Project Documentation

Here is the link of my demo:http://imanas.shanghai.nyu.edu/~tz1422/0416/

Here is the link of my assignment: http://imanas.shanghai.nyu.edu/~tz1422/0413/

Based on the suggestions that my Professor gave me in the last class, I re-recorded the sounds separately. And I combined more than 30 sound clips, which include the sound of boiling water, walking, closing the door, pouring water, dropping a book, sound from the outside, etc. to create a one-minute sound clip. And I hope that I can use it in my project as part of the main character’s daily life.

Here is the link to my one-minute sound clip: http://imanas.shanghai.nyu.edu/~tz1422/one_minute/

In this project, I want to create a webpage for the users to experience the daily life of a blind girl/boy, thus raising people’s awareness of the disabled.

I will first draw a map of the entire house that the blind girl/boy lives in. The map will be shown to the users as soon as they open the webpage, but it will fade out in ten seconds, (if possible, I would like to set a countdown here). Then the users will see only a webpage with a black background. And they will be given several tasks sequentially. For instance, go to the kitchen and boil some water, etc. And they have to rely on their memory to complete all the tasks. In the process, they will hear a lot of sounds like slow walking movements, drop a book, etc. They may feel weird at the beginning, but they will be given an answer that this is a normal day in a blind girl/boy’s life.

In this audio template, I put 9 pieces of audio in it, and I would like to briefly describe each of them in the following.

A1. the sound of boiling water / a long recording / might be used as part of the background sound / the whole process of water boiling

A2. the sound of a book falling / a short recording / can be used multiple times to show the difficulties the blind meet in his/her daily life

A3. the sound of opening a curtain / a short recording / might be used as a symbol of beginning a new day

B1. the sound of drinking water and taking pills / a long recording / can be used multiple times to give the audience hints that he/she is a blind

B2. the sound of the environment outside the window / a long recording / can be used as part of the background sound / especially can be played when the audience triggers the sound of opening the windows etc.

B3. the sound of pouring pills / a short recording / can be used before the sound B1 / a unique part in this sound is that after pouring out the pills, since he/she is blind, the way that he/she make sure the pills are in the correct quantity is to drop them one by one into another plate, and the extra one is put back into the pill bottle

C1. the sound of pouring water / a long recording / since he/she is blind, he/she cannot do this job in a fast speed / have to slowly move their hands and use tactile to sense where the bottle is / also an obstacle faced by the blind

C2. the sound of walk / a mid duration sound / the sound of hesitation and carefulness when walking / move really slowly

C3. the sound of washing dishes / a long duration recording / might need to be recorded separately later and composed together to show a better quality / can be used as another obstacle in the blind’s daily life

Here is the link for my audio template:

http://imanas.shanghai.nyu.edu/~tz1422/AudioTemplate-Tina/

For this project, I paid a lot of effort, and I would like to share the story behind creating this project for you.

To begin with, I will share my idea of the story choice and the revision I made to the original story. Afterward, I would like to state my main idea in creating the whole project as well as the reason why I chose to integrate those certain interactive actions in this project. In the end, I will put forward several deficiencies in my current project and look ahead to future development.

First of all, about the basic story, I chose a famous animation movie called “Zootopia”, to be the original story of my project. There are two main reasons for me to choose this story as the base of my interactive story. One is because “Zootopia” itself has earned a high reputation in both artistic achievement and central idea. The other is that I feel it interesting to revise this story. I only put the focus on the first part of the story, the part that the heroine, Judy, seeks for realizing her dream, to be the first bunny police. Speaking of the revision I made, initially, I rewrote a completely different story that has 12 distinctive endings in all, which you can see more details in my last blog post. However, due to the time limit, I decided to change my previous thoughts. I create a world of memory, in this world, users can take a peek at the fragments of Judy’s memory by some interactive actions. I took some screenshots from the original movie, but, instead of directly use them as the elements in my project, I wrote my description on each of them and created a brand new one with my thoughts, my handwriting, and my drawings.

Secondly, I would like to share the central idea that I want to deliver through this project. In my project, the webpage is divided into two parts, one is a storyline that is consistent with the plot of the original movie, the other is some hesitations that the main character had. What I want the user to notice is that they can choose to believe whether the storyline that is consistent with the original movie plot is fact or not. To be more intuitive, those hesitations that the main character had can be the fact, and the original movie plot can be only an illusion. Therefore, I develop the basic “drag and drop” interactive way into an advanced one. The picture of “Judy” can be dragged to everywhere on the webpage, even drag out of the webpage in which the user will get the PNG image of Judy. While dragging, the storyline will appear gradually (the opacity will change from 0 to 1), also, I put one blur filter on the images while the mouse drag through them. Ultimately, I want the users to choose what they tend to believe and finish the storyline by dragging by themselves. Furthermore, I insert two audios in my project. One is the background music that I found on the website. It is used for creating a relaxing atmosphere for the users. The other is a recording of my voice, “This is a world of memory. We are glad to have you here. But, please bear it in mind that all you see are just memories in Judy’s mind, so you can choose to believe whether they are facts or not.”Not only does it work as a tip for the users to get the experience that I would like them to have, but it also works as a way to deliver my central idea in creating this whole project.

Thirdly, based on my observation, the first major deficiency lies in the incomplete storyline. I am looking forward to integrating more interactive actions into the whole storyline that I created at the very first beginning. The second major deficiency, based on the suggestions that my classmates and professors made, the current storyline is a little bit messy. They suggest that I should use other interactive ways, such as deciding to view one of the storylines through the different scrolling directions, and maybe add some real choice options to the hesitation part, making the hesitation more practical and real for the users. In conclusion, I think I should consider developing a more user-friendly way in the future.

Last but not least, I think this project is a fantastic experience for me. Although the time, as well as the current coding skills I currently mastered, is really limited, which bothered me a lot, I still found the appropriate way to realize my idea, learned the skills by myself, and obtain a relatively good result.

http://imanas.shanghai.nyu.edu/~tz1422/Project2_InteractiveStory_tina/