Designers in a User-generated medium must offer Users trails to their Resources. . . Cos Sharing is Caring Y'all!!!

Above is my Showreel of the scenes I had inbetweened as an intermediate IB at DisneyToon Studios Australia.

The advent of Web 2.0 services can be viewed as extending a familiarity of the importance and value of graphic design across disciplines (Gromala 55) as a designer acting within such a community can assist in a role of “creative interlocutor”. Traub and Lipkin describe a creative interlocutor as a navigator of associative trails of thought and resource, who enables others to freely and creatively manage their human interests. This individual is one who is integrated: his creativity functions as part of an organic part of society, and he acts to connect for the common good…In doing so, he enables others to further their creative potentials (in Heller 82).

To view my Show-reel as an IB trainee, plz click on the link below:
http://chasing-sandcastles.blogspot.com/2006/10/disney-ib-showreel.html

Existing Online; Its like opening ur diary and preaching ona soapbox... "C'MON READ THIS, BETTR YET READ THIS OUT-LOUD!!!"

C'mon users 4get ur pride. .. .Share ur artwork. .. Just enjoi da ride. .. .



To view my personal sketch-book made public on DeviantART, plz follw the link below:
http://chasing-sandcastles.deviantart.com/gallery/

Web 2.0 is all about offering other users opportunities to grow'n'learn.....So.. . ..Share your Design Work

As Web 2.0 users become increasingly responsible for performing tasks once relegated to designers,it encourages designers to function more as creative interlocutors. And in such a role facilitate the exchange of ideas and information between one human need and another. This person is the producer,director, the organizer-navigator…Creative interlocutors are: programmers, producers, inventors, researchers, teachers, scholars, and volunteers’ (Traub & Lipkin in Heller 89). Below, I have offered a slide-show of some samples of my Design work, in the effort that it may ignite the spark of ideas of other users. . .

Cool Slideshows

Cool Slideshows

In response to such a refocus, designers must learn to collaborate. For the act of designing has been transformed from an individual endeavour into a group effort. As learning through collaboration rather than competition, fosters an environment where exploration, analysis and risk-taking are encouraged (Burns in Heller 2001 102). This mode of Design fosters an interdisciplinary team dynamic, since designing for interactivity is about working with others (Niederhelman 17). Web 2.0 services call for a mode of Design that encourages collaborative methods of working, between teams of designers and non-designers, and between various design specialties – where the primary focus is on critical listening and communication skills (Nowacek in Heller 191). It appears that another emerging role for designers within this user-generated medium is this role of critical observer. As Charles Leadbeater remarks, History tells us the inventors (designers) are often very bad at guessing how technologies will be used, and further concludes that, consumer contributors are vital to innovation, for disruptive innovations which upset traditional markets and business models often start in the margins of a sector, with innovative users with distinct needs (Leadbeater 2006, 28-29).

In Web 2.0 services, Design is the work of Multiple Authors. .. .

In open-sourced communities as this diagram illustrates, “the order comes from within these communities not from the top” (Leadbeater 5). In such an equal platform, ‘Consumers turn out to be producers as creativity becomes a mass activity not just an elite one.’(Leadbeater 5-6).

In the photo-sharing site Flickr, user participation flows in both directions, where contributions are circulated and re-circulated. In Flickr it its not the photos, but what users do with the photos that puts the mechanism of Design into action. In this user-generated medium, the enrichment of a user experience becomes the primary focus, as our methods of content exposition gives our online activities meaning and purpose.


Summary of findings from Flickr Case Study in Thesis:

Strengths
• There are strong levels of feedback, since all users are in fact contributors.
• Flickr’s open API allows for the development on new features, through the modification of JavaScript.
• Flickr facilitates for creative dialogues between members, where users practices tasks of listening, thinking, and speaking.
• Flickr’s responsive and participatory nature helps to immerse users into their engagement of the service.
• Flickr’s multiple approaches to organization supports greater navigational variations.

Weaknesses
• A folksonomy has a tendency to be ambiguous, as users assign the same tag to different items.
• Users are only granted a finite amount of control of the system, which hinders autonomy and self-expression.
• Users without knowledge of JavaScript can’t make sophisticated modifications.
• Flickr chooses to ignore, rather than devise solutions for members who user Flickr for non-photographic material.

Opportunities
• A folksonomy allow all users to have a “voice” to negotiate the value and meaning of communal content.
• Flickr offers users various choices for archiving, annotating, appropriating and recirculating their generated content.
• Flickr allows users to utilize their content, in and amongst other Web 2.0 services they belong to.
• A designer belonging to Flickr can aim to respond to the challenge of multiple ways that users access information.

My procedures for doing Qualitative Research on Web 2.0 services

The steps undertaken to establish an online presence included:

• Creating a user account for a Web 2.0 service

• Generating content within its user page

• Enrolling my accounts into Web 2.0 search databases

• Making informative contributions to the service’s public library so that other users can benefit and can deviate to my user page

• Communicating with other users of the service by offering opinions, joining user groups, and participating in communal discussions.

• Becoming community active by establishing trails to resources of information within the service, and offering links to contacts in other Web 2.0 services.

• Promoting a convergent use of Web 2.0 services by interlinking the content amongst my various user accounts.

It was important to establish a sense of connectivity with resources found in various services, as the features of Web 2.0 services promote the circulation and re-circulation of online content. In my qualitative research as a user, it was a goal to create opportunities for open dialogue with other users to as certain emerging user needs, and as a designer, co-develop appropriate design directions through this exchange. In linking my online activities and resources in my various user pages, the probability of this occurring became highly likely.

The main Web 2.0 services I participated in are:
• My Blog (http://www.chasing-sandcastles.blogspot.com/), which is a form of an online diary,

• My Wiki (http://chasing-sandcastles.pbwiki.com/), which are online places where people can easily add and edit content, and are therefore often used for collaborative writing (Kloos 2006 8).

• Flickr (http://www.flickr.com/photos/chasing-sandcastles/) which is a photo-hosting service which manages content through folksonomy

• Del.icio.us (http://del.icio.us/chasing_sandcastles), an online bookmarking service which heavily relies on a user self-tagging system.

• DeviantART (http://chasing-sandcastles.deviantart.com/) Which is a image-hosting service where users upload their art, for critiques and opionions from the DeviantART community.