It would appear that I’ve finished all the work required for this course. At least I sincerely hope so. My digital portfolio came out rather alright, considering that it was the very first html site that I’ve ever composed. I also submitted the final versions (again, I sincerely hope they are the final versions) of the Annual Activity Calendar updating instructions earlier today. I’ll be much relieved when the tool is finally delivered. I’d like to thank all those who participated in the course, it’s been a blast (even though my incessant whining might have given you a different impression). I feel I’ve learned a lot about project work, content creation and the virtues and pitfalls of technical communication.

Not to mention the fact that I can now write some wicked use case.

I’m running out of things to say.

Cheers, everyone. Enjoy the clip.

Elmo!

I guess it’s once again time to give an update as to what we’ve been up to. The Faculty of Humanities Annual Activity Calendar (made that name up myself ) is well under way, not that I’ve had much to do with it. My contribution so far has been to create a glossary for the tool, and together with Sari we also put together some writing guidelines for the text content. I also proof-read the current content, and after a few corrections its good to go. The tool itself is pretty as hell (if you’ll excuse the expression), I never could have imagined such fine output from our self-professedly unskilled group. I’m currently waiting for the tech team to complete the month templates so I can get on with jotting down some use case for the updating instructions (Wow. I don’t seem to have anything to complain about. Somehow it just doesn’t seem right…).

Apart from the calendar thingy I’ve been working on my digital portfolio. I’ve got the layout figured out and there’s actually some content online already. The biggest task now is to round up all the stuff I’ve done for this particular course and find a nice way to gloat about it on the site. I’ll add a link to the site later once I’ve fine tuned it a bit (this is the first html site I’ve ever worked on and I don’t want anyone to pee on my parade just yet). I also uploaded the Virtual Physical Mobile stuff into the tc0708 wikispace. The binder application turned out to be quite clumsy (the images I took with the older camera phone actually dissappeared from the site recently) so I just used a piece-o-crap(tm) Nokia(tm) data cable to move to images from my phone to my desktop computer and then uploaded them onward.

That’s about it for this (rather hasty) post, let’s see if I can find a clip for you (can’t help it, it’s a habit):

Flight of the Conchords!

Hey. We finished our Sanctuary concept somewhat successfully, despite of a rather disastrous presentation which we had far too little time to prepare for. Personally I was quite pleased with the results of our team effort, although I’m not sure whether the concept went over too well with the group. We had to tone down the initial idea quite a bit since even a the concepting work for an application that would override the standard Facebook profile entirely would’ve been far too laborious and time consuming. The end result was basically a gaming portal do-dad with a pseudo-spiritual candy coating. There isn’t anything wrong with that, is there? I guess the group, along with Minna, became somewhat disillusioned because of such a drastic change of direction. The fact that our presentation was an ill-prepared, caffeine-fueled fiasco didn’t help either. Regardless of that, I maintain that both the graphic look and the accompanying mass of use-case was well thought out and successful. As for the required technical study the work we submitted was in my opinion more than adequate.

As of last Monday’s session the whole TC group is working on an activity calendar project for the English Department (or whatever they call it nowadays) administration. I’m not too proud of dodging all the administrative jobs within the project (Project Manager, Risk Manager and Communications Manager). Should my schedule be any lighter this spring I might have considered taking up one. I do realize that the said tasks do not necessarily contain any more work than anyone elses, but I just don’t think I can deal with an additional mass of deadlines even if they are for someone else’s work. I’m perfectly content in playing a worker bee on this one.

I addition to the the mentioned BIG project we we’re also assigned a FUN project involving semi-obsolete symbian phones and an application called Brieftec Binder. Our task (as I “understood” it) is to take photographs and produce other content of stuff relating to the relationship between the physical and virtual. These examples of *ADD SUITABLE TERM HERE* should then be sent somewhere using the Binder application. They will then be studied by someone somewhere for some obvious purpose. Now I know it isn’t really all about the gear but the phones we received are annoyingly old. After using s60v3 phones for a couple of years going back to an older version is just plain painful. I do have a spare nokia 5500 which I could use for the task but I can’t seem to get the software to work properly. There appears to be no such thing as a Brieftec Binder mobile application available (at least not online). There is, however, something called Brieftec Exhibitor, which I think is the application installed on the assigned heaps of phone. This is also the application I installed on the 5500. The problem is that the damn thing queries for an email address in order to log into said whatever. Unlike the version on the old phones there is no *cancel* option which would lead me to a username & password input. So, unless I come up with a solution I’m stuck with using the gray oblong tear shaped brick-of-a-thing handed out in class. Boohoo.

A bigger problem is of course that I really don’t have a clue what to do with the thing. I also suspect that whatever we come up with will lead to another far more difficult and time consuming work assignment.

I’ll leave you with this cheery outlook and an unrelated clip if I can find one:

I can never move to Japan. I’d never get any work done.

