social media history, digital empathy, and game design, students transitioned into studio mode to produce final projects. The requirements for final projects were the same as last year: something digital with a pro-social benefit (self-defined) that’s team based. But we tried a few new things including a meet n’ brainstorm session to facilitate team formation, extending the final project timeline by a couple weeks, more intensive coaching, in-class work sessions, three major prototype milestones (conceptual, visual, functional), and a dress rehearsal before our prototype showcase event. We also learned how hungry students are for digital design skills (a potential University wide gap) and relevant strategies from experts that can be replicated. We still face challenges of how to select the “right” cohort of students, how to best scaffold the final projects, and how much to focus on certain design topics within the new digital media landscape…

We hope our class provided students with significant stepping stones for future media development and digital design thinking inspiration beyond the Stanford dschool. Check out what our students created (in less than a month) and show some love!

Robots Reboot

Robots Reboot is an online social game powered by real world actions to save the planet. You gain points not just through on-screen game mechanics, but also through your real world actions – for instance, saving energy (judged through a power meter in your home). Learn more here:
http://www.dmediaproject.com/robots-reboot/

Motion Math: The Whole-ly Grail

The Whole-ly Grail is the latest in the Motion Math suite of iPhone apps that help teach kids math through motion. Students shake the iPhone to move, left, right, up and down to learn the coordinate system while following clues and collecting gems along the way. Learn more here:
http://www.dmediaproject.com/581/

Media Sift

Media Sift is an online tool that helps teachers teach their students to become critical consumers of media. Web search, website evaluation, issues of privacy, authorship and identity are known as 21st century skills, necessary for today’s students but difficult for teachers to teach. Learn more here: http://www.dmediaproject.com/media-sift/

BeThere: Share where you are

BeThere is a distributed application that allows people present at an event to contribute live media streams from connected mobile devices, and allows those who aren’t there to participate virtually. This geo-location application is unique in that it aggregates multiple modalities- whether video, audio, pictures or text- in real time, creating a sense of immersion even for those can’t be there. Learn more here:
http://www.dmediaproject.com/bethere-share-where-you-are/

Red Balloon

Red Balloon provides an easy way for San Franciscans to communicate with City-level government officials using their mobile phones. It is a powerful feedback loop that creates new opportunities for citizen engagement, facilitates collection action, and brings greater transparency to our local governing process. Learn more here:
http://www.dmediaproject.com/red-balloon/

Templates in Time

Templates in Time is a self-reflection tool for children to create and visualize life events in a casual setting.  You can interact with your timeline by zooming, sliding, panning and animating space with your own art and media. Learn more here:
http://www.dmediaproject.com/templates-in-time/

Screen360

Screen360 is a film festival from around the world for people four and up. Screen 360 aims to broaden the palette of audio-visual media and storytelling experiences to promote cultural literacy with kids. Learn more here:
http://www.dmediaproject.com/screen-360/

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As we wrap up our 3rd year of dmedia, we want to recognize our alumni for some of their contributions in the digital domain and encourage those missing to re-connect, we miss you!

Andrew Haeg manages Public Insight Network with Minnesota Public Radio. As a student, he pushed forward a strong vision for crowdsourcing to enhance journalism.

Andreas Brændhaugen is a freelance designer who has awesome visual communication skills. As part of the first dmedia class, he worked with Dan Sinker on the The Take Away.

Burt Herman recently founded Hacks/Hackers. During the class, he experimented with ways to make news more relevant through your social network.

Dan Sinker, teaches mobile journalism at Columbia College. As part of the founding class, he helped WNYC re-imagine morning radio with The Take Away.

Enrique Allen is creating another startup incubator with design thinking at its core. As a student, he worked to showcase stories about public art on the Stanford campus through the iPhone.

Erika Dauber just helped launch Togetherville. Along with Jaki Clark & Diogenes Brito, she launched BitWisdom.

Jaki Clark is now a UI Designer at TiVo and was formerly with Pixar and Adobe. Along with Jaki Clark & Diogenes Brito, she launched BitWisdom.

Karan Nischol is a mobile product manager at AT&T Interactive. For his dmedia final project, he worked on a service to help people deal with the emotional stress of finding a new job in the down economy.

Rajiv Patel now run his own design shop Lift Projects. During class, he crafted an augmented reality game to teach participants about the spread of epidemics.

