Critical Reflection for Digital Curation Project
who your audience is specifically, what you hope to persuade then to believe with your exhibit, what you want them to do (your call to action), and why. You should also include in your introduction a clearly identifiable, clickable 'hot link' to your DCP.
Reflection:
Especially for anyone doing so on a daily basis, a walk across the Walnut Street Bridge into Downtown Morgantown will feel like a depressing and disgusting experience - but it shouldn't be that way. I want to walk into and around the city and to be proud and happy to do so. I want others to be proud and happy to walk around our city. This is "why" I have chosen this topic. "What" one is faced with when one walks the sidewalks of Morgantown is refuse and discarded food, cigarette butts, vomit, dog and human feces and other disturbing items. Loiterers will sometime block the way almost completely and create a gauntlet to pass, and will ask for change. Usually these will be the only people sitting on and along the sidewalks Downtown during the day.
These conditions all add up to make a trip Downtown unpleasant. Residents and students in Morgantown, as well as visitors, shop owners and workers, delivery people, and City workers have a right to live and work in a clean and safe environment. Anyone who does not venture Downtown on a regular basis, or who drives rather than walks, may be unaware of these appalling conditions. I would like to make Morgantown aware of these conditions and to turn things around. I want to be happy living here.
Audience and Call to Action:
It is my hope that through creating awareness of the problems, residents and business owners and workers, community groups and the City government and any of the above mentioned individuals, such as students, will be motivated to take action to remedy the situations. These groups are my audience, the "who". What I want these groups to "do" as a call to action is to become aware of the problems I delineate, to identify so much with the right for us to live in a clean and safe environment that they personally will not litter, throw butts on the sidewalks or not pick up after their dogs and will encourage others to act likewise. Then I want them to take part in campaigns to create a culture of cleanliness and safety in the city, as well as to fund and support and participate in if needed in these campaigns and activities, be it through voting for improvements or direct participation.
As specifics, I want them to support and fund regularly done professional power washing of selected sidewalks and areas, to consider relocating and consolidating "homeless" services, possibly to Westover, to fund surveillance cameras and monitoring in certain areas of the city, to enforce dog walking laws and other anti-littering laws, to hold contests and campaigns to promote a culture of city cleanliness, and to install urinals, possibly toilets and vomit basins adjacent to High Street. I want the Walnut Street Bridge to be clean and to be decorated artistically somehow. These actions will hopefully be followed by other positive actions and projects to further revitalize and beautify the town so that it can achieve a good walkable appeal and an increased quantity, variety and stability of businesses. Further enhancements of the city may be street cafes, greenery including planters, flower boxes, trees, etc. I want to raise expectations in Morgantown.
The Digital Curation Project can be found here.
I have chosen Adobe Spark to display my digital curation project for its ability to use the Universal Design Principles in the most effective way for this project. Besides the fact that it is extremely easy to use, it afforded a way to use Progressive Disclosure (pg 188) using a scrolling "page". The page is easy to navigate quickly up and down. One moves ahead viewing the unfortunate sidewalk conditions in a manner almost as if they are taking a walk themselves. The problems, and then the solutions, are progressively displayed. One does not have to go to another page and thereby get off the path to see the overall picture, but there are links and buttons to give information that augments the discussions should the viewer wish more information. They remain on the singular path during this augmentation.
Cognitive Dissonance (pg 46) - I found that people were less likely to complain about the dog excrement on the Walnut Street Bridge after a heavy rain. If it was not right there in front of them, they tended to say everything was all right. At that time they are in a consonant state. When the evidence was in plain sight, it was impossible to ignore the situation, and they would recall all the other times they had seen it. When confronted with a poster or other advertising that reminds them of the way things can be if not careful, or pictures that contrast what could be with the way things are, people experience cognitive dissonance and realize that they want a clean town.
