Applications

Do they want to much information?

(source:socialmediainbusiness.com)

Recently application developers have come in for some criticism from the Information Commissioners Office (ICO) for the amount of information that they are having access to. This criticism has come from the ICO after some people have claimed that the developers are not being clear enough with the information that they are allowing them to have access to and how they are using it. 

ICO have said that they would like for many developers to make it more clear to users what information they will be accessing and how they will be using. The timing of this warning/piece of advice, is strange with Christmas typically being the most busy day within the UK for the downloading of applications, with 320 million applications being downloaded last Christmas. 

However even though the timing of the ICO saying this is slightly strange the fact remains that they do have a point in what they are saying. This is because in even though the application industry is one of the fastest growing industries within the UK, it is believed that at least half of application users have rejected installing an application due to privacy encroachment. I put myself in that statisic due to the fact that I have reject a few applications due to the information that they want access to. So this leads me to the point which is that  i agree with the ICO that developers need to be more specifc in why they need access gto certain information, because if clearly explained why they need and will use the information, I know that me and many other people would allow the application to be installed. That in turn will mean to more applications being installed, which can only help the growth of a truly great industry.  

Online Abuse

Is enough being done?

( Source: www.dalbeattiematters.co.uk)

Recently in the news there have been reports of two people being arrested for offensive tweets they sent to the feminist campaigner Criado Perez. This has again raised the question of whether enough is done to stop online abuse. For many people one of the great attractions of the social networking sites such as Twitter and Facebook is that there is a degree of freedom within them, that people can post what they want and when they. However some consider this a problem with the internet due to the fact that some people in the online community, like normal communities, just want to make people feel rotten. And this raises the question should social networking and in fact other forms of media on the internet be more strongly mediated. 

I take the side of that the internet should not be more strongly mediated, but instead there should be better education for people, especially young people. I take this view due to the fact that in the UK people on average spend 9 hours a day in front of a screen. This works out that in an average persons life they will spend 30 years in front of a screen. This is why I believe that there needs to be better education about what can be said and used on the internet, due to the fact that it is such as huge part of people lives. This better education would allow people to be more informed of the consequences of being abusive over the internet could help reduce the number of "internet trolls" that believe that they are just being funny. 

(Source: www.keepcalm-o-matic.co.uk)

However one part of the internet that should be more strongly enforced is how abuse is reported and identified. This is because with websites such as Twitter, there is not report abuse button. This means that it becomes incredibly hard for people to report that they are being abused over the internet. As seen with stories such as the 14 year old Hannah Smith, whom committed suicide after being a victim of online bullying through sites such as Twitter and Askfm, the consequences of not being able to identify or report abuse has cost a life. These stories show that there is a need to to improve how abuse is identified because on some websites it can is really hard if not impossible to report abuse.

References 

BBC News UK, 2013. Tweets to feminist campaigner Criado-Perez: Two charged [Online]. BBC News. Avaliable from: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-25408993 [Accessed 17 December].

De Lacey. M, 2013. British people spend NINE HOURS a day (that's 30 YEARS of our lives) staring at screens...and more time online than ANY other nation in the world. Daily Mail. Available from: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-2256067/British-people-spend-NINE-HOURS-day-staring-screens-time-internet-ANY-nation-say-NetVoucherCodes.html [Accessed 17 December].

Topping. A, 2013. Hannah Smith suicide: MPs call for education in social-media awareness. The Guardian. Available from: http://www.theguardian.com/society/2013/aug/07/hannah-smith-suicide-cyberbullying-ask-fm-twitter [Accessed 17 December].

Concept and Ideation - Project 3

Yuletide Project 

The third project that was set within the concept and ideation unit was to create a brand image for a business which a someone was setting up. Within in the brief it stated that we had to incorporate the following things: a business name, a logo design (which had to be suitable for screen and print) and a splash page which showcased the brand. 

The first thing that me and the other members of the team did was firstly to decide what the business name would be. After some time of discussing possible names and checking whether they were available to use through Yell.com and Companies House and also whether the business name could be used within a website domain name, we decided on the name of Xmas Shopper. We decided on this name due to the fact that from the information that we had gained from about the business idea, this name best described what the business did. 

Once we had decided on the business name, we began coming up with ideas for the logo design (which can be seen above) and the splash page. We also decided that we wanted to create a home page for the website so that the client would get a good feel of what we were trying to do with the brand. 

The first of these things to be completed was the logo, which we all believe would be very effective. This was due to the fact that it would be easily used within a website or an application as well as any form of print media. We also believed that the simplicity of simply putting the 'R' within the christmas tree was effective due to the fact that the rest of the logo could be removed and just keep the R and there would still be a strong brand logo. 

The next aspect of the project that was completed was the splash page. To showcase the brand on the splash page we though it would appropriate to have a short video on the page, which clearly defined what the business does and also incorporated the fact that the business does plan to donate a percentage of their profits to charity. Although we believed that this was a good idea there were some downsides to the idea. One of them being the capability on smaller devices. This is because on some devices such as smartphones the video would not automatically play which means that some users would simply skip the video and thus make the page redundant. 