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Since the end of January, 120 sixth graders in San Mateo’s Bayside STEM Academy learned what an international film festival is during the Screen 360 US-2 Lab.  They learned about the job of film curator.  And they learned that kids fill a 900-seat theater four times a day for two weeks in Berlin, Germany and watch high quality films about kids, for kids in different languages from all over the world.  While that very film festival was going, they researched the films being shown there.  Quickly they demanded to know “Why can’t we see these films here?

Bring them to us, too!”

Using their sharpened senses, they chose the top films that they would like to show to their peers… Peers, they agreed, are not only other 11 year-olds nearby but 11 year-olds in Berlin, 11 year-olds in Bangalore, Beijing or Boise.  How cool to see the same movies as your peers in another country! They could even talk to them about the movies. They wrote letters to the filmmakers and, as film curators do, asked to see the entire film and invited it to their own Screen 360 film festival.

So why is it wise to connect kids to the world though movies well before their wisdom teeth come in?  International films can:

• Offer language immersion opportunities during the developmental period when second languages are learned best;
• Help kids foster their own global opinion;
• Lay common ground for when they do meet in person and lay cornerstone memories to help steer a direction.
• Broaden the palette of audio-visual media and storytelling experiences to promote cultural literacy.

Questions? Send a note:   screen360@googlegroups.com

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Shared events build community.   Whether a wedding, a rock concert, or a conference, there is no better way to make connections with other people than to experience an occasion together.  But what if you can’t join the event in person?  Or what if you want to share an event with someone who can’t be there?  Can the feeling of community be translated to those people?

BeThere is our answer to that question.  BeThere is a distributed application that allows people present at an event to contribute live media streams from connected mobile devices, and allows those who aren’t there to participate virtually.  Our system is unique in that it aggregates multiple feeds in multiple modalities — whether video, audio, pictures or text — in real time, creating a sense of immersion even for those who can’t be there.

Our current implementation is a proof-of-concept mockup which shows how the app might work for a few specific events — a concert, a wedding, a conference.  But these examples just scratch the surface.  Sports events, political events, emergencies — whatever the event, the aggregation of multiple feeds of real-time user-contributed content can create presence in a way that was never before possible.  Using BeThere, you can be there, even when you can’t.

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Saturate

In a small group interview, three fifth graders pored over a time line which shows lines arising from a drawing of actress Lucille Ball, reaching up to bracket the period from 1951 to 1957, and captioned with the words “Lucille Ball stars in television:’
Boy 1: She probably was born here and died here.
Girl 1: But she’d only be 6.
Girl 2: It shows the years she starred on TV: 1951 and 1957.
Girl 1: I call my neighbors Ricky and Lucy.

This anecdote provides several insights into our users. Boy 1 automatically assumes that the dates on the timeline imply birth and death. Girl 1 challenges this noting that the time span is just 6 years. And the final comment about neighbors “Ricky and Lucy” illustrates the childrens’ ongoing need to link information to their personal lives.

Synthesize

Over the course of the last 5 weeks, we have significantly changed directions and narrowed down the focus of where we want to be in space of “Kids and understanding time” We went from the wide range of the endless time domain, with implications of historical context, geologic time and more, plus elements of cyclic vs. linear patterns in time, to focus the app on supporting a child’s (~8 to 11 years old) development of autobiographical memory, and time as it relates to one’s own lifespan.

This was further strengthened by our user studies, where we saw childrens’ need to connect their conception of time to events in their own lives. These studies also led us to believe that connecting these dots in memory may help them discover who they are and see what is important to them.

Through our need finding we believe that a child who understands him/herself can get by better. They can advocate for themselves and have a clearer focus of where they want to go and who they want to be.

Realize

Creating “Templates in Time” allows us to provide a platform where children can create their own visual identities and find ways to discover who they are and what are the important events in their own life. Building an interactive platform allows the kids to play with the application and zooming, sliding, panning and animating helps them see their lifespan from different view points.

The use of art and media, and icons help them express their thoughts and moods in a more creative way. Allowing them to share the application with their friends helps them see what they have had in common throughout their lives. Having a space where they can explore their future self a few years down the line, may allow them to see how their past and present events influence their future.

In conclusion, Templates in Time tries to connect your dots in memory through visualization techniques, so that you can create your own visual identity.

