Structuring a Critical Essay

I meant to mention this in class, but I wanted to share a few thoughts on how to structure (or sequence, or arrange into a syntagm yayy!) a critical essay. A scientific paper in our field typically has the following structure (and you are welcome to use it in this class, if it makes sense to do so):

1. Intro
2. Lit Review
3. Methods
4. Results
5. Discussion
6. Conclusion

Critical essays don’t have a standardized structure like this. Typically, though, they have a structure that can be more or less described as a sequence of high-level ideas or concepts. Take a look at Manovich to see what I mean. Each of his sections develops a single concept. Each chapter covers several of these concepts. And the introduction and conclusion identify the relationships among each of those concepts. And actually, most of the readings I assigned this semester are like that.

So ask yourself what the main ideas you are exploring, and think a little bit about how they relate to each other. That should help you come up with a good outline and thesis.

Last-Minute Reprieve! Paper Extension!

I’ve heard enough from a sufficient number of people to worry about tomorrow’s deadline for the paper.

I am therefore granting an extension on the paper until Sunday at midnight. 

Please bring all of your materials to class today, and we can have an emergency how-to-develop-an-argument lecture (if needed), or we can do whatever. Also, please be careful! If you accept this extension, it could make it very difficult to complete your other assignments due next week. I’m giving you a little extra rope, but don’t hang yourself! 

Tafsir of the Qur’an

Detailed research and pre-writing on religion and the net has led me to narrow down this broad topic to focus on the internet’s role on compilation of diverse Qur’anic tafsir (interpretations and commentary of Islam’s primary scripture). The arguments are leading to a proposal for a new methodology on compiling an extensive online exegesis of the Qur’an which may include collective interpretations of the scripture from different languages amongst different cultures and religions, compilation of the ‘matn’ and ‘isnad’ (chain of transmission) of the hadith literature, and linguistic evaluation of the meaning.

So this is pointing to a proposal of a new system with an online community.  Individual compilation would be too cumbersome without a collective community contributing to the development of such a system.   So finding the right balance in design to fully utilize social contributions to such a project is what I have been trying to find.

Tagging as Identity Construction

For my paper, I’ve been looking at tagging on sites like Del.icio.us and Flickr.  Lots of interesting design opportunities here (e.g. vocabulary problems, identifying communities of practice, adapting to site navigation). One thing I found particularly interesting was how much you can learn about someone from their tag cloud (and how eager some people are to share their tag clouds). Yes, tags clouds are useful interfaces…but an individual’s tag cloud also says something about them; a community’s tag cloud says something about that community.  In this sense, they are similar to facebook and myspace: they are ever-changing interfaces of the self.

This echoes some ideas from Manovich: “…creating a work in new media can be understood as construction of an interface to a database. […] As a cultural form, the database represents the world as a list of items, and it refuses to order this list. In contrast, a narrative creates a cause-and-effect trajectory of seemingly unordered items.”  This cultural logic of the database manifested in new media has led to a database complex, “an irrational desire to preserve and store everything.” [e.g. lifelogging, lifecaching]

The other key form of new media that Manovich talks about is navigable space.  “The subject of the information society finds peace in the knowledge she can slide over endless fields of data, locating nay morsel of information with the click of a button, zooming through file systems and networks.”

How do we make sense of all this database information? This multiplying abundance of digital things?  How do we make sense of navigable space? Our spatial meanderings? Our digital memories?

Tagging is one way; a language for talking about experience in cyberspace…for constructing identity through an interface to a database of experience.

Tagging and tagging interfaces are wonderfully simple. The tagging interface reverses the search interface: you freely associate terms with resource you are tagging so that you can find it in the future.  The notion of a tag, as metadata, isn’t new.  But the idea of letting anyone assign any label they want to anything IS new.

So why tag clouds are a good construction of identity?  First off, we actively collect and manage them (as opposed to search histories or page view histories).  With a folksonomy (i.e. collaborative tagging), there are no predefined categories or hierarchy, no natural ordering.  Tag clouds are a good way to construct a (usable) interface to a database of yourself because you do not need to decide who you are ahead of time.  Tags can be simple and understandable, as well as rich and expressive.  The virtual flaneur may not have time to keep a narrative diary of her travels, but she is willing to tag up digital destinations she finds meaningful.   [is this authorship?]

Current applications that use tagging focus on the utilitarian aspects of tagging for the user and community (e.g. searching, navigating, and browsing content).  Many studies focus on the empirical, quantitative insights that can be drawn from analyzing tags.  This is all quite fascinating. However, there doesn’t seem to be much focus on the experiential, qualitative aspects of tagging…on tags as related to identity and ongoing construction of an interface to a database of the self.

 A few interesting design directions…

 Merging/alternating hierarchies and clusters.