Once the splash page was created, we proceeded to create the home page of the website. We kept a simple design in the webpage by having navigation bar at the top of the page, along with a search bar. There would also be a basket feature in the top right hand corner of the webpage which would display what  items the customer was buying. We felt that by keeping the site simple it would be much more effective due to the fact that the users would be easily be able to find what they were looking for. 

Once the main content for the project was created we began looking at other thing within the brief that would aid our idea. We decided that the brand should have a Facebook page, due to the fact that the business would be able to reach a very large amount of people through it and would be able to tailer their advertising to specific people. Along with that we also created a design for an application. This is because within the brief it stated that there we needed to be room for future development into other formats so we believed that having an application design would be a good idea because many people have smart phones and having compatible applications for those devices means that the business would be able to reach more people. 

Concept and Ideation - Project 2

Fire Kills Project 

For the second concept and ideation project we were set the task of creating a fire kills awareness campaign. The campaign had to include six key points which had to be clearly stated within the campaign. 

To start me and the other members of the team began brainstorming some ideas which we could use for the campaign. We first decided that the target market for our campaign would be students aged between 18 and 24 that were living by themselves for the first time. Having decided this we began to think of some ideas for the campaign. The first idea that we decided to use was shockvertising. We were going to create a campaign which depicts the real costs of a fire. However the more we began expanding on the idea the more we believed that the idea would not work. This is due to the fact that the audience that we were going to target, which was students aged between 18 and 24, have grown up with shockvertising. This means that the target market which we had chosen is in many ways immune to this form of advertising meaning that idea would not be an effective one. (Williams, 2009)

The next idea that we had was to incorporate some of the ideas that were used in a recent Very.com advert (see video below) in which they used freeze frames. We though that this could be a good idea for a video which would be set inside a burning house and would extenuate the objectives, such as an image of someone trying to get out of a door that is blocked.  However we came to the same conclusion that although this would be very visually striking, it would be to much like shockvertising and therefore would not be effective for our audience. 

After this we began to do some more brainstorming and finally decided on an idea which would incorporate an increasingly popular form of media within the age group we had decided to target, which is vine videos. We decided that we create six individual vine videos which incorporated the six objectives that we had been given. The team and I believed that the videos should be funny by having them set in ridiculous situations but at the end clearly state the objective. This we believed would be an effective way of getting the message through to the age category because they would be more likely to pay attention to something that is funny than something that they are growing immune to. This idea also had the benefit that they could become viral, through being passed around through friends, via social networking. This meant that the campaign would reach much more people. 

References 

Williams, Matt. (2009) Does Shock Advertising Still Work? Campaign(UK), Issue 16, 11

Concept and Ideation - Project 1

Bristol Zoo Concept 

For the first project that we had within the concept and ideation unit, we were set the task of designing a digital user experience that: Utilised the Zoo’s archive collection of photos and associated facts from its past 176 years. Engages users and facilitates new kinds of interaction. Makes the heritage sector relevant by using new technology. Maximises locative aspects (ie from mobile smart phone). Appeals to an audience of young families: (children 5-12 and their parents), visitors to Bristol Zoo, animal lovers.

The first thing that me and the rest of the team did was begin brainstorming some ideas for what we could do to incorporate some if the ideas that we had been given. The first thing that we came up with was a wristband. The wristband would have is that it each wristband would include an RFID tag and GPS. The reason behind this would be that it would allow customers names to be stored within the wristband and allow a track of their location. The benefits that we felt this had is that it would firstly allow customers to receive personalised customer service, such as being greeted with their name. This would make the customers feel more welcomed and that would only benefit the business through having happy customers. The second benefit was that because the wristband had a GPS tracker within it, it could be linked up to an application which could be downloaded on to compatible devices (Smartphones and tablets) and then the app would allow the user to track the location of wristbands that have been linked to the app. The obvious benefit of this is that it would help prevent children being separated from their parents.  

As we discussed the ideas further, we soon came up with the idea that the application would have an interactive map within it. This would allow customers to be able to see exact events that were happening at certain times at the zoo, such as feeding times. The map would also tell customers about how busy certain areas of the zoo were. 

The final idea that we had to come up with was an idea that would incorporate all of the pictures which the zoo had collected over the last 176 years. The idea that we came up with was inspired by 3D wall mapping that we had been shown in a lecture before. If you are not aware of what wall mapping is, it is essentially projecting a images onto a wall to create a show of some kind. The video below is an example done by LG Electronics. 

The way that we would incorporate this is that we would create a simulated a ride in which the customers would sit in a cart and instead of the cart moving there would be 3D wall mapping which would create the illusion of the cart moving. Along with this we thought it would be a good way to use the pictures that the zoo had by almost taking the user through a journey through time,  by using the images to show how the zoo has changed over time. Although we believed that this would be a very good idea and would provide their customers with an amazing experience, the financial implication of doing this, does make it a slightly risky idea. 

New to Blogging

As a a digital media design student I believe that it is important that I start to use, what is fast becoming a very popular form communication, of blogging. This is my first blog and I will be mainly writing about things that are happening within my progression at university and factors that are beginning to effect the media industries. 

I hope that you enjoy reading my blog. 

Liam Gorton