Classical Conditioning (pg. 42) is also at work here, as inherently people know, having been classically conditioned to the fact, that clean is good and excrement and dirt is not good. Therefore when faced with the abundance of unsavory pictures of the evidence and with the articles and videos about the nature of the diseases that these things produce, as well as testimonials from others who live and work here through the two videos I made, one will naturally want to move from the current unclean conditions to the more idyllic clean conditions that are possible.
Exposure Effect (Pg. 86) will occur when people are daily confronted with campaign posters, especially if the posters are updated regularly and are kept interesting. People will then start to look forward to the latest poster issue. They may turn on their radios and hear further reinforcement of the ideas. They will become increasingly familiar with the concept of a clean city and over time a clean city will become the norm, especially because peer pressure will come into play - perpetrators like errant dog owners will no longer be able to believe that no one cares.
Priming (pg. 186) is a direct result of the Exposure Effect. Once people know that others care and once they feel they are being watched and judged unfavorably if they act contrary to the public expectations, such as with the pictures of eyes in the example in the book and with the presence and monitoring by surveillance cameras, they will not be inclined to go against the public norm which at some point will be a good norm. Showing attractive town elements in posters will prime people to want and to expect to see their own city looking that way. Well pumps need priming before the water begins to flow on its own. So will campaigns and improvements prime the community to move forward in cleaning up Morgantown sidewalks.
I have tried to keep the project understandable while scrolling quickly through the items displayed, and therefore have striven to use Serial Position Effect (pg. 220). The most disturbing pictures of uncleanliness appear near the beginning of the presentation. That sets a somewhat dismal tone and makes an impression. These can be quickly scrolled through. Then hope is gained slowly through understanding the situation and by considering some options and avenues of change, and finally lovely positive images are at the very end to provide a clear feel for the goal and the results of efforts that can be achieved. This makes use of the order effect within Serial Position Effect. It will leave the viewer hoping and longing for change.
The words within the DCP are kept to a minimum, and Readability (pg. 198) is enhanced in the process. Words and sentences are kept simple and are not complex for readability. They are grouped by pairing them with photos in most cases to imprint the concepts without the necessity of reading every word. The pictures, being worth 1000 words, are adding to the readability. This phenomena is the Picture Superiority Effect (184) which enhances, reinforces and illustrates the point being made with the words. Pictures are remembered better than words and the words and pictures blend into a whole. One is able to scroll more quickly through the page to get a general idea of the story being told, and then can scroll back again to take in an item more leisurely should one wish. These two design principles work hand in hand.
Framing (pg. 108) is definitely a tool in showing uncleanliness in a bad light and cleanliness and greenery, or the Biophilia Effect in a good light. Greenery and flowers are good and deserve to be framed as such. Also, "homeless" are generally also referred to as vagrants in the DCP, as the term homeless engenders too much sympathy in this case since most of the vagrants are not in fact truly homeless. Therefore to term them homeless would frame them in an undeserved better light than to term them vagrants, although neither word is a perfect word for the situation. Campaign posters frame the perpetrators in an unflattering light, and frame those who do their part to keep the sidewalks clean in a flattering light, which enforces the need of individuals to comply with more socially acceptable behavior.
The Biophilia Effect (pg. 36) is shown by the use of pictures of towns showing attractive green spaces to good effect near the end of the presentation, which lends a color and visual contrast to the dull dirty sidewalks and the mostly brown items that contaminate them. A link to an article specifically about the Biophilia Effect offers further consideration of the design principle. Our book says, "Environments rich in nature views and imagery reduce stress and enhance focus and concentration." They also attract people and make them happy.
When displaying the multitude of campaign posters from many different sources, Alignment (pg. 24) as a design element has been used, as well as categories within the alignment which have similarly themed posters and signs grouped together. Other motion-based methods of display have already been used by this point and the posters come as a stationary block of colors to break up the motion, although there are so many posters and signs that they must be moved through to see them all. The alignment gives them an organized appearance and does not draw attention to any one poster or sign but gives an overall impression of the kinds of things that could be done in our town to promote ideas of cleanliness and change.