 EX:  the ability to “bundle” tags on delicious gives people more (top-down) control over the management and display of their tags

 Merging/alternating database and narrative; making syntagms more explicit.

 EX: visualizing the evolution of “interesting” tags in Flickr with a river and waterfall metaphor.

Paper Topic: Visualizing Energy

For my capstone, I aim to create a website that helps dorm residents become more aware of and reduce their use of electricity. To do so I plan to hold an energy-saving contest and then display real-time data from electric meters on the site. My inspiration comes from a project done at Oberlin College: http://www.oberlin.edu/dormenergy/

For me, the most difficult design challenge is in how to represent energy–something invisible, abstract and taken for granted–in such a way that makes visible, tangible, and meaningful.  For my paper, I want to look at the Oberlin site, and analyze the paradigmatic choices for representing the data. For example what meaning is communicated by the use of: a horizontal bar chart, colors ranging from green to red, a dashboard interface metaphor, the ability to change the units of measurement, etc? What different design choices could have been made in these cases and how would that have changed the meaning?

I hoping that this exercise will produce some actionable design concepts to make my capstone project more effective. I would appreciate any comments or suggestions for improvement.

Lots & Lots of Picutres

I have a final paper question that I had planned to discuss with Jeff in person, but I’ve decided to make it a blog post instead - just in case anyone else is struggling with the same question.

Topically, my paper seeks to analyze the editor UI’s of three popular 3D modeling programs (3dsmax, Maya and Cinema4D), with each representing a specific, historical moment in the evolution of this ilk of UI’s.

My line of inquiry holds that the long march through the years and these three UI’s manifests a shifting from procedural to transitional to purely object-oriented approaches and philosophies.

What’s important is that I am using a lot of images to make and illustrate my points. And thus, a large portion of my 8-10 pages has already been consumed by images. And bear in mind, these images have all been just as carefully researched and composed to their respective ends as any chunk of text that I might write, so I’m not anxious to see them second-classed to my text in the final accounting. I’ve chosen them carefully and leveraged them rationally and I believe each to be worth a good portion of the “1,000-words” they supposedly embody.

Still, I can’t help but wonder how Jeff’s red pen feels about this?

Template for final paper

I’m pre-writing my final paper today and after reading the assignment I wondered if perhaps Jeff couldn’t post a link to the template you would like us to use. I’m kind of assuming that the CHI format you are talking about is the landscape one with two columns and the third row for callouts and figures, but it would be helpful to have this made explicit.

I wouldn’t mind a little more guidance on if you want a lit review section on the paper, and if so how complete.  We’ve all read a basic set of literature (or at least we should have right) how must more do we need to say about that?

My Paper: Goffman’s Presentation of Self and YouTube

Goffman’s Presentation of Self in Everyday Life was published in 1959 with the intent of establishing a description of meaning in social interaction.  Goffman said that people present an “idealized” version of themselves in public (front stage).  People present more consistent versions of themselves to coincide with norms and societal laws.  When not in public (behind stage), these social rules do not need to be followed.

However, I believe that technologies such as YouTube has blurred the personal and private rules to the point that there is no back stage. Technology is shifting the concept of privacy.

I want to know if Goffman’s idea still holds true.  I am going to search YouTube for “Drinking and Puking” and hypothesize that Goffman’s idea does not fit.  Seeing YouTube presentation of self, I do not believe that the distinction between front stage and back stage still holds true.  There is a reconstruction of public and private space and there is a mutual shaping of technology and behavior.

For design idea, I am going to suggest an instant removal option on YouTube because as these people go out and search for jobs, there is a need for them to reestablish their boundaries between personal and private.

What do you think?  I know there are some books out there already that look at presentation of self and technology, but I’m going to focus on the YouTube idea.

Papers and Feedback

I *believe* I have responded to all of the paper topics that have appeared on this blog.

However, please don’t hesitate to ask for (further) feedback if any of the following apply:

• I didn’t actually respond to your post on your paper topic (d’oh!).
• You have since iterated on your topic, have some new thoughts, and would like some feedback on that.
• You disagreed with me or just couldn’t get enough and want more!
• Any reason at all, actually.

So don’t be shy! Marty, our WTS consultant, and I are *all* happy to help you with this, and I *know* these resources are available to you, and therefore I expect good papers!

Concrete to Abstract: On the Goals of the Course

We can divide the issues discussed in this class into three broad categories: concrete, particular designs; the underlying design concepts, insights, principles, and strategies that they rely on; and the deeper philosophical implications beneath them. Here’s one of my patentable scientific diagrams:

At the top are actual, concrete designs: “dialing from favorites list on this phone,” or “the use of camera techniques in this scene of this film,” or “the images representing this project in this designer’s professional portfolio.”