Author: Zak Atkin

Digital Media Padlet

http://padlet.com/13456339/fk90xn8m8239

Project 2.0 should have been blogged about sooner but I had no real idea on where to take the idea until recently.

I may start embedding audio clips of ideas and discussions, but my voice is a bit boring to listen to so I’ll try to summarise if/when I need to.

 

To start with the breif requires me to think of my own project and develop an idea based on that. Not so helpful when someone like myself can rarely decide what to have for breakfast. Anyway, in the 1st lecture we were introduced to the project and given a deadline for the proposal in week 3’s workshop. The idea is to think up multiple ideas that can be developed into actual projects, though “Any idea that starts with: ‘I’m going to design an [app, website, game, etc]’ should be scrapped” so that removes part of the problem of trying to make an overly complicated project.

So over the past two weeks I’ve been thinking of ideas, I could of decided to continue my R&D and develop my research into NFC to create a solution to how bad the registration system might be (I still think signing paper is a waste of paper and ink buuut…) but this raised a slight issue with like how I know nothing about app design or anything like that. I know how to make a tag tell the receiver to go to an asset but beyond that I have no real idea. Secondly if I was designing a new registration system I’d need to make a database of students before making it so the database could be referenced and edited, and so on before actually providing an idea on “This is how it should work” and trying it out. Since I would do this project on my own I’d need to fund the equipment and it would probably of left a student that looks remarkabley similar to me crying under a desk. Sooo…

I thought up two more ideas, well one more and I borrowed one off of a competition website.

The idea I borrowed is to redesign the branding for Adobe Creative Cloud, which I was looking into, but the design on the current branding is pretty clear and user friendly and the only way I oculd think of making it suitable for future users would be to make it more childish and use curved lines… Soo I cut that idea out, as much as it would be nice to see my branding designs used I don’t think I’d improve the branding much at all.

Now onto my final idea. To make a showreel. The problem that needs to be solved is the lack of a showreel but with the VFX industry being difficult to get a job in, as with many other industries it would make sense to prove to an employer or even a client that I have the skills and knowledge to create solutions to a variety of issues like not having the right location and so on.

After having a look around at various reason why NFC would be useful to have I hit a problem.

The original idea was to have an NFC reader on each desk but the cost would be far too high. I based my idea on having a class of 20 each needing a tag and a reader. Having a NFC reader per person (depending on the type of reader) would cost anywhere from £20 to over £150 and in some cases much more. Whereas the tags seem to be around £1.60 since people are careful not to lose their phone the cost of having to buy readers/receivers is sugnificantly cut.

It makes much more sense to have the tags on the desks. As the average student has a mobile device it makes more sense to flip the idea upside down, however even then there is a problem with this idea. A large amount of people use iPhones which are not currently NFC enabled, the iPhone 6 and 6s have NFC but from what I’ve read is only active for the Apple Pay service. Leaving this idea only open to ‘most’ Android users.

http://www.nfcworld.com/nfc-phones-list/

The idea now is to have a tag at each desk and use the student’s mobile to scan the tag and be directed to an online asset, most likely a webpage where they put their student number and submit that instead of waiting to have a paper register handed around, still this idea would have a high startup cost but would help reduce the ammount of paper used and has potential to be more accurate.

The main thing that needs to be added is an incentive. Often lectures are skipped by a few and attendence is an issue with a few students in most institutions however an incentive for a high attendence rate may help reduce this problem.

The idea that jumps out now is that impliments NFC but the more I look into this, the more I’ve found that it’s already used in multiple sectors. Banking, for example we now have contactless cards, there are some schools mostly seeming to be in Sweden and America that have tried an NFC system. The problem I have now is trying to make this original as one of my final points of research is pretty much the idea I had.

How does NFC work?

http://www.nearfieldcommunication.org/benefits.html

Contactless Payments
The most well-known use of NFC technology is for contactless payment. Customers can swipe their smartphone over a card reader to make a purchase without fumbling through credit and debit cards or counting out cash.

Information Sharing
The small size of NFC tags and their lack of a battery, relying instead on radio frequency signals sent from a smartphone or other NFC compatible device to operate, let them go virtually anywhere.

 

These two main aspects of NFC are something I’d hope to implement into an organization. Using the university as the organisation I can think of a number uses for this technology. First of all ease of access when sharing information, in every ‘timetabled’ session students are required to sign in, the idea with this would be to remove the use of paper registers throughout the uni and implement NFC to let students sign in with a swipe of their student ID card. If a student loses their card one way that this could still work is if they have a smartphone compatible with NFC, could then be used to open a webpage where the student logs in and registers. Another thing that this could be used for is emailing colleagues and tutors, the idea would remove the ‘issue’ of not being able to contact people, allowing uni and personal accounts to be separate.

The second thing that I find important is the contactless part to NFC, we already have cards that open rooms at the uni but what if we could have it so instead of having to book a room and collect the card early we simply have to use our student ID to open rooms we are in, similar to media loans system we have now with equipment just untilize this for rooms.

How else could this improve uni?

I mentioned in a previous post about a reward system, in some module marking schemes attendence falls under “Professional Practice” and usually has around a 10% standing on part of the criteria. On occasions I haven’t signed a register or for other reasons not had chance to, however a system could e implementd to enter students that have an above average attendance score say 90%+ to be entered into a raffle or have some way of being credited for attending scheduled sessions. Adopting a contactless payment system into the caffertiras my also help, though we have use of contactless with cards and such we could remove the fee for card use. This could be done by using student cards as a pre-paid cards the downside to this is needing to carry loose change for other means such as vending machines etc.

One benefit of being able to use NFC on mobile when registering could be a that the lecture is set up to download or opened in a browser, however there are some problems with this one requires lecture notes to be uploaded before the lecture instead of after and also throws in a the added “worry” of data charges and draining the user’s battery.

 

 

 

 

With the deadline to this task almost here  I thought it’d be a good time to reflect on what what methods have been explored in class and how I can apply the same techniques to my one minute video.

First of all, I’m a little unsure how to approach the video the examples that we have had to work from have had some interesting ideas but as this is supposed to be about me (not my favourite topic in the slightest) I’m not so sure where to start, other than making effects into a showcase of what I can do.

Motion graphics.

In the first two workshop sessions we explored motion, specifically how to animate a sequence from a cut up image. This could prove to be useful however I’m not so sure how to apporoch this, I enjoy the range of title effects that take a still and animate it but there is something that makes this feel kind of forced since there wouldn’t be an overall theme.

Branding.

THe following two sessions we explored revolved arnound branding from this I have had a number of ideas for my “brand” however this isn’t an area I’m very strong in, let alone know much about. So far the colours I have decided on are black, white (maybe a light grey instead) and blue, since these colours are usually what I wear.

Augmented Reality/Projection Mapping.

In the next two sessions we explored applications of augmented reality and projection mapping, though it was impressive I’m not sure how to include this in my final bit of work. One idea I have had is to shoot a short clip of a card with four points clearly visable as markers and see if I can animate an object in the space.

Motion Tracking.

I’ve got to admit this area was one that I found very interesting. The idea of being able to create new enviroments, overlays etc is something that I’ve tried to learn for a long time but never really had the time or patience to persue it. The problem I have is that I could happily make my video a collection of tracked objects without really exploring anything else.