Templates in Time is currently a web-based tool built in HTML, CSS and JQuery. We like the idea of having it web based for now, because it gives us the opportunity to share it and get feedback from numerous users. In future we are considering developing it for the iPad. Here is the URL for the current functional prototype.

Functional Prototype: http://www.stanford.edu/~athakur/timeline/

Here is also a screen cast that walks you through the functional prototype and explains the workings.

Templates in Time screencast

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We came to this project with a couple of key insights.  First, using physical motion to teach math has been shown to reinforce key concepts and engage students more than traditional means.  Second, the iPhone is becoming a ubiquitous mobile device with unique motion capabilities.

Given these insights, we sought to create a new motion-based iPhone app to teach kids math, in the same vein as the Basketball Fractions game Jacob had already created.  After brainstorming a number of different concepts, we decided to prototype “The Whole-ly Grail” an iPhone game that uses motion to teach the Cartesian coordinate system to fifth graders.

We hope you enjoy our prototype!

Kid Tester #1

Kid Tester #2

Kid Tester #3

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What is Red Balloon?

Red Balloon provides an easy way for San Franciscans to communicate with City-level government officials using their mobile phones. It is a powerful feedback loop that creates new opportunities for citizen engagement, facilitates collection action, and brings greater transparency to our local governing process.

Why Do We Need Red Balloon?

The City of San Francisco and its government officials are constantly making policy decisions that affect City residents and their quality of life. By capturing and aggregating wishes submitted by local residents, Red Balloon helps illuminate public sentiment and make actionable policy ideas that have community support.

Red Balloon Poster

How Does Red Balloon Work?

Red Balloon is location-aware.

Your Red Balloons get sent to the elected officials that are directly responsible for representing the neighborhood in which you live and the neighborhood in which you are standing when the balloon is sent unless you tell us otherwise.

Red Balloon knows how to delegate responsibility.

We match the issue category you associate with each of your Red Balloons directly with the government officials that are responsible, which include elected and lead administrative officers.

Red Balloon lets you control your privacy.

All Red Balloons and the wishes inside them are publicly visible on our website. However, you may make your balloons anonymous by either selecting to do so before sending each balloon or by adjusting your profile settings.

Red Balloon is social.

After sending a Red Balloon, you can tell your friends by sharing it on Twitter, Facebook or MySpace. You may also network with other Red Balloon users with similar policy interests.These features help you generate support for your wish and mobilize for community action.

Click here or go to http://mockapp.com/u/Final_RB.pdf to download the prototype for your iphone.

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Robots Reboot is an online social game powered by real world actions to save the planet.

Imagine your favorite online social game, but for the real world. You curate a piece of a new planet, and are responsible for its well-being. You gain points not just through on-screen game mechanics, but also through your real world actions – for instance, saving energy (judged through a power meter in your home). Incentives make it worthwhile to have friends who are doing the same. This is a way to socially motivate and emotionally connect people to the consequences of their actions so that they can make the transition from apathy to action.

[2 minute video pitch]

We have iterated through many prototypes by following the design process of Saturate, Synthesize, and Realize.

Saturate

• Brainstormed the question “How do we make sustainability more fun and social at the same time?” and picked the top three ideas to use as starting points
• We all played Farmville for a couple of days to understand what made the game so compelling (several of us have not stopped playing)
• Interviews with serious social gamers and serious environmentalists
• Continuous testing with our target users – “Stanford students who want a fun, informative and social connection to the environmental effects of their everyday lives”

Synthesize

• Used Google Docs to refine our Point of View, capture insights/feedback, and work out game mechanics (Brainstorming doc, Prototype doc)

Realize

• Paper sketches
• Post-it note screen mock-ups
• Looks-like renditions of final product
• Simplified working digital prototype
• Several versions of a board game to simplify and test out game mechanics
• Played and tested the game several dozen times with various players to work out the game mechanics

[Slideshow of our paper and digital prototypes]

For today’s version, we have a proof-of-concept digital simulation and the basic game mechanics have been incorporated into a board game (For Macs: download game, instructions).

[Gameplay overview]

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Media Sift from tony s on Vimeo.

