Remiens' Relatively Reliable Recounts of BCT

How have your views on failure changed?

The "failure" part being italicised feels like a personal attack but I'll let it slide for now.

Now I've always seen failure as a natural process, simply because the idea that "everyone fails" has been ingrained into my mind for a very very long time, because if there's a lesson some wise old person is going to tell you I can comfortably bet that it'll be about failure and come our victorious 9 times out of 10. Yet despite my apparent comfortability with failure any time I ever mess up in public I instinctively try to cover it up, often to the inverse effect I had wished for. So I'm "comfortable with failure" yet my natural "defensive" reaction is to shield myself from any sort of failure. What am I missing here? I genuinely don't have an answer, I want to know.

One actual development I've come along with failure is that I used to see it as a straightforward process. I used to go alright, I'll fail until I get it right, but I still tried to avoid failure any chance I got in the search for success. I thought either I'll fail with one less wrong way to do it or I'll succeed. Yet the Week 8 PowerPoint showed a simple picture of failure not being the opposite of success. Which being a very logical person I thought "Well, of course, that makes so much sense". Yet this whole time it was always something I wanted to avoid because technically it takes me further from success than succeeding. Now, rather than avoiding failure, I will try to embrace it to learn as much as I can, and should I succeed? Add more problems until it breaks, see what the flaws of an idea are, most of the time you'll learn more and rarely you'll be surprised to find out that an apparent flaw is actually the hidden solution you've needed all along.

How do you contribute to a creative team?

I have many viewpoints, backgrounds, experiences. I have sympathy, I have many feelings, I possess the ability to think, not just like myself but like others. I don't know, I can't answer that question. I don't know what it's like to interpret my contributions because what I think of comes naturally to me, I don't know what it's like to not think like me. This seems extremely contradictory to what I literally just said but, I lack the words right now to express what I truly mean.

What techniques/methods have you used, what do you think about your process?

I don't really have a technique, just masterful stubbornness. If something doesn't work right away or how I think it'll work well then, I guess whatever I'm working on is getting well acquainted with me 'cause we're spending a whole lot of time together, 'cause I'm trying every method from here Hell and back until I figure out something that works.

How do you apply the principles of visual communication?

As little as I see myself using "theory", I've used this in my project design to use certain objects or images as indicators rather than just decorations. I've used 3D hexagons to present movement and depth, accent markers, and sliders in the shapes of triangles to using the point to subtly show flow and direction.

That's all I have for now, how does one conclude a blog?

Personal reasons stopped me from being at Week 8's session blah blah life and such.

I, however, being the me that I am have gone above and beyond to do the bare minimum amount of work and decided to very creatively strip the questions directly from the slideshow and retrofit them in the context of the project I'm working on for 501.

Right, so, without further adieu I present you with: A Blog Post

To clarify any confusion about the preceding questions, my project is about a friend finder app similar to the one on "Bumble" which is referenced many times.

Who is the product intended for: The app is specifically being limited to students but there shouldn't be any issues I see with it being used by the general public because of the way we're going about production of the app.

Why are you making the product:

People are a vital part of making people function, we are, by nature, social creatures.

What is the app for:

Barebones I suppose it's for prevention of isolation and depression, but externally it is designed to connect people who normally wouldn't find each other.

Who is this helping:

Anyone in a position of needing friends but lacks the initiative or bravery or opportunity to go forth and find people independently.

Who is this failing:

People who genuinely struggle with every aspect of communication and meeting people are the exact people that would be using this very app. Yet this app fails those people, rather than a crutch or a guide to conversation this app is more like a portal. You're placed in front of a person and told "Here is your new friend". This is still very daunting to many people.

Who is being ignored:

We intend and aim to assist as many different people as possible, mental illnesses, conditions, habits, etc. We simply don't have the time and the research to encompass inclusivity to every single one of these groups given the scope of the project and eventually we have to choose people to ignore to help others

What assumptions am I making:

I'm almost certain there's some inherent oversight and flaw to the app's function, and I'm always going back to see that I haven't missed something. I believe that because we are all working on the project and know it's an app for making friends we assume how it should work and I am afraid that an unknowing user will instantly run into a flaw in the design and be stumped as to what to do next.

