Developed Personas
- Elliott
a. Aspiring Theatre Professional
b. 32 years old and is a playwright
c. he represents Critics (27-37, no formal training, college degree, low association seeking a better association, towards beginning stages of career seeking advancement) and Playwrights (typically older but can be any age, approx 25-40)
d. off hours access
e. has his own laptop, accesses internet at coffee shop
f. high bandwidth
g. from Midwest moved to Chicago
h. Caucasian
- Sierra
a. NTI participant
b. in College at NYU
c. 22 years old
d. represents college students attending NTI ages 20-25
e. high bandwidth, wireless, during working hours
f. from San Diego
g. African-American
- Ruth
a. 62 years old
b. theatre lover
c. Jewish
d. loaded w/ money that she'd love to donate to deserving charities
e. represents donors (typically older from 40-85)
f. lives in Nantucket
g. Mona from Who’s the Boss
h. Low bandwidth, low skill on computer
i. She’s the most important denominator because of her low skill and the goal of the O’Neill
- Charles Pierce
a. Entertainment journalist
b. Male critic
c. Gay
d. 42 years old, caucasian
e. Boston, MA
f. High bandwidth
g. Accessing on a portable mobile device
This is my other initial logo.
This is the initial logo.
Preliminary Personas
1)
Elliott ________
- Aspiring Theatre Professional
- 32 years old and is a playwright
- he represents Critics (27-37, no formal training, college degree, low association seeking a better association, towars beginning stages of career seeking advancement) and Playwrights (typically older but can be any age, approx 25-40)
2)
Sierra ________
- NTI participant
- in College at _______
- 22 years old
- represents college students attending NTI ages 20-25
3)
Ruth _____ (name still undecided)
- 62 years old
- theatre lover
- possibly Jewish
- loaded w/ money that she'd love to donate to deserving charities
- represents donors (typically older from 40-85)
LOGOS
Hello all! With this blog I am posting the two logos that Lindsey created on the computer so everyone has access to view them whenever they want and so the Technical/Design team has easy access to them to edit them when necessary. You all have the logo that I passed out to everyone in class, the paper with the 3 O's on it, and I'm going to email Shawn to have her send me her logo, the one with the rock wall, so I can also add that to the blog.
Something else I think
Another thing I could see with the idea of remediation and the O'Neill website is with the concept of remediation as reform. Here, with the O'Neill website, I don't feel as though we are trying to "restore" anything to our audience. I don't feel the remediation is going to be trying to tear down some stagnant perception in favor of some form of media that will change the way they approach acting, writing, directing, and critiqueing. However, I do feel the remediation that will go along with this website will be more toward facilitating new interaction.
Good Point
Lindsey, I am glad that you pointed out how the authors discussed that giving users options and letting them use their mouse to explore digital online media and how this is giving control back to the user. Electronic media seems to be the most instantaneous and personalizable form of media. With a mouse, the user can gain access to the specific information sought after and disregard what is deemed as personally irrelevant.
The O'Neill website will give users this sort of access as well. The website may be a historical resource to a user who wishes to know more of the community and heritage. It could be a practical resource to users who wish to learn more about the arts and process of developing plays and criticism. To another user, this website may be an entrepreneurial tool to see how one could create a center similar to the O'Neill Center in their own community.
Overall, the project is so fascinating because with remediation, a website is
everything to everyone. The website because a personalized tool for the specific goals of the user.
The Virtual Self & the O'Neill Website
In the last sections of the Remediation book, I contemplated some things that I think are important in our work on the O’Neill Website.
- In the section on the WWW, the authors discuss how the web borrows from so many forms of media that the real discussion on remediation on the web is about ratios. What ratio of remediation will we use on the site? I think based on the desire to go back to the roots of theatre, starting with the script, that the O’Neill center would like a modern site that is still understated. They want to be professional, intense, and promote the work they are doing. However, I don’t think they would want us to remediate film, radio, and even television. I think they would like some interactivity but they’re focus on the basics could indicate how we focus on doing the basics well online. I think there is more here we can explore as far as how much remediation we’d like to explore.
- “We employ media as vehicles for defining both personal and cultural identity” (231). Therefore on our site, how would we like people to define the O’Neill culture? How do we want them to identify themselves in this environment? What are we trying to get them to understand in the content?