Highlighting (pg. 126) is used generously throughout the DCP to emphasize specific words so that one does not have to read the whole paragraph or sentence to understand what it is referring to. This highlighting can be done using either bold type or a larger type. The free version of Adobe Spark that I am using does not allow color highlighting. Bold or larger type is also used to differentiate titles and headings from the body of a paragraph. Highlighting increases the readability of the presentation.
I have consciously and probably unconsciously used the Rule of Thirds (pg. 208) while taking the photographs used in this DCP and while filming the videos. Of note is the last man speaking on the Walnut Street Bridge film about the Japanese Yakuza. The composition of that shot is a perfect Rule of Thirds set up. Sometimes people or objects are in the center of a shot, be it a photograph or a person being interviewed for a video, and many times they are positioned one third of the way from either side.
Last but not least is Storytelling (pg. 230). The whole Digital Curation Project is the story of a walk from home to school through town and the things I see and notice and record on the way. Viewers will also be able to identify with these things and can recall their own walks into and through town. Using photographs and videos I have created as well as items selected from online I hope to have assembled a good representation of the experiences that is now to be had in Morgantown, and have contrasted those experiences with more desirable experiences that we could be having. Along the way I hope to have shown ways that a change can be accomplished.
Of course, many other design principles find their way into the display of these multimodal items. Color, Chunking, Symmetry and hopefully Propositional Density deserve at least passing mention. Satisficing is also important, since there is a time limit involved in what can be shown and described both in the Digital Curation Project itself, and in this description of the principles used to do so.
I moved to Morgantown March 6, 2014, four years ago today. Coincidence? I came to this town because I wanted to find an affordable old house that was in a good neighborhood from which I could easily and quickly walk into town, and to a university should I decide to go back to school. I made one exploratory four day trip to Morgantown in August, 2013. The first thing I noticed about the town besides the nice old architecture was the many beautiful hanging flower baskets on Downtown light poles. Coming from Texas, I wondered how they managed to water them and to keep them looking so nice. I discovered my favorite neighborhood, the Greenmont section of Morgantown. I loved the old wooden houses with narrow alleyways and the gardens. There were two bridges that I used to walk into town, but on that trip I mostly used the Pleasant Street Bridge as I was staying in the Hotel Morgan which is closer.
In contrast, I did notice the sidewalks that trip, especially when I was on North High Street for Fallfest. And yes, I did notice the vagrant situation in town and others told me about it when I went around "interviewing" residents and shop owners about what it was like to live here. The picture of the parking meter in front of the library which asks people to refrain from giving change to panhandlers was taken on that first trip here. The sidewalks in Morgantown were in complete contrast to the sparkling white pristine sidewalks I had seen while visiting Fayetteville, Arkansas, the only other town I visited in a quest to find a new affordable home town.
Morgantown still won over Fayetteville, regardless of the sidewalk situation. The first year and a half after moving here I focused on fixing up the beautiful house I found online. I did not walk downtown much. Then I decided to take advantage of having a university close by and went back to school, starting the summer of 2015. The sidewalks slowly became an issue for me, until this class forced me to focus even more on them. Cleaning the sidewalks has now solidified into a real cause for me. Now I would also like to see positive changes made in the increased beautification and walkability of the city.
I am glad that my two years volunteering on the Urban Landscape Commission in Morgantown has helped me to gain insights into how the city is run, and the processes that must be followed before changes can be implemented here. Ironically, I had volunteered to be on the commission as a result of a conversation I had had with my Ward 2 City Council Member about the cleanliness of the sidewalks at our annual Greenmont Neighborhood party in June, 2014. It was at his suggestion that I joined the ULC. I became discouraged at the efforts to beautify the city while I daily saw the condition of the sidewalks. Perhaps now, using this Digital Curation Project as a starting point, I can get some changes made!
who your audience is specifically, what you hope to persuade then to believe with your exhibit, what you want them to do (your call to action), and why. You should also include in your introduction a clearly identifiable, clickable 'hot link' to your DCP.