The first public presentation of our concept specification task went smoothly, the Facebook Sancuary idea didn’t catch too much flak from the rest of the group. I guess our biggest challenge is the sheer vastness of the application, at least I have never seen a complete override of the basic profile. Still, if we keep the basic profile running in the background the thing shouldn’t be completely unfeasible. Another big challenge will be the “masked” real-time message/invitation updating which we intend to do with a visual gadget. I’ll be the first one to admit that an actual realization of the application concept would be way beyond our programming skills.

Another thing we have to consider is the fact that we can’t have the user completely idle when using Sanctuary. I did a little “research” the other night in connection with the mini-games we intend to incorporate into the sub-profile. The Bowman game at www.stickpage.com provides a nice prototype for the archery game we planned on including. One idea might be to have the avatar perform the game tasks in the same basic “desktop” view of the application. The stick figure look so stylishly portrayed at stickpage also gave me some ideas as to what the look and feel of the Sanctuary space might be. At least I would prefer it instead of the “Lego” look of Habbo.

About the title of this post: I got some new spectales on Friday and they’re really giving me a hard time. In addition to the splitting headache caused by the 0.5 diopter change the specs are also giving me a bit of a personality crisis with their trendy Buddy Holly -esque heaviness. I look like freakin’ Phantom over here. Well, I picked them out myself, didn’t I?

I’ll just go and cry in a corner. You, on the other hand, can enjoy this clip:

Dirty, filthy cowboys.

Now here’s something that’s been a-long-time-a-coming, the ever elusive Cognitive Walktrough exercise I was supposed to do months ago.

Here goes:

My task is to find a friend in Oulu. I have his street address (Makelininkatu 39) but I’m not familiar with the city. Oh, and I’m British.

Someone has told me to check the Oulu city website at www.ouka.fi. I get online and find the page filled with foreing gibberish, lots of it. When I’m just about to lose my temper I find a tiny Union Jack in the upper left hand corner of the page where it says “English”. I click on the flag.

After a quick browse of the page i find a link that says “Map Service”. Assuming a map is what I need to get to where my friend lives, I click on said link.

The link opens a map search page showing a map of what I assume is the greater Oulu area. In the top of the page there is a search bar with a type-in box for search criteria. Under the box there is a check-box option “search only from addresses” which leads me to believe I can type in my friend’s address. I do just that and click on the little play button thing right of the type-in box.

The page shows a zoomed-in map of the oulu city centre with a little dot-and-bubble thing where my friend supposedly lives. It seems the street name is actually spelled with one of those crazy scandinavian A’s with little dots above it, like so: “Mäkelininkatu”. I take out my trusty (and free) Look At Oulu map and mark down the spot (I could of course print out the map if only I had a printer). I think I’ll manage.

Thank you City of Oulu!

There, I’ve done it. The search process wasn’t too complicated, although there is room for improvement in the Oulu website. There were sufficient clues on the index page to guide one through such a process. The major drawback of the site, however, is the fact that it contains a lot of information, a feature which might discourage users who are inexperienced in searching the web for information. The rather dated ‘phone-book’ approach to web design (common in Finnish municipal/administrative websites) requires the user to scan the page throughoutly for clues in order to get ahead with his/her task. The map search engine itself is a functional and valuable tool.

And that’s that. See you all next year. Inspirational clip to follow:

Go Panda Go!

I’ve been seriously neglecting the (essential) learning journal aspect of this blog. This is my attempt to get back on track with reporting about the tasks we’ve been busy with during the course. Let’s see now…

1. Ah yes, the low-involvement user task. That went quite smoothly. The interviewee age group that I had the priviledge to work with was ‘middle-aged’ (35-55 yrs.) . I interviewed my girlfriend’s mum (50) only to find out how prejudiced I am when it comes to evaluating the technical involvement others. Shame on me.

I don’t mean to say that she isn’t what one would call a ‘low-involvement user’, but her attitude toward new(ish) technology was far more open-minded than I thought.

Like most of the other groups, we decided on a female nurse user persona. Ours was called Sirkka. Apparently I’m not the only one with prejudices. Shame on us. It turned out that the majority of interviewees had indeed been women, and, again, most of them were either practicing or retired nurses, physiotherapists etc.

2. The Use Case Exercise. We actually had to work for that one. Our task was to create instructions for signing up for courses in weboodi. Our first draft was hopelessly long and far too complicated. The second and final version, however, was accepted ‘as is’ to the EKL Wiki. I hope one of us actually got it there (note to self: post the instructions). The deliverable was a combination of a simplified step-by-step guide and corresponding screenshots. I’m happy with it.

3. We’re currently working on a concepting exercise involving Facebook. For the necessary brainstorming we’re apparently supposed to use Habbo Hotel, the virtual doll-house for pre-teen girls and pedophiles alike. To be perfectly honest I really don’t see the point in using this particular “tool”, since any instant messaging program would be far more useful. I guess its our fellow scholars in the Department of Educational Sciences who want us to play with dolls. They’re apparently conducting a study on the basis of our work.