- I also really liked how the authors discussed that by giving users options and letting them use their mouse to explore that we are giving control of the digital online media back to the user. This made me think about how our site is going to work visually and information architecture wise. We want our audience (donors, past institute participants, and future institute participants) to feel like this site is for them and that they can control how they understand the content. I think a big question is how are we going to take advantage of this virtual self? Do we do research on how users best navigate sites? Do we try to think about our users’ goals on the site and work backwards on how to help them achieve them? I think making this site really easy for people to control the information flow is imperative. By doing this we can then show our audience how much we value the role of the individual.
- Then a key thought I had is how we can make this website value the individual and yet make it “individualized” for all who come? Are there things we can do to make our audience feel like this is an individual experience that they are going through? Can we do this without getting into too sophisticated web technology and applications? I don’t think we have the time or the ability with this large of a group to accomplish anything too sophisticated but perhaps putting our minds together we can find innovative methods of accomplishing the same thing.
- And lastly, I really digged the section on empathy. The authors talked about how through empathy the self can see the multiple points of view online and thus self-reflect and not self-reflect. It made me think how we are always trying to gain as many perspectives because it gives us great understanding of reality and meta-cognitive awareness. Thus, I was thinking we might be able to do this through the pictures. Right now there are so many on the site and hardly any cohesion and how when looking at “good” websites they used less pictures and made them bigger. I wonder now if we liked them because we could focus on one at a time and empathize with the picture. I think if we can take some of the really good pictures we have and make them bigger we can get our audience to empathize with the pictures especially those with people. I have heard from professors before that pictures of people online have better rhetoric than those without. So with these bigger, more cohesive, and well chosen images we could try to get our audience absorbed in the picture and to empathize with what it’s like to be in that experience. Perhaps that would promote the center better from the perspective of a potential participant but also entice donors into giving money because they could live vicariously through others experiences.
So these are some of the ways I connected the readings to the website. I think the readings really allow us to challenge our thinking on the website far deeper than just the surface visual and information level. I think it challenges to dig deeper into the rhetoric on the site.
What I learned from the book Remediation and the O'Neill Website
Despite all the technological ideas in Remediation, I learned a great deal to add to my writing interests. First of all I learned more about the strange wod "Convergence." Instead of convergence being a single solution, it can be used to remediate between all types of media. "Convergence means greater diversity for digital technologies in our culture" (pg. 225). Therefore, convergence improves the media. We can now use writing, pictures, animation, audio, etc all together on the World Wide Web. It's amazing. Even though some people find this at a disadvantage because it rejects the "culture of the printed book." In a way it removes the imgaination of print media. When a person reads a book or an article, he can imagine the characters in the book. But with the new convergence, pictures, audio, etc are already set for us. This will be useful for the website. The writing group needs to focus on spicing up the writing but keeping a "true feel" to the writing at the same time. In other words, we will use the convergence but we will describe the places around the O'Neill Center in a descriptive way to allow the readers/audience to visualize what they want. The second interesting fact I learned had to do with television news. I always thought this was true, but it's amzing that news stations make their website look almost identical to their television version. Television and the internet also don't need to use subtitles. Because it is visual, the audience can understand what's going on or hear what's going on. This is useful for the project also. We can use our writing to enhance the image. Certain webpages won't even need any writing because the picture will explain it. That is way we as the writers need to focus and concentrate on getting everything, all the details, out and not let any audience members not understand what's going on on the site.
Remediation and the O'Neill Website Parts 1 and 2
Since I am in the editing and writing group, I will not use the technical aspects of the Remediation book. What I got from it instead was
1. We, as the editing and writing group, need to work on making the writing more modern and sprucing it up. As new technologies remediate old media, so will we make the old writing better. I also discovered that the writing will look the most modern if the other groups, especially the technical group, can remediate the old pages. This way we will work together to make the new website even better.
2. I also learned that remediation is not just one thing in particular, there are different parts that make it up, and we need to figure out how to make all of those parts work for us in re-doing this website.
Remediation & the O'Neill website
Two things that stuck with me while reading the Remediation book were:
1. The fact that no media event or medium to convey information through the media stands alone. Media constantly involved interculturally, and with other forces, economic and social (Bolter). The reason I have been thinking this while planning the website is because as designers we must think about how our website will be portrayed by everyone, we don't want to give off a very wrong impression. We need to make sure that we're "up with the times" and remediate older types of media that may already be incorporated into the O'Neill site.
