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

A picture tellz a thousand (key)wordz

After doing a case study of Flickr for my thesis, one of the key points regarding connectivity is Flickr’s view of photos as a tool that prompts interactivity. As expressed this post's diagram, photos no longer lie dormant in photo albums, online they become “living entities” that are used as a resource that foster online activities. They add description to Websites, they enrich online libraries, they attract our attention in self-made slideshows, and they even become the instigator of dialogue between users. Photos once relegated for private collections have now been opened up for public consumption, and Flickr has upheld such opportunities by developing places “for the audience to take part in the action” (Shedroff 227), by permitting them to generate metadata to the library of the service.

To visit my user foto-sets on the Flicker Website, plz follow the link below:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/chasing-sandcastles/sets/

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).

Share Your Photos Y'all!!!

As a designer acting a user, it was important to promote the need to be community active (figure 39), as user participation has become the new vehicle for designers to enrich the understanding of Web 2.0 audiences. This should be an objective for any designer acting as a user; this should be the objective for every ordinary Flickr member.

As ‘Interaction is a cyclic process in which two actors(users) alternately listen, think, and speak (Chris Crawford in Shedroff 142), the role of a designer in a user-generated medium is to uphold the conversational and participatory nature of the community. They can achieve this be being community active in their own designated groups (figure 40, 41, 42), and being visible in accumulated community resources.

To view more of my photo-collections, plz follow the link below:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/chasing-sandcastles/