MINI-PROJECT 01
VISUALIZE HISTORY Look back to move forward
THE GOAL Long before Facebook, mySpace and the O’Reilly trademarked Web 2.0 term, people were using both digital and physical artifacts to create shared meaning and enable collaboration. “Social media” has existed for decades, but never before at this scale and with this ubiquity. What can we learn from the past to help us design better media solutions in the future? This project has four goals: 1) Uncover the long and local history of social media. 2) Gain experience discovering and then synthesizing large amounts of information 3) Gain experience synthesizing and communicating information in a visually compelling manner 4) Learn to collaborate quickly and effectively with your new classmates.
The Project For Thursday April 2 nd : 1)
2)
Read the following: a.
Fred Turner, "Where the counterculture met the new economy: the WELL and the origins of virtual community," Technology and Culture, Volume 46, Number 3, July 2005, pp. 485-512 available here: http://www.stanford.edu/~fturner/Turner%20Tech %20&%20Culture%2046%203.pdf
b.
Howard Rheingold, Chapter 2 of The Virtual Community , (1992) http://www.rheingold.com/vc/book/2.html
Jot down 3 or more questions, comments or insights about the readings. Come to class prepared to discuss your findings with the class. Fred Turner, Stanford Communications Department Professor and author of the book From Counterculture to Cyberculture: Stewart Brand, the Whole Earth Network, and the Rise of Digital Utopianism will be joining the class discussion and helping us synthesize our learnings.
The class discussion will be used to inform and inspire the next part of the project found on the following page.
Boyd, d. m., & Ellison, N. B. (2007). Social network sites: Definition, history, and scholarship. Journal of Computer‐Mediated Communication, 13(1), article 11. http://jcmc.indiana.edu/vol13/issue1/boyd.ellison.html
For Tuesday April 7 th 1) 2) 3)
Continue exploring the topics of social media history and visual communication. Use the resources found on the dmedia site as a starting point. We’ll send a pointer to the resources after class via email. Prepare a visual representation of your findings. Use any medium you prefer and use any tools you would like. The visualization must be presentable in a digital form. (e.g. a beautiful hand drawn mind map, which is absolutely encouraged, must be converted to a digital format like .png, .jpg, .tiff etc.). Be prepared to share your artifact and discuss the interesting social media history insights it communicates in class on Tuesday April 7th.
Advice for Success •
Ideally your visualization can help answer the question: “What can we learn from social media’s long, local and rich past to inform the way we design solutions in the future.?”
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Choose a unique point of view. While a timeline like the one on the previous page could be interesting it might not be the best (or only) way to represent the network of people, places and organizations that created the fabric of social media history.
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Go deep OR go broad. The history of social media is vast. You might choose to hone in on one particular area and provide some deep understanding. Alternatively you could take a broad view and present a shallower response.
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Feel free to work individually or in small groups. It is up to you to determine the most effective way to complete the project.
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There is no “correct” answer to this project. Follow your creative instincts to a fruitful area and start designing! Ideally your visualization will inform and inspire the class in unanticipated ways.
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BE VISUAL! Get inspired by visiting some of the visual communication resources found on the d.media sprout. Communicate visually in any way you like. Don’t be afraid to try to learn a new skill or master a new tool. Use of on-line digital tools is encouraged.
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Get started by designing something quick and dirty. Hand drawn mind maps, like the two represented on the following page, might be an effective way to get started fast. They are very effective ways to saturate a space with ideas and make unanticipated connections.
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Ask for help. The teaching team loves to help. Just ask!
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HAVE FUN!