2. Bolter and Grusin say that "the ultimate ambition of the Web designer seems to be to integrate and absorb all other media." Keeping this quote in mind, I want to make sure that as a class we integrate all media into the website. through photos, writing, even the logo and brand, we need to do our best to send one main message to our users. To me, the web is the most direct form of mass communication nowadays because everyone who has internet acces can see all the same pages on the world wide web. It's not like having something on tv where some users might not be able to access it.
Remediation
We're supposed to post two blogs about Remediation, but I'm going to combine mine into one, because they kind of go together.
What I really took with me after reading this book was how approach a design template for our website. I learned how to get into the audience' shoes and try to remediate a comfortable theme for them onto the website.
We have already used the ideas and themes in this book and our plan for completing the website will involve remediation as well. We have chosen a color scheme to work with that represents a brand identity completely unique to the O'Neill Theater Institute. When doing this, we really remediated the feelings and ethics of the theater. I think we will use remediation again when choosing a design template, (i.e. a theater, playbills, or their message board at the institute.)
I really thinking recreating or making an allusion of something familiar when introducing a new format (remediation) is really important. If we can accomplish this for the O'Neill I really think we will produce a website that all users will enjoy and believe it represents them accurately.
-Lucia
ONeill colors from Thursday's class
Hey Everybody-
Sorry I didn't get these posted sooner, but here are the computer color number i.d.s that we decided were closest to our ideal in class on Thursday.
Dr. Fishman was working in Photoshop, whose colors should be the same as other image-work programs such as Illustrator.
The colors were:
336699 Teal-ish
336666 More Green-ish Green
993333 Cranberry-ish
FFCC99 Wheat-ish
So, I hope I'm not too late to help you guys pick colors for your logos, and I'll see everyone on Tuesday!
Lauren
Remediation and the ONeill II
So, here's the second main point that I drew from the readings as applied to our project.
2. Even though we may live in a hypermediated society that reveres new media, many people have individual aversions to or fears of new media. That is why it is always helpful to remediate a medium or multiple media with which people are familiar. I think that Bolter and Grusin would argue that all media is simply remediation, and we will do well to keep this fact in mind when designing our new ONeill website. Websites are a hypermediated forum in which many sites are well-served by building on metaphors of older media that are not new or intimidating to users. This helps accommodate users to the media used to reach them, while still getting their message across.
For us.....this means that we ought to keep in mind metaphors and real-life analogies on which to build our site. This makes our website fun to visit, and it allows people to more easily identify with our site. It can also allow us to create a website that stands out, one that feels different from all of the other standard cookie-cutter websites that loom on the net. It will allow us to communicate the truly unique nature of the real ONeill Center while also creating a memorable web identity.
Remediation and the ONeill I
I have really been surprised to find out how many times since reading
Remediation I have noticed applications of its concepts in our work in class, in my work for other classes, and in my everyday life! What started out as a set of seemingly fabricated terms has turned out to be a very enlightening paradigm through which to view our modern, media-saturated lives.
As far as our class redesign of the ONeill Theater Center's website goes, I have certainly picked out at least two main themes that we can apply from
Remediation.
Here's the first one.
1. As a society, we have a perennial fascination with new media and cutting-edge technology just by virtue of its novelty and its display of human ingenuity (hypermediacy), even though we may individually have some aversion to or fear of new technologies. Thus, creative and cutting-edge websites are crucial to the vitality of modern-day organizations vying for attention in a hypermediated world. No one who wants to maintain an image of competency in this marketplace can afford to ignore new media that constantly modify pre-existing media.
So....for us, this means that we need to make the ONeill website one that would impress us as technologically savvy as well as communicative of the timeless nature of the ONeill itself.
email address
I guess this would help; my email is
ashleygalloway@yahoo.com :) Thanks again and I will see you all this afternoon.
Ashley
Names of members in each group
Hi guys, I am revising the final proposal to send to the O'Neill people and Dr. Fishman has asked that I add a column with each groups individual members....however, I don't have a list of everyone and what group they are in so if someone from each group could send me a list of your members I would really appreciate it. Thanks so much!
Ashley G.