Who else has done something like this:

"The app "Bumble" has a feature called "Bumble BFF" which is very much like our project in almost every aspect, but we have more in-depth knowledge of the users at the cost of time (and something I discover later in this post, privacy)

What are the thoughts that come from knowing that another person/group has already made your product:

On the one hand, it's a tragedy, we're no longer original, revolutionary, interesting, or unique. I mean it wasn't that grand of an idea in the first place but those feelings arise nonetheless, we end up looking like copiers and we're constantly stuck in this massive success shadow. Then on the other hand this is the perfect opportunity due to this precise position, they've run the trial, now we just perfect it. Also, we can use the massive success of this company as a backing board saying "Yes, this is a wanted product" and given it was created by professionals in their fields we know that we're thinking in the right direction to arrive at similar conclusions.

Things that I've learned:

I love trial and error. Research is king, literally just figuring out what colours and shapes would blend well together from just a few articles have changed the game. We went from a bunch of uneducated amateurs throwing shapes at a canvas to being uneducated amateurs carefully molding shapes and colours and then throwing them at a canvas. (Also this method coincidentally was the style that Ricardo used for demonstrating how he finds the most success when teaching. I believed he was right already but it's always fascinating to see things actually happen)

Studies that have been done:

I did find an article not in support or assistance to the creation of the app but rather the opposite, questing the privacy of such apps. Which now seeing it written out is an incredibly valid and scary concern. Hypothetically say all the students use the app, and complete the information survey, we now have an entire collection of names, ages, and interests. Any one of the group members with access to that information could very easily abuse that power. (Will come back and edit this blog with a link to the article)

Things that I can try:

Week six, Ricardo showed us a collection of trees, each of which represented a different person's blog.

Now someone could've just told me I'm not doing enough and I would've simply agreed. I know I've been avoiding work. I would just sell myself an idle promise that "I'll do better next time and everything will be ok!", but having my obvious lack of work pictured, quantified, and then presented in front of everybody was embarrassing; shameful. Anonymous or not I knew which work, which "tree" was mine.

It hurt. It hurt because I always try and impress those around me and I had failed to, it hurt because I know I could've done better, I know I can do better.

Yet I'm not.

This terrible habit of procrastination is something I've had for a great many years and is a constant struggle for me; To break years of conditioning isn't an overnight process. (Speaking of, halfway through writing this I stopped to do something else for two hours. Was it important? No. Was it urgent? No. I just seem to love wasting time)

In my entire high school career, I don't think I studied even 20 hours. I would always do "well enough" without it.

Yet here I am now, in a class with a minimum of ten hours of self-taught learning a week. Ten hours isn't even that much, it's a tiny amount, and yet I hate to admit it, I have done very little if not any researching and self-learning until this week.

I've been going through these weeks thinking that "Oh I already knew that, no need to research" like some pompous jackass.

Hell, I'm even writing this the day before week seven's class because I was too busy messing around. Still, though, I have done a lot more than I would've

I can't turn around these habits just like that, but,

I'm not perfect, I'm trying.

Despite these old habits though, this week made me feel like doing work NOW, showing people what I can actually do, and all of it is thanks to Ricardo, I'm not even sure this type of response was the intended result of his presentation but regardless.

So our week four task was to "make an instrument with sounds that evokes a mood"

So the obvious idea to pull from this brief was to make a glove that evokes fear.

Our idea was that the user is to be blindfolded and to be wearing headphones so that they're guided purely by hearing and the glove was so that the controls are always on them and can still be used despite their lack of vision.

How it would work is that the user would be guided through a scene of them walking outside and then being chased by someone or something whilst using the glove to interact with the noises. For example one of the buttons allowed the user to "run away" which lowered the noise of whatever was chasing them to give the illusion of distance.

