Assessment 3 Networked Media 2016
Jordan Williams, Andrea Blake, Hannah Tepoorten, Karl Vitolo
Muggle in Melbourne
Link to Photo Map (Front Page)- http://s3583984.wix.com/muggleinmelbourne
Links to All Pages:
Airport- http://s3583984.wix.com/muggleinmelbourne#!airport/aar78
Bar- http://s3583984.wix.com/muggleinmelbourne#!bar/qzkzu
Cafes- http://s3583984.wix.com/muggleinmelbourne#!cafe/lq5lj
Laneways- http://s3583984.wix.com/muggleinmelbourne#!laneways/idqq4
Shopping Malls- http://s3583984.wix.com/muggleinmelbourne#!shopping/qwqf4
Swanston Street- http://s3583984.wix.com/muggleinmelbourne#!swanston-st/ot7dq
Zoo- http://s3583984.wix.com/muggleinmelbourne#!zoo/ji904
Trams- http://s3583984.wix.com/muggleinmelbourne#!trams/z1w0l
Myki- http://s3583984.wix.com/muggleinmelbourne#!myki/y80j8
Kebab Stops- http://s3583984.wix.com/muggleinmelbourne#!kebab/k0vru
Trains- http://s3583984.wix.com/muggleinmelbourne#!train-station/k6ceu
Buskers- http://s3583984.wix.com/muggleinmelbourne#!buskers/n1smg
ACMI- http://s3583984.wix.com/muggleinmelbourne#!acmi/fmes3
State Library- http://s3583984.wix.com/muggleinmelbourne#!library/gfydk
Food Court- http://s3583984.wix.com/muggleinmelbourne#!foodcourt/cbo6l
Cinema- http://s3583984.wix.com/muggleinmelbourne#!cinema/tqxi0
Botanical Gardens- http://s3583984.wix.com/muggleinmelbourne#!botanical-gardens/mpasc
Academic Reflection:
For our final hypermedia story, our group titled Lemonade decided to explore the idea of building an image and text based website targeted at young people between the ages of 7 and 19. Our idea is basically summarised by the title ‘Muggles in Melbourne’, a comedic yet informative guide to Melbourne city, which targets those who aren’t necessarily familiar with human life.
Given that we wanted to target and younger audience, we decided to use humour as a device to engage and entertain the. Our research dictated that audience expectation is very important, and in order to maintain attention and receive positive feedback, the viewer must experience what they intended to. This is a concept explored by Gene Perret and Judy Carter in their educational books on comedy writing. Jay Oatway further confirms this theory by stating that in order to develop a strong online following, content must be consistent and accessed via relevant platforms where the expectation of what the content is has already been developed. Wix allowed us to create a story with engaging and immersive content for young people with shorter attention spans than adults, and a need for constant stimulation. We found it easy to drop in pictures and sounds onto the relevant page and to code image maps for added interactivity.
Our second point of consideration was to figure out how best to create our site in order for it to engage the audience. Since we knew our audience was young, we decided to go with large popping images as these would be easier to navigate and more intuitive. Mark Bernstein states that “muddled writing was more likely to be the source of confusion than hypertextual complexity” therefore, our writing was kept simple and concise, and where possible we used a clickable image map.
The image map was created to engage the viewer at more of a story level, allowing them to select what exactly they are exposed to. This is what is known as an interactive narrative, For example, from the homepage one could choose to look at public transport or at zoos, they are not forced to read through in order like a book. “The medium lends itself to circumstances where readers can play out alternative scenarios” (Douglas, J. Yellowlees). If considered at a deeper level, this effectively means that the audience can create their own expectation, resulting in them being more likely to maintain engagement.
Given time and work, the ideal outcome of a location-based website like the one we built would be to fit into an app format like MONA’s ‘O’ (https://www.mona.net.au/theo) but on a city-wide scale. It allows users to wander around a gallery at their will and reacts to the artworks the user is looking at by popping up useful information and interactive material on the screen, effectively letting the user wander around and determine their own path through the gallery.
Furthermore, the image based website is something that young people are becoming more and more familiar with, as image content grows on websites like Facebook and Tumblr. Adrian Miles refers to this as ‘network literacy’, or an understanding of textual spaces, such as an operating system or a social media website. Given more time, Google analytics could have been employed to allow for readjustments and feedback from viewers.
References:
Bernstein, Mark. “Delightful Vistas: Revisiting the Hypertext Garden.” Travels in Intermediality. Lebanon, US: Dartmouth, 2012. ProQuest ebrary. Web. 8 February 2016. 142-146
Carter, J. (2001). The comedy bible. New York: Fireside.
Douglas, J. Yellowlees. “Books without Pages—Novels without Endings.” The end of books or books without end? : reading interactive narratives. University of Michigan Press ; University Presses Marketing, 1999. 11-36
Guadagno, Rosanna E. et al. ‘What Makes A Video Go Viral? An Analysis Of Emotional Contagion And Internet Memes’. Computers in Human Behavior 29.6 (2013): 2312-2319. Web.
Miles, Adrian. Network Literacy: The New Path to Knowledge [online]. Screen Education, No. 45, 2007: 24-30.
Mona.net.au. (2016). Mona » The O. [online] Available at: https://www.mona.net.au/theo [Accessed 1 Jun. 2016].
Oatway, J. (2012). Mastering story, community and influence. Chichester, West Sussex, U.K.: Wiley.
Perret, G. (2007). The new comedy writing step by step. Sanger, CA: Quill Driver Books/Word Dancer Press.