Creative Media Group Project Blog # 8 - 4/12/17

Final Presentation

  

We prepared as best as we could for our final presentation. We organized several meetings and each of us prepared slides but Sophie put in a lot of extra work to make sure that it looked right. As I was the only one in the group that was part of the CCM course, some of our biggest project deadlines, including our literature review, clashed with the other CMMAddOn deadlines and were due on same day as our presentation. So that week I was a bit all over the place with other assignments. Sophie had me watch over her during the meetings, helping her with the presentations. Sarah was helping with research and Natalie was designing our new logo & presentation and I think she did an excellent job. I told them that with all the other projects that I had to do for that Monday, which their course didn’t have, I wouldn’t be able to do much work at home on the presentation. I said that I would be prepared for the presentation on Monday and if they were stuck and needed me for anything, just let me know. They seemed to understand.

On the day of our presentation, we were all a bit stressed as we had 2 long presentations that day and 2 big group projects to be handed up that day, as well as my literature review for my dissertation. But we were pretty confident and knew that this presentation would come along far better than the last one. During the presentation I spoke about our Aims and Objectives, Methodologies & Technology, including our plan to make an interactive narrative about an emergency responder dealing with a deaf person using Wirewax. I stuttered a bit during my slides, but overall the presentation went pretty well. It wasn’t great but it was certainly a lot better than the last one and the lecturers seemed happy with our project direction. They had a few notes for us, saying that we need to do more research on the training and practices of emergency services and find out if there are already steps in place for how to deal with a hard of hearing person in an emergency situation.

Now we only have the Project Proposal to complete and that is our work for this semester finished.

Creative Media Group Project Blog # 7 - 28/11/17

Meeting with DeafHear

First off, we just found out that a member of our team, Vanessa Hernadez has dropped out of college and is no longer part of our team. I was sad to hear this but it has certain benefits. We were told that teams of 5 would be marked harsher as they would expect a better project. So at least the pressure of that is off. The other thing is that I know have a better chance to contribute to the group by filling Vanessa’s shoes.

None of us really knew what to expect going into DearHear. Our team met up outside the DeafHear building and we were made feel really welcome going into the interview. We met with 3 of the workers there. One of them was deaf and one of the others translated. The introduced themselves speaking while signing ASL. There was a bit of silence and then Sophie decided to introduce herself by spelling out her name in sign language. We all did the same and the workers seemed really impressed we went in with some knowledge of the ASL language. We only had around 6 topics that we wanted to bring up but we ended up chatting for over an hour about everything. What to focus more on, any difficulties people who are hard of hearing may have that aren’t commonly knew, the best way to go about the project, etc. Then afterwards they gave us a tour of the type of technology that deaf people would use. Everything from alarms, to headphones, recording devices, to mobile phones. There was some much useful/interesting information that we were given that I wouldn’t be able to write it down without rambling on. We made sure to record the entire conversation for future use.

Originally we were going to make a mobile app that is targeted towards kids that teach them the basics of ASL and bring awareness to those hard of hearing. But after discussing everything with the DeafHear workers, we are now bring our focus in a direction that needs to be addressed. We are now aiming to build a website that targets adults. It will teach important phrases for emergency situations. Such as a doctor/police officer/fire fighter describing to a deaf person the situation, like taking blood pressure or telling them to breathe calmly, etc. As well as this, some important tips that could benefit everyone when speaking to the hard of hearing. For example, if you are trying to get a deaf person’s attention without them seeing you, there are signals they recognise that would otherwise be considered rude to average people. Signals like kicking the ground once or twice to send vibrations through the floor or quickly switching a light on and off to get the attention of anyone in the room.

We came out of the DeafHear building knowing exactly what we need to do and we have no more worries about the presentation and report that are due next week. 

Creative Media Group Project Blog # 6 - 20/11/17

Feedback from Glenn

We got our feedback on the presentations from Glenn today. We got a decent result but he had a lot to say about our presentation. First and foremost was that it seemed under prepared and the presentation was too text heavy. That’s understandable as we did the best we could with the time we had. He also said that it seemed like it seemed like we weren’t entirely sure as a group what our goals were and that the task that we are proposing is too big for a team that seems unsure about the end goal. Especially as we said we were building an app despite our lack of app development knowledge. He also mentioned that creating a documentary alongside the app is a big project on it’s own and recommended we do something else. He also said that there seems to be a lack of communication or chemistry within the group itself and it’s something that we all need to be on board with. None of us thought that since we have been communicating and having meetings a lot, but after he said it I kind of understood where he was coming from in a way.

