Author Archives: Samantha

The Adventures of Theo the Cat (Project 4)

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Play the Adventures of Theo the Cat!

SUMMARY

Ever wonder what you cat does while you’re at work all day? In this playful and interactive story about Theo the house cat you can navigate through a typical day. Help Theo get through the day and make sure you don’t break anything or get into mischief!

This narrative aims to teach the user about cat mannerisms and habits that we may not even realize our cat has. Though they’re on the more independent end of the domestic pet spectrum cats are still affection seeking creatures and they miss us too! Take a step by step look with Theo and then check out the kitty gallery at the end!

REFLECTION

Creating project four was the most challenging but has been my favorite to date. I set out with one concept in mind but later changed it because fitting the story and some form of graphic together proved to be too complex and unending. My new concept was centered around my cat Theo and showcasing or educating people about cat mannerisms. By combining pictures and scenarios that are common to cats the user gets to navigate through a life in the day of a house cat. When composing my story, both the original and second one I was picturing a kids audience or an audience who loves cats. The interactive aspect went through many phases and trials where I piloted a trio of choices vs. just two. Ultimately I decided three choices was too complex and confusing for the younger demographic of my target audience and narrowed it down to two. Instead however I added a gallery and about page to supplement information and aspects of interactivity.

For me the most involved aspect of this project was story mapping because although I mapped out and created a sequence when I was executing it in HTML I realized many things had to be moved or changed. This wasn’t all bad however because as I created and linked pages I was able to enhance and modify the user experience for the better. I also toyed with numerous color schemes and decided classic black and white was the way to go, it just looked cleaner and more professional. Overall I really enjoyed making this project and I look forward to displaying it in my portfolio.

The Real estate of fear- “Change”

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The Real estate of fear- “Change”

Pitch

After much deliberation and brainstorming we have come to the conclusion that this third project should be based on the overall arching theme of fear and how it plays a part in determining aspects of our professional lives. Since this project will be be both collaborative and non-fictional based we have all chosen issues which we have faced in our personal lives that we believe many professionals also face.

Description
Change is something people sometimes have a problem coping with. Knocking things off the track or having them abruptly rerouted isn’t an easy hill to climb. However when you forget the courage and ability to climb obstacles no longer seem life changing. Change comes in many forms, personal being emotional or interpersonal or even physical. Professional change is another form of change that isn’t given much credit and that’s what I’ll be discussing today, how do you cope or understand that the goal you’d set yourself years ago is suddenly no longer an option.

 

 

Team Work Makes the Dream Work- A short video about the perils of interning

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This is a short fictional video about interns learning to work as a team to get a task done. They’re not used to working together or sharing the lime light so they agree to separate the work and just stick it all together at the end. They come to find that this isn’t productive as the pieces of the project rely on the other elements to be effective and cohesive. Through some persistence and encouragement they manage to share the work and get it done surprising even the boss with their job well done.

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REFLECTION

This project was really fun and engaging from the start, though at first I had no idea what I was going to do or how I’d carry out any idea I came up with. I finally settled on the idea about a lesson in team work because A its something I hate doing and B something I’m learning about in another class of mine. I aimed to make it funny but clear enough that users would be able to clearly identify the purpose. I wrote it for a general audience so someone who was 4 or 44 could use and understand it, I kept it simple. I shaped it to have a 1 2 3 structure, Problem, chaos, solution. I didn’t want to over complicate or crowd the main idea where it was too long and unappealing to watch. The most difficult choice for me to make was to have the characters voice the script or to make it a silent movie. Being that I was working with minions and they’re known for not having “human” voices I elected to do a silent style movie with simple sound effects. I think the sound effects add to the humor and make it light to watch, over all I would say the video has a simple and easily achieved goal. I believe the video though super low budget and simple gets the point across, its not too long or complicated and the subtitles are short and easy to read.

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ANALYSIS

Based on the analytics of my YouTube video I would say strictly numbers based it flopped. Thats not to say though that in three weeks it could have hundreds of views. I think it has its purpose, though that may be limited to industries or even classes that focus on group work 4 views in 1 day is pretty cool being that nobody really knows its out there. I would like to keep publishing videos maybe of different genres to see if they have similar or completely opposite results to compare to this one.

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DISCLAIMER: The Minions are a trade mark of DISNEY, I do not own the minions and I did not create any of the figurines in this video.

From existing to excelling, The story of a lost and found single mom

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This is an archive of my non fiction Twitter story. Below are the tweets in order detailing my journey from aspiring cop to single mom to college drop out to college graduate.

REFLECTION:

For my twitter story I had two particular audiences in mind. One being young moms and the other being moms who juggle work and school with motherhood both who may doubt their abilities or that the goal is attainable. I crafted the story originally to be very detailed but soon realized that would make the story entirely too long for a character limiting platform such as twitter. I then reorganized my story to include necessary detail but concise to where it wasn’t overwhelming on a timeline. I believe my story was a success because not only do the numbers (over 2,000 impressions in 24 hours) support that but I got excellent feedback from my professor as well as my peers. Mariah (@mariahraj) said “ your strength and go getter attitude is inspirational” and Jodie (@jodieannstephen) quoted one of my tweets saying “Life goals “. Professor Ellis also applauded my delivery of the message as did Pam who can personally relate as a mother herself. I feel that I got wholly positive feedback and my story was relatable to people with or without kids. I sought to deliver a message of inspiration and encouragement and based on the replies I believe I have. It was challenging but rewarding to deliver a story on this platform because not only do I love twitter I enjoy discovering new ways to use it. From these tweets I got mentions, likes and follows from things I mentioned or hash tagged. Using keys terms and tags helps to reach a specific community and that was my main goal for crafting this story.

ANALTYICS:

On Wednesday my twitter got 2,473 engagements. This consists of retweets, likes, and mentions or times people opened the tweet. The most highly trafficked tweets were the closing to my twitter story with 116 and tweet 16 of 16 with 79. The topic in general garnished a lot of attention because its in line with one of the genres of my twitter feed regularly.