Turning it up to 11
Project work has been consuming all of my time for the past couple of weeks. I’m up until 5AM on some days, I’m at school up to 14 hours at a time, I’m constantly working or thinking, and I’m having the time of my life. Our project and our presentation are both coming together rather nicely, although we still have a lot of work to do. We developed a strong story, and now we need to get everything into the computer. It’s easier now that we have a clear vision of what and how we’re presenting, but it’s still quite a ways to get there from here.
Once we’ve presented on Thursday and taken a well-deserved vacation until Tuesday, we’ll come back and spend time documenting our projects during review week.
In addition to being excited about my project, I’m also really fired up about the other projects people are working on. One project in particular deals with memories, emotions, and music. They’re collecting real data with a web form, which will be displayed via an interface that they’re developing right now. From what I’ve seen so far, it looks really good.
This group has been struggling with the expression and visualization of their concept since day one, but I think they’ve really got it nailed . . . two days or so before the presentation. But better late than never, and it looks like it will be really slick. The interface should go live after the presentation.
You can contribute your memories (anonymously, of course):
The whole concept reminds me a lot of the fray, where people respond to published stories with stories of their own. Some really personal and private things are published—sometimes anonymously, usually not—and the quality of responses in turn stimulates more quality submissions. One of the interesting aspects of the music and memory project is that right now the web form has no feedback. That is, the results aren’t shown anywhere. Yet people have been contributing at an impressive rate, and a lot of it is quality stuff, really good stories. I’m sure that once these memories are published, the quality level of submissions will increase even more.
This group has taken the idea of the project sequence a little further than most (in that they will have produced a working website), but all the projects are good. I’m excited to see what people present on Thursday. I suspect it will be impressive. There is definitely something to be said about producing quality work, as it spurs everyone to match or exceed the previous mark. I think this spirit also exists among the faculty: the professors in the group leading the next project sequence have mentioned on a couple of occasions that they have a strong precedent to follow. And they rub their hands with glee as they remark on how they plan to exceed it…
All I can say is that I’m glad we have a week to recover (hopefully) before diving into the next sequence.
Right now, however, I need to get this presentation finished…
Didier wrote:
It is absolutely true that we have been struggling a lot with our visualization. On the one hand I think it was due to the number of issues we were trying to resolve. Dealing with all of them at once resulted in a confusing system. Focusing on what is the differentiator really helped us. In our case it turned out the data speaks for itself (well, close enough…)
However, equally important has been the good en thoughtful feedback we have gotten form the studio sessions, students and professors alike. I especially remember your remark about thinking in terms of “what do I want to do with this data” (and how it is going to be used by others) as opposed to “hey, cool dataset, let us build this, this and that…”
So, yeah, now it is time to wrap it all into a nice and exciting presentation. I really enjoy your project by the way. Overall I think we have achieved a significant amount of creative work over the last 4 weeks. And yes, it has been tough at times, but that is part of the process. In any case: good luck on Thursday!
Posted on 27-Oct-04 at 1:48 am | Permalink