I originally thought this would be a lot easier going into the task but soon found out that stuff is hard to do good. Scratch was the program we used for the scene but we discovered very quickly that Scratch and high quality audio were not good friends at all which added to the amount of work we needed to do immensely.

I also ended up learning a lot about how to use Adobe Audition to add effects to voices that I had created which after passing a quick learning curve became a very fast and effective tool.

Once it came to presentation day we ran into issues such as the glove breaking as well as the code but overall it was a successful and enjoyable day.

So we’re given the first group task, to “Hack a Boardgame” with the MakeyMakey. I’m thinking “Oh yeah, first group project, time to make some strong first impressions” AND THEN WE PRODUCED THIS.

Don’t get me wrong, objectively it is well made and did follow the instructions of being interactive, and all the fellas did good on their part so full credit to them.

But I close my eyes at night and still have this board game flash before my eyes.

So starting from the top we end up choosing one creatively titled “The Vampire Game” as our base for our new game and before we’ve even touched it, it already looks like a relic from centuries ago so that’s a promising start.

I’m not sure exactly how the idea of Shrek came into the equation, I believe we just had green Playdough and then one person said “you know what, what if...” and from that moment onwards the world was blessed with this idea. We decided to keep the core mechanics of the game and focus entirely on visuals and integrating the MakeyMakey to make the most use out of having it for this project. We collected scenes from the Shrek movies as well as just audio segments that would trigger once players had reached certain places on the board.

The game was retitled

and then a whole bunch of copper tape wired the entire board to some tabs near the corner for easy set up to the MakeyMakey.

Ah, the MakeyMakey. Such a revolutionary piece of technology. So many new paths and avenues have been revealed thanks to this device, never again may a single fruit or vegetable be safe from abuse in your home should you own one.

I was first introduced to the MakeyMakey when we were tasked with creating an intuitive yet creative controller for the flash games that each table was given.

My table and I made our first design where each user controlled a single button and they had to work together in what I would call “The most infuriating team building exercise known to mankind.”

As you can see by the clearly labeled buttons you know exactly what you’re supposed to do to play this game.

Ha, sarcasm.

As it turns out people who don’t understand how the controller works wont understand how the controller works. Amazing how life works like that.

 AND most people for whatever reason don’t want to touch the cursed green lines sprouting from the center of the table which just happens to be the thing that makes it run properly.

Long story short we were told about globally used symbols and how we should consider integrating them into our future designs.

So round two, I came up with the idea to use hands to signify where hands were supposed to go, because (hopefully) everyone using the controls knew what hands were.

Lo and behold it worked like a charm, we ended up with a lot more engagement and people were able to intrinsically understand the controller the moment they sat down and actually started having fun with the game.

I don’t want to say this project was saved purely because of my genius, mainly because it wasn’t, I probably just got lucky and people figured it out themselves the 2nd time around.

Week 2 of CTEC502 we were introduced to Papertronics, a fast and simple way of creating circuits. We were then tasked to make a simple circuit that is completed by a switch.

And thus Cirkey was born

He shone brighter than all in the land, but then mere seconds after his creation we were told “Ok nice, now kill it and make it better.”

I may be paraphrasing a bit here but that’s what the words felt like. I knew there was no circuit out there better than Cirkey, but for science I did what had to be done.

Although this new creation was a marvel of science and engineering I did not feel pride, only loss. I may have learned many things this day but was the cost worth it? I may never know.

Speaking of what I learned though, I believe the purpose of having us mess around and create more advanced (if not slightly counter intuitive) designs was so that we could become more comfortable with Papertronics and understand the basics of circuits more, as well as giving us an excuse to create problems and find creative solutions for them. Putting in restrictions such as needing more switches give us an idea of what it’s like to run into problems and then how to go about solving them in many different ways.

My name is Oscar William Lewis Remiëns.