Reflection:
Especially for anyone doing so on a daily basis, a walk across the Walnut Street Bridge into Downtown Morgantown will feel like a depressing and disgusting experience - but it shouldn't be that way. I want to walk into and around the city and to be proud and happy to do so. I want others to be proud and happy to walk around our city. This is "why" I have chosen this topic. "What" one is faced with when one walks the sidewalks of Morgantown is refuse and discarded food, cigarette butts, vomit, dog and human feces and other disturbing items. Loiterers will sometime block the way almost completely and create a gauntlet to pass, and will ask for change. Usually these will be the only people sitting on and along the sidewalks Downtown during the day.
These conditions all add up to make a trip Downtown unpleasant. Residents and students in Morgantown, as well as visitors, shop owners and workers, delivery people, and City workers have a right to live and work in a clean and safe environment. Anyone who does not venture Downtown on a regular basis, or who drives rather than walks, may be unaware of these appalling conditions. I would like to make Morgantown aware of these conditions and to turn things around. I want to be happy living here.
Audience and Call to Action:
It is my hope that through creating awareness of the problems, residents and business owners and workers, community groups and the City government and any of the above mentioned individuals, such as students, will be motivated to take action to remedy the situations. These groups are my audience, the "who". What I want these groups to "do" as a call to action is to become aware of the problems I delineate, to identify so much with the right for us to live in a clean and safe environment that they personally will not litter, throw butts on the sidewalks or not pick up after their dogs and will encourage others to act likewise. Then I want them to take part in campaigns to create a culture of cleanliness and safety in the city, as well as to fund and support and participate in if needed in these campaigns and activities, be it through voting for improvements or direct participation.
As specifics, I want them to support and fund regularly done professional power washing of selected sidewalks and areas, to consider relocating and consolidating "homeless" services, possibly to Westover, to fund surveillance cameras and monitoring in certain areas of the city, to enforce dog walking laws and other anti-littering laws, to hold contests and campaigns to promote a culture of city cleanliness, and to install urinals, possibly toilets and vomit basins adjacent to High Street. I want the Walnut Street Bridge to be clean and to be decorated artistically somehow. These actions will hopefully be followed by other positive actions and projects to further revitalize and beautify the town so that it can achieve a good walkable appeal and an increased quantity, variety and stability of businesses. Further enhancements of the city may be street cafes, greenery including planters, flower boxes, trees, etc. I want to raise expectations in Morgantown.
The Digital Curation Project can be found here.
I have chosen Adobe Spark to display my digital curation project for its ability to use the Universal Design Principles in the most effective way for this project. Besides the fact that it is extremely easy to use, it afforded a way to use Progressive Disclosure (pg 188) using a scrolling "page". The page is easy to navigate quickly up and down. One moves ahead viewing the unfortunate sidewalk conditions in a manner almost as if they are taking a walk themselves. The problems, and then the solutions, are progressively displayed. One does not have to go to another page and thereby get off the path to see the overall picture, but there are links and buttons to give information that augments the discussions should the viewer wish more information. They remain on the singular path during this augmentation.
Cognitive Dissonance (pg 46) - I found that people were less likely to complain about the dog excrement on the Walnut Street Bridge after a heavy rain. If it was not right there in front of them, they tended to say everything was all right. At that time they are in a consonant state. When the evidence was in plain sight, it was impossible to ignore the situation, and they would recall all the other times they had seen it. When confronted with a poster or other advertising that reminds them of the way things can be if not careful, or pictures that contrast what could be with the way things are, people experience cognitive dissonance and realize that they want a clean town.
