Building upon my last blog post and comments provided, I will summarize my project proposal here:
Tane, in Shiga prefecture in Japan, is a unique rural depopulated community where various universities and organizations visit to conduct different projects. These outside projects can seamlessly come into the community largely because of two proactive community leaders; at the same time, there is a big gap of interests, passion and efforts between these two leaders and the rest of the community. My project aims to engage this quiet portion of the community more engaged in what two leaders are making efforts for, specifically in the projects from the outside, by creating opportunities for local people to talk about the projects in videos. Through my experience, I am aware that there are some people who have some interests but do not know what they can do; I would like these people to learn more about the projects by talking, and to connect even more people in the community to participate in the projects. My first responsibility for this project would be to design a prototype that people will be able to use easily and with minimum efforts to make videos in which they talk about the projects. My second responsibility would be to design the “template” of the videos that the people in the community would watch and get interested in the projects; the targeted audience for these videos are the locals who know that these projects exist but never participated in any. My third responsibility is to design a platform where the videos can be collected and which also encourages the civic action of the people, specifically commenting about projects and showing their will to participate in the projects. By the end of the class, I would like to have all the designs ready to be implemented as soon as the technical experts are found; it also means that I would not focus on the “guts” of the products, but on the usability and analysis of the influences that the project could make.
My plans for the rest of the semester is following:
Oct 21 – Oct 26: General project concept sketch, Initial designs on hardware and platform, Get feedback from people in Tane
Oct 27 – Nov 2: Decide on what each video should look like, specs, make example videos
Nov 3 – Nov 9: Create protocols so that others can make the same videos, Test with others
Nov 10 – Nov 16: Design and make prototypes on the hardware shell
Nov 17 – Nov 23: Test the usability of the prototypes, get feedback
Nov 24 – Nov 30: Compile everything and create the final design. Research and connect with people who can make the “guts” working