Remediation & ONeill Website
One of the most important things I gained from the readings in the book was to question how media is always remediating other media. This has great potential impact on my decisions on the website. For example, what are the kinds of content we'd like to see on the site? This content could be remediating content from other media. Photographs which used to be such an automatic and unquestionably authentic practice will be manipulated by us to be present the O'Neill Theatre in the best light. We will be mediating the photos to make sure they work in an online format.
Also, will we want to provide any video? Will the video work like what we are used to on TV? The forms will be interactive versions of the paper version. We are remediating the paper versions of forms to make them better, we are taking what is existing and reformating it for this environment.
And lastly in regards to remediation, I think about how we are going to be taking all these forms of revised media from the past and bringing it together on the site as hypermediacy. I take what I have learned from the readings to question how I am bringing this to the audience and whether I am trying to improve upon old media with this online environment.
-Lindsey
meeting log organizatin group
Thursday September 9 - In-Class:
-turned in project proposal
-discussed changes to Support the ONeill link
-discussed changes to National Theater Institute link
-changed meeting time from Sunday at 3:00 to Monday at 5:15 to finalize
-for next time, think on website metaphors
organization group timeline
Organization Group Timeline: Lucia, Joanna, & Lauren
Sunday
Monday
Tuesday
Wednesday
Thursday
Friday
9/5 – 9/11
Meet to assess individual reorganization plans
Present new organizational layout to class
Collaborate with other groups for feedback
9/12 – 9/18
Meet to look at layout again with fresh eyes
Meet with technical group to coordinate plans
9/19 – 9/25
Add amendments if necessary
9/26 – 10/2
Meet with content & editing
10/3 – 10/10
Lucia to logo/design
Joanna to content/editing
Lauren to technical
My Questions for O'Neill
My questions for O'Neill would be:
1. What exisiting online forms need to be on the website? How, if at all, do the exisiting online forms need to change?
2. What type of online form or submission process would you like the O'Neill website to have?
3. What standards or uniformity is desired for items that are submitted electronically?
4. Will individuals that submit items electronically also be required to submit hardcopies via the mail?
Other questions may arise before actually talking to the folks at O'Neill...also, further elaboration may be needed based on their answers to the above questions. However, this is kind of a starting point.
-Daniel Jeffrey Bassett
My First Steps
For me, my first steps will be to analyze. This will include a survey of O'Neill's existing materials for online forms. Second, will be to teach and learn. In this step, I plan to share knowledge with my classmates in a tutorial as well as learn from everyone else. Finally, my initial steps will be to develop questions that need to be asked of the O'Neill folks, in order to create the ideal deliverables for the client.
-Daniel Jeffrey Bassett
Editing/Content Group Timeline as of Sept. 7th
Content/Editing Group
O’Neill Theater Website
Timeline: WEEK OF: *
September 7: Proposal and timeline due. We will exchange our timeline with other groups to establish a more concrete timeline. We will adjust the timeline accordingly.
September 14: Begin preliminary editing for grammatical errors on original copies. Start asking questions to other groups to keep our work on task. Each group member will present a list of questions from all the following sections: alumni/hall of fame; places/history; people; conferences; getting involved. The questions will include interview and research materials for future references (i.e. interviews with O’Neill representatives). Furthermore, we will contact the O’Neill Theater to establish a reasonable interview schedule with the O’Neill employees and create an interview schedule for the following week.
September 21: Find additional information about the sections proposed. We will interview people from the theater to create a more personal website. Also, we will research more information regarding the places and history. We will use our interview schedule to contact the appropriate representatives.
September 28: We will organize the material we already have and begin adjusting the old material with new research from interviews and other sources. We will also meet with the organization group to determine the layout and format of our rewritten work.
October 5: Compile information and begin the rewriting process. After a copy is finished, the writers will turn their copies into the organization group for editing purposes.
October 12: Continue rewriting and send to editors. Furthermore, meet with other groups such as the technical and organization groups, to discuss how to layout and organize the new material.
October 19: Finish rewriting. Send all copies to editors for final touch-ups. Help edit if necessary.
October 22: Finalize the papers and turn the new copies in via email to technical and organization groups.
November 2: Fall break.
November 4: Assist other groups with any additional help they may need to finish the project. We will also work with the organization group to distribute our content appropriately including captions and layout.
November 9: Continue to assist other groups until the website is completed.
*Timeline is subject to change according to other group schedules.
Content/Editing group and responsibilities
The Content/editing group has split the work according to the organization group's layout map. Ashley W. and Julie will be responsible for rewriting about the people under the About US section. They will contact the O'Neill representatives to gather quotes and more useful information. They will also work on the director's bios under the Conferences and Insitutes section. Megan will work on the Conferences and Institutes section. She will basically rewrite the entire program overviews of the Critics Institute, the Musical Theater Conference, the Puppetry Conference,the Playwrite conference and the National Theater Institue. Ashley G. will work on the History of the O'Neill Center and learn more about the places such as the white mansion, etc. Reyne will work on the "Get Involved" portion. She will research more about the Volunteer opportunities and the Trustee residency. I, Kelly, will work on finding as much information as possible about the founder Eugene O'Neill so we cna have a separate section just about him, his life (biography), etc. In addition, I will work on the "Hall of Fame" section the organization group and Dr. Fishman came up with. Finally, I will conduct interviews to learn more about the alumni and discover some well-known talents from the O'Neill theater.
After doing all of our research, we will edit and receive help from the Organization group for editing.
What I am most interested in proposing
I am most interested in editing and re-writing the different webpages. I want to make the web sites more interesting and not so repetitive. Everything should be on the same page that goes along with that page instead of having to go from page to page to find information.
Content/Editing Group questions for O'Neill Representatives
1. What is the best way to contact you in regards to finding more information?
2. What would be an appropriate time to call and who will we need to get in touch with first?
3. Where is any additional information regarding the White mansion, the graveyard, etc.?
4. How can we get in touch with the alumni?
5. How can we get in touch with the people who work there now?
6. Is there any information you would like us to keep or add?
7. How can we find information about Eugene O'Neill? Who would be our best contact for this information?
8. Who or where can we find all the information we need about the history of the O'Neill Theater?
These are some questions at the moment. I am sure we will come up with many more soon. Thank you.
Content/Editing Group first steps
Ashley G. has already posted our first steps. But I would like to update our new information. After meeting with the other groups today in class, we split the work up a bit differently. Starting next week, we will be contacting the O'Neill Theater to find out a proper interview schedule for their representatives. In addition, we will be doing plenty of research on the internet as well as any other sources we may have. After these first steps, we will compile the old information with the new information and deleting any old information that is irrelevant to the website as well as adding any new information we find prudent to the website. Thank you.
organization timeline
OK, Group-
Here is the amended Organization Group timeline as of 2:00 on Tuesday September 7:
WEEK THREE
Tuesday 9/7: Joanna, Lucia, and Lauren met on Sunday to create a first draft of the site map/organizational flowchart. We are currently amending this flowchart.
WEEK FOUR
Tuesday 9/13: We will have a "final" draft of our flowchart ready to begin operating from. This new flowchart will included input from Dr. Fishman and classmates given today.
Thursday 9/15: Meet with the technical group to coordinate plans/assess needs.
WEEK FIVE
Work with other groups: Lauren to technical and editing
Lucia to logo/design and editing
Joanna to writing/editing
WEEK SIX
Meet with content and editing group regarding info gathered in their interviews
This is all we have planned out so far. Please post any suggestions, requests, or feedback of any kind.
Thanks, group!
organization questions for oneill people updated 9/9
We in the organization group have come up with four burning questions thus far that we would like to ask the people at the O'Neill.
1. Is the alumni list under Critics Institute exhaustive, or is it just a list of notable alumni?
2. Is the alumni mailing list sign-up form under National Theater Institute a sign-up ONLY for alumni of the National Theater Institute? Or is it a sign-up for alumni of all programs? It doesn't really say....
3. We were thinking of including a "Hall of Fame" section either under About Us or as a link under each institute/conference. How would we best find info on famous plays that have originated at the O'Neill, famous critics who are alumni of the O'Neill, etc?
4. We would like to include a link containing info on Eugene O'Neill himself. Should we just conduct some general research on our own, or do you have any interesting VIP information that you would like included?
5. On the "Support the O'Neill" page, there is a link entitled "Make a Donation." This link takes you to the same PDF form that is used in the Annual Fund link. Is it necessary to have a general donations link? If so, then should we create a form specifically for general donations rather than using the Annual Fund form?