What is Media Sift? Media Sift is a online tool that helps teachers teach their students to become critical consumers of media.
How does it work? Teachers or students create a web page with links to videos, news articles or blog posts related to their chosen topic. Users are then encouraged to rate the media using a four part credibility scale. Components of media credibility include author expertise, transparency/bias, supporting evidence and argument depth. As students interact with Media Sift, they begin to understand how to consider the messages they receive and how to evaluate the media they encounter. In addition, quality pieces of media rise to the top of each topic page, and serve as examples for students as they create their own work on the Internet. There are also other ways Media Sift can be used. Teachers can track individual students ratings and see their improvement. They can see how their classes are rating media in relation to other classes, and what media sources their students tend to find most credible. Students or teachers could also use Media Sift as a repository and catalog for sources they collect during their research.
Why Media Sift? Web search, website evaluation, issues of privacy, authorship and identity are known as 21st Century skills, necessary for today’s students and difficult for teachers to teach. Either teachers do not have the skills or dont have tools to teach students in an engaging way. Students often complain that they already have these abilities, in which case Media Sift is a way for them to demonstrate that knowledge and put it into practice. In addition to learning web skills, students also come in contact with a full range of topics, with the best work regarding those topics easily accessible.

Media Sift Screencast from tony s on Vimeo.

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PROTOTYPING – A “TESTER” PERSPECTIVE

Hernan Gouet
May 28, 2010

The world looks quite different from a “designer” and a “prototype-tester” perspective, that is “prototypes” look quite different and with different meanings depending from what side they are being looked at. That’s the impression left after some testing.

It was a life-transforming experience, seriously, at least in the realm of designing, prototyping and testing world.

The experience went something like this: You’re suddenly in front of a prototype, which is surrounded by their creators, some observing, some playing a role. Very fast, almost at a first glance you have a “gut feeling” about if ”it works” or “it doesn’t work”–almost as in a first date. After the first general look, you pay attention to what calls your attention most in trying to understand “what it is and how it works”, without asking. As gaps are found you start making questions, and although some are due to “your” lack of observation (and lack of prototype’s clarity) you are suddenly pretty surprised as how something that is very obvious for you to ask raises the designers’ brows, they look at each other and take notes, sometimes happily nodding, sometimes with lasting raised eyebrows and a nodding with a reluctant component.

You advance through the prototype, some surprises are great because you have never thought about it, others are of the sort of “why this?” Following instructions and making questions the testing finishes. Besides becoming an ordinary person again (the deep attention on you, your reactions, and your opinions vanished), you leave with a feeling of having understanding something “more” than the designers, and THAT was a strange feeling: How can you feel something like that in a couple of minutes from work that smart and hardworking people spent hours or days creating it…?
SOME INSIGHTS

I would say that there’s a reason for the feeling and an insight for our “designer” perspective.

One main reason I believe may come from the simplicity of a common experience’s prototypes (even if overloaded by features), and because of the “non-attachment” to them. In a sense, using a Buddhist metaphor we could say that we designers are “trapped in a web of karmas and delusions” while testers are already “enlightened.” In short, not being attached to a prototype allows you to be much more “objective” than being attached to it. And it allows you to think more clearly—and to see, hear, and sense more, and better.

Some insights from the experience are:

1. The most important objective of a prototype is to test some features, ideally one at a time, in the simplest and most obvious way possible.

2. Any over-designing and over-crafting are truly not needed, they confuse and for the tester it’s amazingly evident! It’s as if you have just swallowed an “awareness pill.”

3. It is “humbling” because it makes you realize how much time is spent in ideation and prototyping instead of starting by making the most basic prototype with just one or two features, walk outside and test it with whoever is passing by. Then iterate and improve.

4. It is humbling because some of your comments (as a tester) which you may believe are the most obvious ones, to the point of not being worth of mentioning them often create waves and oohs and aahs, even an Aha! in the designing team–that’s PRETTY humbling because you remember that it happened to you. And you know that it will happen to you again, and again.

5. A prototype needs to be simple and clear, simple and clear, simple and clear, with difficulty and challenge lying in designing the “testing objectives” not thinking in the future product in detail (unless the design absolutely requires it).

6. A prototype can be “almost anything,” a device, a person, an experience, and whatever it is, it should be able to generate the right (for your purposes) almost instinctual first impact, which most probably will frame, mark, and bias the whole tester’s experience–and the feedback.

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