This week Jon Wetherall from Onteca (http://onteca.com/) came in to set us our 2nd question for the research module. I thought that Jon was a really cool guy and had a lot to say. His background is mostly in developing games so pretty much the whole presentation was based around this. I enjoyed the presentation because I've never really had a talk on game development so it was a new experience for me. It made me realise how fierce the competition is in the gaming industry.
It seems almost unfair after Jon explained, that so many people seem to demand free apps in the smart phone app world. People will happily pay for food or takeaway but then become judgemental when asked to pay 69p for an app, it doesn't make sense to me, although I myself admit I am guilty of it. My worry is that what if I buy an app and then don't like the app, at least when I buy a burger from Burger King I know I'm going to like it. Maybe its just the risk of spending money on something that you don't know much about.
After Jon's talk he set us our question which is displayed below.
I think this whole idea is really interesting and is a potential question I might be in favour of! The whole talk interested me as well as the question!
Hello!
In toady's Applied Media Research class we were taught about qualitive research, which I from the start preferred over Quantitive. I think this is because I generally like talking with people face to face when wanting to find out information and I find it easy to chat to someone and qualitive research relies on this, depending on what kind of qualitive research you carry out.
We got into our research groups and were given the opportunity to come up with a type of qualitive research to carry out on another group. The question we had to consider was the same as the quantitive which was "How would you promote a degree to a potential student". We decided on a Diary entry. I thought that this was a useful way of finding out information about the stages of someones journey to university and gave us a good insight on peoples thoughts. We got some feedback off the other group and found out that maybe our idea was a bit vague and all of the answers were similar. In the future I think we would try and come up with another method of qaulitive research that required more participant involvement.
In our TV Studio production module we recorded our paper airplane show. This was a really good experience and gave our group a feel of what we will be doing in the future with our final show. I really enjoy presenting, theres a good adrenaline feel towards it, I like being put under pressure I guess. Its definitely something I would love to continue doing but I do realise how hard it is to break into that section of the industry! I think that I could be slightly more funny on camera though. Anyway I'll see how it goes!
Bye!
This week Ian Wareing from the Digital Fiction Factory came in to set us our first question! He was a really nice guy and gave a great presentation which took up the most part of an hour.
Digital Fiction Factory are a company that work with the BBC and Channel 4 to try and make new programmes that are convergent. The programs that they create take place on more than one platform. This encourages people not to just watch their programs but to go online to find out more about the program or take part in online games. I think that this is a very forward thinking way of thinking with media and is very interesting for the consumer. If I was watching a program and at the end of the episode it told me to go online to unlock further into that episode I would definitely go online!
Peter Salmon who is the Director of BBC North has been very complimentary of The Digital Fiction Factory and has said "The Digital Fiction Factory [is] a completely new kind of development and production centre.”
One of the examples of this that Ian talked about was The Well.
Ian then went on to talk about different examples of this idea on a mixture of different platforms, I have linked these below:
TV Radio and Film
http://www.youtube.com/britaininaday
https://www.themillionpounddrop.com/
Online
http://www.exquisiteforest.com/
http://bear71.nfb.ca/#/bear71
Mobile/Tablet
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gew68Qj5kxw
http://www.carolinesmailes.co.uk/books/99-reasons-why
Social Media
http://www.takethislollipop.com/
http://www.b-reel.com/digital/projects/inside/
Live Events
http://www.idhideyou.com/trailer.html
http://www.e4.com/hollyoaks/blog/wretch32invasion/
After Ian showing us these examples it became apparent to me how open and potential this idea actually is. I looked at all of the examples and all of them drew me in and had me looking around. I think there is a clear future in this multi-platform idea.
Ian then finished off his presentation by setting us his question:
"The Internet, Social Media and other open systems have allowed for user generated content (UGC), crowd-sourcing and other forms of audience participation to prevail in Digital Media. But how do we translate these features into storytelling experiences, without treading on the toes of the author?"
My first thought about this question was confusion! It is quite a hard question to get your head around I think, but after some thought I can see where maybe I would start to base my research, it will involved talking to a broad range of people I believe.
But we will see how it goes!
Second Year has arrived! The first week I came back to Liverpool was quite hectic moving into a new house and everything but once I was settled and started arriving back to my new modules I settled in very well. This year The Module that I will concentrate the blog on is Applied Media Research.
There isn't much to say about the first class that we had in this module as it was just an introduction and Sarah told us everything that we will be doing this year. This class was more about getting into the new building and preparing for the year!
Week two in this module we started to look at quantative research which I found relatively interesting. We were told to get into groups and create a questionnaire to hand out to the class on 'How to promote a university degree to potential students'. I really like the idea of working in a group as i like the aspect of teamwork and working with people that sometimes you may not work with!
I understand quantative research and its effects on research. With quantitive research I found that you can gather a lot of information in a very short period of time. The idea is not to detail questions too much but rather to ask the right questions in the right order. Our questionnaire I thought was quite good although some people thought that it was slightly vague. We used a rating system from 1-5, 1 being the lowest mark and 5 being the highest.
Sarah talked us through the main points of quantitive through her PowerPoint and showed us a number of diagrams like the one below:
I believe I have a good understanding of quantative research and I can see its advantages and disadvantages. Personally I like qualitive research more as I like to be able to chat to someone on a one to one basis, but I'm sure that I will use quantitive research as part of the research for my final question!
