Documentation Process
In library 1201 class, we were asked to create a game, a research tool, or an information resource that can assist us in research process. We first each thought about what issues in research were difficult for us and then came to a consensus on which one we thought would best help someone wanting to write a research paper. Initially, we had decided that we wanted to construct a game. The game was going to consist of a rifle and a word cloud of synonyms that were derived from keywords. We were going to call it the word hunt. Among further discussion in the group, we decided to create a web page called “word hunt” instead. The web page is going to aid in a research process by using keywords. We have decided to use the same cloud full of synonyms, instead of shooting them; we were going to click on them. Once the word was clicked on, it would be opened in a new tab in a new search engine.
Throughout our research process, we have used different research databases and search engines to develop our topic. We used google to find information on our topic. During our research process we searched Google for tools similar to one we wanted to create, the major one we came across was Quintura, which is a tool designed to provide results that contain the word entered. From our search with the keywords “quintura” we got a list of results mostly directly related to quintura. We decided that we needed more information on the topic so we used the following keywords “quintura visual search” from this we got results with more information about tool. One website from the result from the list was fordjordan.com. In this site the author, Ford Jordan, explains how quintura works, he also talks about a similar tool quintura has for bloggers where bloggers submit their articles to the site search and quintura suggests tags and categories for the blog. Given that a thesaurus can be used to find synonyms and antonyms we decided to do some research on it since it is the most basic form of our tool. For this we searched Wikipedia for the word thesaurus, there we found a brief history of the thesaurus. Another site we searched was thesaurus.com see how an online thesaurus works and test it out. We also found another site, masternewmedia.com where the author Robin Good discusses the top visual search engines. Quintura the webpage our tool was based on was also there.
After doing research on the tool we created our project page, “Word Hunt” on the open lab website. First we created an avatar for our page. We did this by searching for “Wordcloud” on Google in order to find a site that would create an avatar with words. We ended up using wordle.com to create an avatar with synonyms of the word research, some of which are consideration, exploration, appraisal and review. We then decided to add tabs to our project page, we added the tabs: proposal, process documentation, reference list and multimedia. We added a picture that would help convey what our research tool was supposed to do.
In developing our presentation we decided to use Microsoft PowerPoint since it was the software we were the most familiar with. We divided the work among of us, with two members working on the proposal, two working on the documentation process and one member working on the PowerPoint presentation. We decided to organize our presentation first with the proposal to let our readers know exactly what our tool was designed to do. Then we decided to talk about the documentation process. This was supposed to allow the audience to know how we actually developed our tool and to find out more about it. At the end we added citations for the research we did when developing the tool. We decided to divide the presentation based on who worked on each part of the project, that way everyone knows exactly what they worked on. Based on this we decided to split the documentation process between two members and also the proposal between two members. A day later we decided to present our tool in the form of an infomercial to capture out audience’s attention.
In developing this research tool we had to do research to make sure the tool we created did not already exist. If we had more time, it would have been very exciting to actually create the tool.