Facebook. I probably wouldn’t have created a profile if it wasn’t for this exercise. I was perfectly happy with MySpace. the world of Facebook seems to be filled with alterior motives and a desperate desire for “Networking” (insert ominous sound of thunder and wailing).

Okay, that’s it for now. I might write a bit more before christmas. Then again I might not. If that is the case, happy holidays. I’ll try and rummage around for a clip… Here we go:

Dear BBC,

Please consider re-running Big Train. You know you want to.

I guess I’ve dilly-dallied long enough with these usability exercises, so i’ll try to get something done. Since I’m a fan of doing things the wrong way around I’ll start with the definition thingy.

A tennis ball* is a specialized piece of sporting equipment designed for optimal performance on the tennis court. A tennis ball is manufactured out of the finest natural and/or synthetic rubbers in order to create an optimal amount of inertia, or bounce. The hollow rubber ball encases a bubble of air which, together with the elasticity of the rubber, stores and releases energy whenever the ball is hit, thus making the ball bouncy. The surface of a tennis ball is usually covered with a green or yellow fibre mesh for optimal friction, or grip.

A golf ball* is a specialized piece of sporting equipment designed for optimal performance on a golf course. A golf ball consists of a hard rubber core which is covered with a white or yellow shell of flexible yet tough plastic. The surface of the plastic shell has a uniform dent pattern for optimal grip.

* A ball is usually a round toy or object for playing sporty games.

There, I’ve done it. I didn’t quite know whether to go into too much detail with the definitions, so I made the one about the golf ball a lot simpler. It’s questionable whether end-users of such products understand certain specific physical phenomena, such as inertia. Then again it’s quite hard to come up with a sufficient definition without going into at least some detail with the inner workings of a product.

I’ll try to get the Cognitive Walkthrough thing sorted over the weekend. Over and out.

P.S. You didn’t think I’d forget, did you? Clip ahoy:

I know it has been videotaped with a camcorder off someones shabby telly and I don’t care. It’s still the best show ever!

I finally became a member of the TC course wikispace and submitted the the content I was supposed to submit (my personal page, an article about the writing style of blogs.). I guess my membership got stuck in the “pending” drawer as a result of me jumping the gun and creating an account before tc0708 was even up and running. Even though I was ‘invited’ to join the space I had to send a ‘request to join’ and well, you probably know the rest. One should never do stuff ahead of schedule, apparently it’ll just result in a heap of confusion.

The Wikispaces is a handy enough medium, though (not minding the minor glitches when editing existing documents, I crashed Firefox five times trying to edit my personal introduction page [apparently I'm an arrogant sod when deprived of sleep]) . I believe we can actually work with this.

New York was awesome, everything went smoothly and we got to do a whole bunch of stuff: sightseeing, a couple of stand-up clubs, the $20 hamburger at TGI Fridays (not that good) etc.

A Completely unrelated clip to follow in 3…2…1..

Hey there. I’d just like to let you know right of the bat that I’m not as (psychotically) angry as my last post might have persuaded you to think. This blog venture is part of an assignment I’m doing for a technical writing course. My initial reaction was the same as with all other writing assignments: anger and despair. I’m not saying I dislike writing (although that is often the case), I just have problem with writing anything on the spot (the pressure thing). I don’t even like signing passport forms at the police station because I always screw up the signature and end up looking like a retarded train robber on my passport (okay the train robber thing has nothing to do with the signature, it’s just a very bad photo).

Passports. I’m flying to New York in a couple of days and I’m nervous as hell. Not because I’m afraid of flying or crime or anything like that. I’m afraid I’ll get a toothache. Or diarrhea. Or that I’ll lose my passport/money/tickets. Anything that would screw up our five perfect days in a city I’ve always wanted to visit. Why is it that a grown man, perfectly capable of taking care of himself, turns into a paranoid child on mushrooms just as soon as you give him an opportunity to do something fun and worthwhile? When I’m bored I’m fine.

I’m sure I’ll get to the course material eventually. Meanwhile, think calming thoughts, think … manatee:

Greetings to one and all. This post is probably my very first attempt to produce and publish anything in a weblog form. Apart from the occasional peek at a friend’s myspace page, I’m a complete stranger to the personal blog medium. I’d be lying if I said I’m thrilled about this experiment, the very though of maintaining a flow-of-conciousness-type daily account of various ramblings seems to bring on an instant spell of cranial constipation. And no, I’m not just saying that to be cool or UG (who would talk about constipation in an attempt to be cool?). I just don’t respond well to pressure.

Alright, now that I’ve gotten past the necessary nay-saying and expressions of discontentment I’d like to welcome all those who are interested to witness my new venture of public though-prostitution.

I leave you with these words and a clip of a sneezing panda: