Newsable Studio

Massey University’s Design+Democracy Project was formed as a response to a call from New Zealand's Electoral Commission for academic and research communities to respond to declining voter participation. Their mission is to "work in partnership with industry, government, and the social sector to ignite a passion for democracy in young people through user-centred design”.

Their latest project, VoteLocal “is a game-based questionnaire that guides people towards the mayoral candidate whose policies and ideals best match up with their own. It provides information about the candidates and what they stand for, informs users about what councils do, and debunks the assumption that they aren’t relevant”

Event in Auckland tomorrow night (23 August).

What is the future for tomorrow’s New Zealand cities? Current affairs presenter Kim Hill talks about the ideal sustainable city with French and New Zealand experts.

By 2050 nearly three-quarters of the world’s population will be living in cities so it is essential that our future cities offer the best possible quality of life.   It is a lofty ambition which needs to take into account environmental, economic, political and cultural perspectives. While separate pieces of the puzzle – like recycling, efficient energy consumption or social diversity – are achievable, we need to know if our cities can reach their full sustainable potential.

Christchurch Dilemmas is a new interactive documentary web series from the creators of When a City Falls. Funded by NZ On Air and created with assistance from Radio New Zealand, the six-part series examines the major decisions facing Christchurch 5 years on from the earthquakes that devastated the city.

Here is an excellent introduction to interactive storytelling tools for creating, curating and managing workflows: http://www.poynter.org/2015/what-matthew-liddy-learned-in-his-first-year-running-an-interactive-storytelling-unit/327049/

The author recommends Marquee, Storehouse, Shorthand, Creativist and Immersive as tools for long-form visual and multimedia storytelling.

I recommend Klynt and Racontr as tools that offer more customisation and flexibility and work very well with video. 

Thinglink is a tool that enables you to make images and videos interactive 

For anyone looking for a bit of inspiration or wondering how to go about working with data or create an interactive narrative, here are some terrific how-to’s.

You can find short tutorials here on topics such as:

HOW TO BUILD AN INTERACTIVE MAP

HOW TO BUILD AN ANIMATED HEATMAP IN CARTODB

HOW TO BUILD A SIMPLE LINE PLOT OR BAR CHART IN D3 USING D3PLUS.JS

‘Auckland’s Unitary Plan was unveiled today. You can read the plan here.

Here’s a brief snapshot of the media response:

From RNZ: 

Ten things to know about Auckland’s Unitary Plan release:

Govt cautiously positive on Auckland Unitary Plan:

From the NZ Herald:

Unitary Plan reaction: 'My wife is in tears, it's pretty awful'

The Herald’s Business section presents an overview of the plan that includes an interactive slider that shows a ‘before and after’ view of Auckland pre and post Unitary Plan.

The Spinoff: 

has responded with a pop-up section they’re calling The War for Auckland and they’ve launched a crowdfunding campaign to support the war effort.

One the first pieces in The War for Auckland section is from AUT’s Ian Shirley who calls for central government to take responsibility for Auckland’s housing crisis.

One News:

Large scale building of apartments in Auckland needed to satisfy proposed Unitary Plan

TV3

Northwestern University Knight Lab is a community of designers, developers, students, and educators working on experiments designed to push journalism into new spaces. The Lab provides an open, collaborative environment for interdisciplinary exploration and conversation, where students and professionals learn together and from one another. In short, we’re energized by hard questions worth answering; we believe in the process as much as the product.