I'm sure we will come up with more questions as we go along, but these are what we have so far.
:)
Technical/Design Planning Calendar
Hello, classmates!
The Technical/Design Team has developed a calendar as our tentative timeline document. Each team will receive our planning calendar in class today, rather than clogging your email, in order to ease the "hashing out the schedule" for all of us. Basically, we have a three phase schedule with each phase lasting approximately one month: 1) Prep, 2) Build, 3) Revise/Deliver, with each phase involving lots of coordination and communication.
We look forward to working with you!
Daniel, Shannon, Shawn, and Lindsey
Impression & proposal
Sorry for the large delay in my contribution to the blogger. I had some errors accessing it and haven't commented since it was fixed!
Initially I didn't think the O'Neill website looked too bad. As I looked further into it I started becoming really overwhelmed with information and found things that were repetitive. I do like the color of the background, it is bright, but not overwhelming and is rich looking. Right off the bat on the homepage I also noticed how quickly the photos change. They change so quick that the user can't even geta good look at what they are.
I am proposing that we change the site visually to make it more simplistic, yet more attractive. If there is less going on on each page, but the wiring, photos, etc. are mroe significant, our change would certainly be better than the original. Also, if we make the content section more interesting, especially the "Bios" part. We also should create a logo and brand for the O'Neill so users can begin to identify the logo with the company.
Technical/Design Group
Greetings from your friendly Technical/Design Group!
We have tentatively divided our responsibilities as follows:
Daniel Bassett: Forms/Organization Liaison
Shannon Campbell: Photo Selection/Content Liaison
Shawn Haney: Project Management/Coordination Liaison
Lindsey Robbins: Technical Director
Organization Group and Responsibilities
Our group is in charge of getting a start on the initial organization of the website and to possibly come up with a new navigational route of all the information. Lauren will be our liaison for the design team and Joanna will be our liaison for the editting team. I will be responsible for visually displaying the present navigation of the website so we can begin to reorganize. Having the liaisons will keep us up to date with the other groups and help us collaborate with them on overlapping tasks. I think this will be a good start to get us working with the materials we've been given so far.
First steps for Organization Group...
This is a little redundant, but here are the Organization Group's first steps...
1. Create a flowchart to map out the current organization/navigation of the website.
2. All of us will create different navigation ideas and present them to each other.
3. Combine all new navigation ideas into one new flowchart to show to class.
4. Collaborate with other groups to actually implement the new organizational method.
Hope that helps!
Lucia
I intend to propose
I intend to propose that we focus on navigation of the website and editing. Once we realize the information that we're dealing with and how to categorize it all, I think it will be much easier to find photos, make technical plans, find appropriate places for the text, etc.
While people are working on the organization/navigation, I think that there should be a group of people dividing up the editing in order to rework the text to rid of typos, make it more interesting, and sound like one voice throughout the entire website.
From there, I think we will be able to see obvious holes that need patching up and then we can divvy up specific tasks as far as design, layout, and actually building the web page.
Content/Editing's first steps
Just to keep the other groups up-to-date with us content people here are our first steps:
1. We are printing all the info from the website so we can update it, proof it and condense the info, and also at the request of almost everyone else in class, make the material more interesting and relevant. If anyone has any ideas please let us know. We are definitely open for suggestions :)
2. Then we are going to break the information down into sections so each one of us will have a subject to concentrate on, such as the history and accoplishments listed on the website.
3. After we begin the revisions we are going to pass our work back and forth to each other so everyone will have a chance to proof and fact check the information to ensure that everything is correct. It should be proofed at least twice before any information is submitted.
That seems to be our plan for now. We are also looking for some good theatrical quotes to put on the page so maybe some of you have a favorite play or director that could provide a good quote. For example, a shakespeare quote or maybe a quote from one of the plays that the ONeill Theater has critiqued, just a little something to add a little more creativity. Thanks, let us know if you have any suggestions!
Organization Group's Plan!
Hi Everybody!
I just wanted to post the Organization group's action plan for the first stages of the O'Neill project.
We are working right now on diagramming the current contents of the O'Neill site so that we can all look at the current information grouping.
We are also working right now on creating some alternative information groupings that we will present to the class if there's time so that we can synthesize all of our ideas into one logical site organization.
Thanks, everybody, and see you on Thursday!
Lauren
