CHANGE in Due Date for Interactive Animation

In order to give everyone a reasonable amount of time to get up to speed on Flash and to get in several more classes and tutorials, the due date for the Interactive Animation will be changed to 24 February.  This is the class after Chinese New Year when we will be going on an important field trip.  However,  your projects will be due in the class folder on that day.

This also means that you will be adding audio to your project and a play button that plays through all three animations.

We will also have an additional tutorial session on Tuesday afternoon at 2:00 pm.

REMEMBER: You will be doing usability testing with your favorite website in the coming class period and you should check the Usability Lecture Notes to get a good feel for what will happen and what is important in usability.

27 January 2010

The votes are in and the overwhelming votes for extra tutorial time is for Thursday morning and Tuesday afternoon.  I will accommodate the Thursday morning people tomorrow at 10:30 in FSC 901, the Animation Lab.  We have Flash CS3 in that lab and it is hooked to all of the servers and your passwords will work so there should be no problem.

I will also do a tutorial on Tuesday Afternoon after 2:00.  Since this first assignment is coming up and there are a large number of people who need assistance I will also do Tuesday morning at 10:00.

I know this leaves a couple of people out and I am sorry for that.

So for next week you will turn in your interactive animation on the O: drive in the dgc2170 folder at the beginning of class.

You will also bring the address of a web site that you want to test for Usability.  Each of you will be a tester and a respondent in this process so you can get some familiarity with usability testing specifically and interactive product testing in general.  I will make the usability protocol available on line before the class session.

We will also be talking about the structure of information and how you use that to develop the underlying architecture of information applications.

See some of you tomorrow morning at 10:30.

Please respond to me with your intention to come to one of the tutorial sessions, either through comment to this blog or via email.

until then...

20 January 2010

There is going to be a change.

Having the entire class build programs from scratch is not going to get us very far in AS 3 or Flash and it will not allow us to have any discussion on the conceptual elements of Information Design and Interactive Media.  While everyone is highly motivated to learn how to operate in Flash, the differences in skill levels and the number of people in the class make working from scratch impossible.  This would be true even if there were only 20 people in the class.

Starting this week I will be providing you with pre-created flash applications that you can download from the web. You will be able to look at the program during class and anytime after.  During class I will walk everyone through the programming and the exercise will consist of you using the the programming and devices and adding your own media elements.

This should make class time more informative, progressive and effective and allow everyone to work at their own skill level.  It will also allow the more advanced users to assist the less advanced users.

I am looking forward to this change and the improvements it will bring to class.  The due dates remain intact.

The First Post for 2010

This is the Blog for Interactive Media.  Most of you have experience with this process so you know what this is about.  It is about making pointers to really cool stuff on the web related to interactive media and thinking about what makes information and interaction design interesting.

Good luck and I know everyone is going to do well.

Until the Next time...