Classical Conditioning (pg. 42) is also at work here, as inherently people know, having been classically conditioned to the fact, that clean is good and excrement and dirt is not good. Therefore when faced with the abundance of unsavory pictures of the evidence and with the articles and videos about the nature of the diseases that these things produce, as well as testimonials from others who live and work here through the two videos I made, one will naturally want to move from the current unclean conditions to the more idyllic clean conditions that are possible.
Exposure Effect (Pg. 86) will occur when people are daily confronted with campaign posters, especially if the posters are updated regularly and are kept interesting. People will then start to look forward to the latest poster issue. They may turn on their radios and hear further reinforcement of the ideas. They will become increasingly familiar with the concept of a clean city and over time a clean city will become the norm, especially because peer pressure will come into play - perpetrators like errant dog owners will no longer be able to believe that no one cares.
Priming (pg. 186) is a direct result of the Exposure Effect. Once people know that others care and once they feel they are being watched and judged unfavorably if they act contrary to the public expectations, such as with the pictures of eyes in the example in the book and with the presence and monitoring by surveillance cameras, they will not be inclined to go against the public norm which at some point will be a good norm. Showing attractive town elements in posters will prime people to want and to expect to see their own city looking that way. Well pumps need priming before the water begins to flow on its own. So will campaigns and improvements prime the community to move forward in cleaning up Morgantown sidewalks.
I have tried to keep the project understandable while scrolling quickly through the items displayed, and therefore have striven to use Serial Position Effect (pg. 220). The most disturbing pictures of uncleanliness appear near the beginning of the presentation. That sets a somewhat dismal tone and makes an impression. These can be quickly scrolled through. Then hope is gained slowly through understanding the situation and by considering some options and avenues of change, and finally lovely positive images are at the very end to provide a clear feel for the goal and the results of efforts that can be achieved. This makes use of the order effect within Serial Position Effect. It will leave the viewer hoping and longing for change.
The words within the DCP are kept to a minimum, and Readability (pg. 198) is enhanced in the process. Words and sentences are kept simple and are not complex for readability. They are grouped by pairing them with photos in most cases to imprint the concepts without the necessity of reading every word. The pictures, being worth 1000 words, are adding to the readability. This phenomena is the Picture Superiority Effect (184) which enhances, reinforces and illustrates the point being made with the words. Pictures are remembered better than words and the words and pictures blend into a whole. One is able to scroll more quickly through the page to get a general idea of the story being told, and then can scroll back again to take in an item more leisurely should one wish. These two design principles work hand in hand.
Framing (pg. 108) is definitely a tool in showing uncleanliness in a bad light and cleanliness and greenery, or the Biophilia Effect in a good light. Greenery and flowers are good and deserve to be framed as such. Also, "homeless" are generally also referred to as vagrants in the DCP, as the term homeless engenders too much sympathy in this case since most of the vagrants are not in fact truly homeless. Therefore to term them homeless would frame them in an undeserved better light than to term them vagrants, although neither word is a perfect word for the situation. Campaign posters frame the perpetrators in an unflattering light, and frame those who do their part to keep the sidewalks clean in a flattering light, which enforces the need of individuals to comply with more socially acceptable behavior.
The Biophilia Effect (pg. 36) is shown by the use of pictures of towns showing attractive green spaces to good effect near the end of the presentation, which lends a color and visual contrast to the dull dirty sidewalks and the mostly brown items that contaminate them. A link to an article specifically about the Biophilia Effect offers further consideration of the design principle. Our book says, "Environments rich in nature views and imagery reduce stress and enhance focus and concentration." They also attract people and make them happy.
When displaying the multitude of campaign posters from many different sources, Alignment (pg. 24) as a design element has been used, as well as categories within the alignment which have similarly themed posters and signs grouped together. Other motion-based methods of display have already been used by this point and the posters come as a stationary block of colors to break up the motion, although there are so many posters and signs that they must be moved through to see them all. The alignment gives them an organized appearance and does not draw attention to any one poster or sign but gives an overall impression of the kinds of things that could be done in our town to promote ideas of cleanliness and change.