My biggest worry for this project is that I’m not doing enough for this project yet. We are currently in the research part of the project and I am horrible at research. I feel like I’m letting down the team even though I’ve been trying my best to be a valued member of the team. But as long as we are still on the research end of things, I can’t prove anything until we start development. Once we start making the project, I will be going full blast. We are going to meet with DeafHear on Tuesday next week, so we all just have to go in prepared. After discussing ideas and issues with DeafHear, we will have a better grasp on what it is exactly that we should be doing. 

Creative Media Group Project Blog # 5 - 13/11/17

Interim Presentation Day

We had our interim presentation today which was worth 5% of our overall mark. We ran into a lot of issues as we ran out of time to work on the presentation together. We started working with on our project a bit later than planned as each of us couldn’t find the time to meet up. The majority of us were also working full time over the weekend at different times so we didn’t have much of a chance to do work or talk over Facebook to prepare for our presentation Monday morning.

I was tasked with creating a sample idea in Photoshop of the type of layout we would be using for a sign language app. I looked at other sign language apps, downloaded and played them for examples. Once I submitted that image to Sophie, she placed it within the presentation. We worked together in finishing the presentation and picked the slides that we would talk to the class about. During the presentation Sophie was the one to start it off. She seemed very nervous. Presentations are usually my strong point, so when it came to my turn to speak and answer questions, I made sure to speak confidently about our product. We got great feedback, some good, some bad. But we made it through well enough and discussed our next step to get in contact with DeafHear. 

Creative Media Group Project Blog # 4 - 9/11/17

Meeting with the Lecturers

Myself, Sarah and Natalie met with our lecturers to discuss what point we are at with our project and if we are ready for the Interim Presentation the following week. We discussed that our hopes is to create a visual aid that a teacher may see the app as not part of the school curriculum, but may be a fun and interesting way to introduce kids to ASL and see if it encourages kids to socialize with the hard of hearing. Especially since kids at a young age going into education may only start realising then that they are deaf and could have a hard time starting their education. If kids with a hearing disability have a bad experience at the start of their education, due to teachers or other kids being uneducated on the topic, it could put them off their interest in education.

We had also discussed our methodology for information gathering. We would conduct surveys, tests and questions towards teachers and parents. We had decided the there would be no need to interview kids as the target age we are looking at would be to young to give any detailed information that we’d be looking for and it would also save us from all the legal forms we’d have to fill out and organise for interviewing kids.

The downside to the team is that none of us excel as a developer, so we were trying to avoid making an app. But after discussing it with the lecturers, we decided that we still could create an app and put our strengths in film, animation and design up front to make it look noticeably different from other sign language apps on the market.

Creative Media Group Project Blog # 3 - 8/11/17

Production meeting

Today was had our first production meeting with the full team. Was booked out a room for 2 hours and worked hard researching and discussing our project. Sophie was excellent as a project manager as she made sure that there was rarely any silence as she put forward her ideas and kept asking questions regarding specifics to research and future development. We were discussing where we could go with the project in terms of apps, websites, film, animation etc. I said that my main strengths are Editing and Animation, although I am also skilled in film and graphic design with some skills in web development. We decided not to assign any specific roles to anyone until we found out exactly what we are making.

We moved on to target audience and asked ourselves why we are making this product. Debating whether or not the app, if we decide to make an app, would be for kids or teachers. We decided that the app should be for teachers and parents that are trying to introduce pre-school kids to ASL (sign language). Not specifically designed for those with hearing issues, but more as a way to encourage inclusive behaviour toward those that are deaf or hard of hearing.  

Creative Media Group Project Blog # 2 - 31/10/17

Missed meeting

Our first meeting as a group of five was to take place on Tuesday afternoon. Sadly I had to miss it because I got called into work the night before and was not allowed to skip it. As this was the first meeting and since I came into the group late, I was worried that I might be setting a bad example of myself and I would miss something important. However the team understood as a couple of them couldn’t make it either. Those that did attend the meeting kept us updated and communicated to us through Facebook that evening.

We took a look a few apps teaching kids how to learn sign language such as Sign Me A Story, which was an app made by Valerie R. Carter who also founded the non-profit organization “GraceSigns.”. The goal was to make learning sign language fun and easy for all kids. The reason why Valerie created GraceSigns was because her daughter, who was diagnosed with down syndrome and apraxia, would come home from school unable to express herself and talk about her day due to her difficulty speaking as a young child. They learned to speak sign language to communicated with each other. I found this very interesting as Valarie’s daughter’s learning of sign language wasn’t a requirement. It was learned to make communication more comfortable for her.