When I talk to people I don’t do subtlety, if there is an issue I’ll say so and if there’s a problem that I’m having I’ll try to solve it, I just don’t personally see the point in beating around the bush. I don’t mean that as in I’m a brick with no personality and by all means I’m perfectly fine just being there for people to hear them rant if they want someone to rant to, but my personal problems I try to solve asap.

I usually pretty good at understanding emotions and how people will react to certain things, yet still struggle immensely with new people. Despite this though I’d still say talking to people is something I enjoy greatly. (whether I actually enjoy social interaction or just rely on the validation of others is yet to be figured out) I usually just feel like I need a reason to be talking to people to feel that I’m not intruding.

(For instance I can talk publicly quite well because I have a purpose to be doing so, like a speech or a presentation I have a reason to be there, and with people I’ve known a while my purpose then is that I know them well so it’s not strange, but then with a stranger I have no specific purpose to be talking to them so it starts to get awkward if I run out of things to say.)

I play videogames, tabletop games, role playing games, (not the kinky kind) mainly anything I can do with some mates.

I believe I am creative because I can think in many different ways and see many different avenues. I have a perspective that can shift and adapt to the situation needed and have lived in and seen many different points of view that can be used for creative purposes.

What is Creative Tech?

Creative Tech to me is basically just anything I can do that impacts the world, and is using technology as means to reach more people and to deepen their experience in whatever it is that is trying to be achieved. Technology acts as a bridge from one person's imagination to another, physically and digitally creating the concepts, conditions, scenarios, backgrounds and landscapes that otherwise couldn’t be visualised through non technological means.

How am I using my 10 hours this week for ICT?

Probably overthinking, procrastinating, and generally wasting time I shouldn’t be wasting. But I’ll still work real hard and get a lot done. This course has finally given me something to do with my time and I’m enjoying that a lot more than I had anticipated and I’m finding myself incredibly engaged and captivated which has surprised myself.

How do I reflect?

I’ll often have internal dialogue with myself in order to see what I could’ve done better or what a different me from different times would’ve done or how I’d like to approach certain things from the future. I do this simply due to chronic over thinking because I’m afraid of fucking up which I just do passively in the back of my mind.  When I do sit down and really think back and reflect properly I can sort of draw this map in my head of how and why things happened or could’ve happened and that’s helped me be able to really learn what I could possibly learn from my interactions.

How do I learn?

I have no issue or struggle seeing when I’m wrong. I’ll get quite embarrassed, sure, but when I’m wrong I’ll admit it and learn from it and move on. Once you can do that it’s a lot easier to see both sides of the picture, see where something went wrong, and then take steps to avoid similar issues in the future.

How do I want to make a difference?

I don’t think I’m going to change the world nor do I aim to, I just want to reach out to the people who genuinely believe they’re unreachable. Prove to people what they can be and try to guide them towards that goal. I’m not entirely sure how I will approach this, big scale or small, or how my end goal may change in the future, but it’s what I’d like to aim for currently.

Feasible + Desirable + Viable: What does this mean to me?

Something feasible is technically possible, maybe even within our grasp and can be done, the end goal and the steps to reach it can be seen and laid out even if they can’t actually be reached.

Something desirable is something we want for ourselves or maybe for other people out of compassion, or something that impacts the environment positively.

Something viable is something that is good, is usable, and can be carried on throughout the ages without risk of running out or extensive permanent damage.

How is the future shaped?

I hope for it to be shaped by people doing the right thing and others following behind but all too often it feels like that dream is entirely fantasy with the hope of it becoming reality slimmer and slimmer each passing day.

How do technology and humans shape each other?

I can say with 100% certainty that I spent over 13 hours working on these, not this one specifically, this took maybe 15 minutes. I kept jumping from idea to idea, system to system and either was working too fast and getting ahead of myself, not understanding how the system even works in the first place, or doing systems that were simply unrealistic.

I can’t say I’m too proud of what I ended up coming up with, I simply loaded one of the tutorials/examples and built off of it, using it as a base to build up from made it easier to understand but it had felt like I had cheated.