Highlighting (pg. 126) is used generously throughout the DCP to emphasize specific words so that one does not have to read the whole paragraph or sentence to understand what it is referring to. This highlighting can be done using either bold type or a larger type. The free version of Adobe Spark that I am using does not allow color highlighting. Bold or larger type is also used to differentiate titles and headings from the body of a paragraph. Highlighting increases the readability of the presentation.
I have consciously and probably unconsciously used the Rule of Thirds (pg. 208) while taking the photographs used in this DCP and while filming the videos. Of note is the last man speaking on the Walnut Street Bridge film about the Japanese Yakuza. The composition of that shot is a perfect Rule of Thirds set up. Sometimes people or objects are in the center of a shot, be it a photograph or a person being interviewed for a video, and many times they are positioned one third of the way from either side.
Last but not least is Storytelling (pg. 230). The whole Digital Curation Project is the story of a walk from home to school through town and the things I see and notice and record on the way. Viewers will also be able to identify with these things and can recall their own walks into and through town. Using photographs and videos I have created as well as items selected from online I hope to have assembled a good representation of the experiences that is now to be had in Morgantown, and have contrasted those experiences with more desirable experiences that we could be having. Along the way I hope to have shown ways that a change can be accomplished.
Of course, many other design principles find their way into the display of these multimodal items. Color, Chunking, Symmetry and hopefully Propositional Density deserve at least passing mention. Satisficing is also important, since there is a time limit involved in what can be shown and described both in the Digital Curation Project itself, and in this description of the principles used to do so.
I moved to Morgantown March 6, 2014, four years ago today. Coincidence? I came to this town because I wanted to find an affordable old house that was in a good neighborhood from which I could easily and quickly walk into town, and to a university should I decide to go back to school. I made one exploratory four day trip to Morgantown in August, 2013. The first thing I noticed about the town besides the nice old architecture was the many beautiful hanging flower baskets on Downtown light poles. Coming from Texas, I wondered how they managed to water them and to keep them looking so nice. I discovered my favorite neighborhood, the Greenmont section of Morgantown. I loved the old wooden houses with narrow alleyways and the gardens. There were two bridges that I used to walk into town, but on that trip I mostly used the Pleasant Street Bridge as I was staying in the Hotel Morgan which is closer.
In contrast, I did notice the sidewalks that trip, especially when I was on North High Street for Fallfest. And yes, I did notice the vagrant situation in town and others told me about it when I went around "interviewing" residents and shop owners about what it was like to live here. The picture of the parking meter in front of the library which asks people to refrain from giving change to panhandlers was taken on that first trip here. The sidewalks in Morgantown were in complete contrast to the sparkling white pristine sidewalks I had seen while visiting Fayetteville, Arkansas, the only other town I visited in a quest to find a new affordable home town.
Morgantown still won over Fayetteville, regardless of the sidewalk situation. The first year and a half after moving here I focused on fixing up the beautiful house I found online. I did not walk downtown much. Then I decided to take advantage of having a university close by and went back to school, starting the summer of 2015. The sidewalks slowly became an issue for me, until this class forced me to focus even more on them. Cleaning the sidewalks has now solidified into a real cause for me. Now I would also like to see positive changes made in the increased beautification and walkability of the city.
I am glad that my two years volunteering on the Urban Landscape Commission in Morgantown has helped me to gain insights into how the city is run, and the processes that must be followed before changes can be implemented here. Ironically, I had volunteered to be on the commission as a result of a conversation I had had with my Ward 2 City Council Member about the cleanliness of the sidewalks at our annual Greenmont Neighborhood party in June, 2014. It was at his suggestion that I joined the ULC. I became discouraged at the efforts to beautify the city while I daily saw the condition of the sidewalks. Perhaps now, using this Digital Curation Project as a starting point, I can get some changes made!
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