BLOG – SWOT
The BLOG was interesting for me because I had no experience, need or interest in visiting or creating one before.
I support Jon’s views that it provided a good forum to collaborate with class members. I enjoyed the keen and capable participation of BLOG-friendly members like Pete. I liked being able to look at other student’s comments and submissions and receive their views on mine.
Was a BLOG (as opposed to say a website, electronic game or another design practice) quite confined by electronic parameters that did not allow more innovative design options to emerge? While I appreciated the appearance and functionality of the site being controlled by others (because of my own ineptitude), I think it would have been fun to see what emerged with more input (experienced or not). Mistakes teach us things as well.
I share Jon’s views about info being split between the Google site and the BLOG. In all we had three sites to visit and/or manage.
I am concerned that a BLOG did allow more engaged practice of the ‘designerly acts’. I am not familiar enough with the practice of blogging to know whether this could be resolved with other software, manipulation, etc. We had a broad range of professional and cultural experience and some interesting things could have emerged.
While I think that almost any critique of the blog has some validity, and may be valuable, I am most interested in considering the fundamentals that set the blog in motion and shaped its evolution.
1 The first of these was to develop the Blog from the bottom up
That decision arose from two factors;
- My limited knowledge of blogs
- The idea of using the creation of the blog as design exercise
I dont think that was a bad idea, in principle. I think it started well but stagnated once the blog was up and running. Partly that was because Kerilynn who was very energetic at first, was gone by week 2, leaving master Pete with all the work.
What I now think we needed was a further development plan that engaged more people, taking the burden off Pete and setting an evolutionary process in motion, that legitimised change. I must admit that I felt inhibited about advocating improvements, because I didn’t want to continue burdening Pete and I didn’t want to convey an impression that his work wasn’t appreciated.
Another issue was the password. There was a brief discussion about whether we should tell everyone or not, in week 2. I was apprehensive about having a situation where anyone in the class, or perhaps their friends could modify the blog anonymously. I now think what we needed was a simpler succession policy, facilitating passage of the site from one developer to another.
I think most of the weaknesses and opportunities Jono lists could have been addressed if a program of continued development was in place. Two particular items are referred to below.
2 Use of the Google Group site
This site was initiated as part of the start up process. We needed a medium of communication to coordinate our activities before the Blog was up and running.
I continued to use it later as an administrative device. eg. for posting marks. As it was configured to e-mail members when messages are posted I didn’t anticipate that this site would be a source of confusion, particularly since nobody mentioned this earlier. However I could have made my intentions clearer.
Alternatively I could post marks on the Schedule and mothball the Google site once the Blog is running. It could become a stand-by utility for use when other services are down.
3 Single Blog versus satellite approach
Jono suggests an alternative approach of a central web portal, from which multiple individual BLOG sites could be formed and cross-linked. This was an option that came up in the first weeks. I can’t recall if you mentioned it Jono, or what was said.
At the time I was more apprehensive about the idea than I am now. Before Semester 1 started I heard that this idea was implemented in a B.Des.Computing class, in 2008, and that there were significant problems in tying the separate blogs together. As the individuals running that studio had a lot more computer knowledge than me I chose a more modest approach.
It should also be recognised that the present site has always permitted linking to other sites. If anyone had wanted to do that they could have.
Next year I can afford to be more pro-active. I will know more and won’t have the big writing load that took so much of my time and energy this year.
Sorry I was late getting back to say goodbye, on the final day. Something else needed fixing urgently and it took a few minutes longer than I expected.
Thanks for your inputs, Jono and Brigid. Further suggestions and comments would be most welcome
Thanks to all of you for your participation throughout the semester. It was a thoroughly enjoyable and worthwhile learning experience for me, as I hope it was for you. I think this is a hugely important field of study with the potential and need to extend beyond professional designers. The focus of this topic, to me, is the essence of what it means to be homo sapiens, at a time when demands on our defining feature, wisdom, are accellerating.