This is my third attempt at a tube map resume and this time, I have taken into account some of the criticisms from version two.
Skills and academic progress are parallel, career emerges from key academic qualifications and the overall map seems to go somewhere – notably along a relative timescale. There is still a bit of artistic license here and there – timescale condenses and expands in places but never mind.
I just did this as a bit of fun, reassembling bits from v2…
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Creativity, Techno | Tagged: creative, interactivity | 
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Posted by damoward
I have been experimenting with an iPod Touch since buying one second-hand over Easter. Not for music, videos or podcasts particularly — more for education apps. Many thanks to @morethanmaths and @ianinsheffield who have individually collected loads of appropriate software and shared via delicious and their blogs. I have added a few gained through word of mouth and also on advice from the nice folk at RM.
So what’s on my eduPod? Well here goes:
There are a lot of fun, ‘game’ apps amongst this lot but the most amazing thing is that despite there being a lot of math based games, my two kids have fought to get their hands on the iPod. The motivation for my older kid to get higher scores than her sister is brilliant! Yes, novelty plays a big factor (the same would be true for a maths or literacy game on the Nintendo Wii) but it’s also amazing to watch them take to the simplicity and interactivity of the iPod.. almost naturally. I’m not sure of class sets to do ‘serious’ learning; but maybe as an extra class tool (like a dictionary or atlas) he eduPod certainly may have it’s place. By the way, all but a few apps were totally free – the most I paid for an app was 59p. A big plus includes the free updates, the wifi web browsing and oh yeah, you can play audio and video on it too.
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Posted by damoward
A while ago, I designed an Interactivity Trapezium model for graphically illustrating the levels of interactivity of different media platforms. The shape of the model for console games is picked out in light blue and is distinctive for most of the platform games I’ve played on PS2, Xbox 360 and Wii. Last weekend a new media platform came out for the PS3 and that is in the current form of Heavy Rain on the PS3.
Credited since the it’s launch with an emotion-based AI, the PS3 has a potential game-changer in Heavy Rain in that it is cinematic to the levels of most Hollywoood blockbusters (probably more so in the case of Avatar) and yet key interactive features also feature highly. The trapezium for Heavy rain is nowhere near the norm for consoles!
How far are you prepared to go to save someone you love? This is the central question of Heavy Rain and one that the protagonist, Ethan Mars, is compelled to answer. After Ethan’s son goes missing and is presumed to be the latest victim of the mysterious Origami Killer, he vows to do whatever it takes to rescue his boy. Besides Ethan, you also take control of three other seemingly unrelated individuals that have been drawn into the case: private investigator Scott Shelby, FBI criminal profiler Norman Jayden, and insomniac Madison Paige. Unlike other games that make extensive use of quick-time events, Heavy Rain does not track your progress in terms of success and failure. There is no right or wrong way to play; thus, no matter what your outcome is, the game will move forward and adapt to the consequences of your actions or lack thereof. Though the overall narrative framework is unyielding, your performance throughout the game can have a variety of effects, ranging from subtle changes in how a scene plays out to much bigger adjustments. Entire events may not occur because your actions and choices caused the plot to branch in a different direction. It’s even possible for key characters to die, thus eliminating any subsequent contributions to the story that they might have made. No matter what happens in your play-through, the adaptive plot of Heavy Rain becomes a deeply personal sum of your experiences. (Gamespot review)
I’m hoping this is the start of a new media that mixes the best elements of an involving movie with the interactivity of the best games; maybe Heavy Rain is the first of many in this genre?
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Posted by damoward
*In the USA, a “trapezium” is a quadrilateral with NO parallel sides unlike a UK trapezoid.
What activities are interactive? After a recent discussion over the relative interactivity of books, websites and reality TV, I wanted to model the components that enable interactivity in more detail. What I wanted to draw was a model in which these four components could interconnect in the form of four micrographs – in the manner of a malt whiskey taste star but less complicated! There are other components of interactivity I could also have included (such as productivity, creativity etc) but I wanted a simple model to test the idea on. So I settled on:
Each quadrant represents a component of interactivity level from low to high (horizontal axis) and passivity (vertical axis). Interactive products are placed within each quadrant and a trapezium connects all four together. For example: a book (red X and trapezium) has a high level of passivity and low level of interactivity in terms of the participator’s control of information. A (successful) meeting (grey X/trapezium) scores highly in terms of interactivity and low in terms of passivity in terms of the control level. Comparing the completed red and grey trapezium shows a different conceptual model for each product and therefore a relative scale of interactivity. With more detail this could be adapted for describing interactivity in AI based computer/video games or the multimedia enhanced web interfaces of the future. Try doing a trapezium for a football match – where would it appear in the quadrants?
1 Comment | Techno | Tagged: diagrma, games, infomatic, information, interactive, interactivity, interface, levels, model, modelling, passivity, trapezium, whiskey | Permalink
Posted by damoward
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