Project 1: Think Piece Updated
Video Games Struggle on Violence Updated
Project 2: Podcast
Project 3: Images
Project 4: Youtube
Video Games Struggle on Violence Video
Project 5: HTML
Learning how to be “Dangerous” with HTML
Project 6: Twitter
Getting the Word Out About Video Game Violence
Throughout the semester, we learned how to work around the affordances and constraints of certain mediums, including essays, podcasts, images, videos, HTML pages, and tweets. Although each medium contained the same information, their affordances and constraints played a huge role in how the message was conveyed.
The essay format (think piece) was perhaps the easiest in terms of working through these affordances and constraints. An essays affordance is the ability to inform with words and visual design. In order to appeal to an audience with words, I made the essay easy to understand by explaining key terms, being straight to the point, and having flow from paragraph to paragraph. In terms of visual design, I wanted to make the essay easy to read and locate information, so I chunked the essay into smaller paragraphs, used Verdana, an easy to read online font, and added sub headings. As for the essays constraints, they didn’t bother me because I’m used to getting information across to the user by words alone.
As for the podcast, its affordance is informing users through audio. With this medium, I was able to appeal to a broader audience because users are able to grasp information easier through spoken words than with written words. I took advantage of this fact by changing the wording of some sentences in the script to sound better when spoken, including appropriate pauses so that users can understand what was said before moving on, and speaking in a clear and flat voice for clarity. I worked around the podcast’s constraints by including video game sound effects so that users can visualize what makes the described game so violent, appropriate music that lets users understand what each section concerns and if they are about the same topic, voice clips, and interview material.
Trying to work around the affordances and constraints of the image medium was a difficult process for me because we couldn’t use outside sources. However after much thought, I was able to take advantage of its affordances and reshape and retell my think piece essay through it. An images affordance is being able to tell a story with pictures and text. With Photoshop, I was able to let users quickly understand what each image is about by adding text, splicing images together, and have images be at a certain angle.
Like the essay, the YouTube video was easy because of its affordances. Its affordance is informing users through video footage, images, and audio. I used these elements appropriately throughout the video, for example, I showed gameplay of Grand Theft Auto when I talked about it. Overall, I believe the YouTube video didn’t have any noticeable constraints because its multiple affordances far exceeded any negatives.
As we used HTML and compared it to CSS and markdown, its affordances and constraints become quite clear. Its affordance is being able to combine the think piece essay, images, and YouTube video all into one. Despite this, it couldn’t display them in the way I wanted. For example, I couldn’t edit a texts line spacing, white space, and font size. Also, depending on the browser that was used, certain elements appear differently than expected. For example, Google Chrome and FireFox may show the website with different font sizes. As a result, HTML was one of the hardest mediums to work on due to its constraints.
Finally For twitter tweets, its affordance is being able to write to a large audience, include images and videos to each post, add comments, and share things with other people. Despite having such a great affordance, it has an even greater constraint. In Twitter, one can write a post with only 140 characters max. I originally had difficulty overcoming this constraint because I wanted to write in complete sentences. But after several hours of trial and error in Microsoft Word, I adapted to Twitters format and pieced together an effective Twitter rant. Afterwards, the entire class shared each others rant and commented their thoughts.