Originally my grand idea was going to be a system on depression using my own personal struggles of “crippling loneliness” as the core for the system that was supposed to be the punchline of the joke (it was actually gonna be pretty funny I swear). I was trying to tackle serious topics with outlandish names and shit like that. Turns out hyper analyzing a system that you’re stuck in and then ending up that every single outcome was a sort of multiplicative feedback loop that basically meant “one sadness goes out, many sad-nesses come back in and now you’re doubly fucked” and on top of that there are countless external factors to such a serious issue I did not feel comfortable miss representing it so catastrophically so I just quickly created what I turned up with today. Oh and also I had spent an absurdly long amount of time trying to work on this by this point. (Seriously something was just not clicking)

Oh right and I’m also supposed to be answering questions:

Q1. I’ve chosen a fairly basic ecosystem here. Starting with foxes and rabbits, I added an additional hunter for the rabbits and then added consequences for the flourishing of the predators so that the rabbits could hopefully be able to survive with double the predators.

Q2. As it shows in the system, once there are more of a specific animal, certain people see these opportunities and create jobs and businesses off of them. This presentation could potentially serve as a wake up call to people that businesses don’t care about the people buying from them, they’re usually just opportunists who like money. Don’t get me wrong I like money a lot also, just that business may advertise they’re you’re friends but they’re not. Geez this is really getting off topic from the original question.

Q3. Similar answer to question 2, opportunity. People see an opening they take it. Once that avenue closes so do the business and jobs, until a resurgence of whatever it was they were built off of.

Q4. An assumption I can make right off the bat is that cats and foxes seem to REALLY like eating rabbits, not sure what values or beliefs you can write about off that but I’m sure someone could manage it.

I unfortunately didn’t realize you were supposed to be blogging until after I had spent all my time following the tutorial so although I can’t provide evidence of my struggle I can provide proof of my beautiful, remade and now green coloured son. 

As you can see he is amazing in every way. (and I’m not just saying that because he’s extremely threateningly close) Funnily enough this tutorial felt less like programming in a new language but just problem solving and trying to most efficiently reach a certain solution, which was rather enjoyable. The only real issue I came across was the triangle problem (which I later discovered through other blog posts that most other people also struggled similarly). I figured “oh alright we got three points on a triangle, I just gotta set them to these 3 coordinates and we’ll be good”.

No. This was NOT the case, and it was NOT good.

If it was possible for a shape to embody the emotion behind flipping someone off that’s what I managed to create, these points went wild and went across the screen wherever they want, it didn’t matter where I had typed in the program, these lines had a mind of their own. After about 27 tries I started to become afraid that it may become self aware and try to break free and thus attempts 28 - 35 were me brute forcing the triangle into some form of shape that appeared correct. So if there’s anything that I’ve learned today it is most definitely that throwing caution to the wind and forcing your janky solutions on problems will eventually work if you’re stubborn enough. Also we had our first in person session with Stephan where he went through every problem and absolutely destroyed them AND made the solutions look incredibly professional. I have never felt such great shame in my own work, to see my trials tribulations that harassed my mind and abilities for so long get tossed aside with such ease, to say I was furious would surely be an understatement. Now you may be thinking 

“Uh, isn’t it like his job to demonstrate how to solve these problems and also doesn’t he have an extensive history spanning across many years, no doubt surpassing the abilities of your own so many times over that comparing yourself to him would not only be foolish but totally outrageous to even consider?”

and to that I say

Maybe.

BUT NONETHELESS I HAVE BEEN SHAMED THIS DAY. (shamed in front of literally no one because everyone is also doing the exact same problems but I have an ego to stroke here) So from here on out I have set out to succeed not just for the sake of success, but to beat Stephan at his own game and to out-code him by the end of this year. This is in no way a challenge to Stephan, no, a challenge can be accepted or declined, this is a threat, nay, a promise. A promise that I’m not even sure how to fulfill, ‘cause I mean what does “out-coding” someone even mean. But whatever it does mean I shall make it so.