Author: vetsch andrew a.

VR Evaluation

The experiment we did with virtual reality, or VR, was an engaging, awe-inspiring experience. I did not watch any video through the NYT VR app because when I tried to download it, a message said the app was incompatible with my phone. So instead I used the YouTube app, which has VR videos that have no problem with incompatibility.

I believe that VR will benefit Digital Publishing greatly because it will help readers become more interactive. I frequently use the NYT app through an account provided by the university and watch the 360 videos. While they only do one video a day, and more concerned about taking readers places, they are still one of my favorite things about having a NYT account.

I absolutely think VR can invoke empathy. That video from TED talk, even without actually experiencing it, evoked almost as much empathy as I would expect. The NYT did a 360 video in a refugee camp which was somewhere in Europe I believe and it was one of the most emotional videos they did.

Final Project

Andrew Vetsch
ENG 256-01
Dr. Licastro

One of the biggest challenges facing a website is not only engaging the viewer, but also keeping the viewer interested so that it becomes easier to sell a product. One of the tactics advertisers use as they create a convincing advertisement is multimodal. Multimodal text is defined as the strategic use of ‘two or more communication modes’ to make meaning, for example image, gesture, music, spoken language, and written language’ (1). Multimodal text is defined by different aspects. One of those aspects is visual storytelling. Visual storytelling, for those who don’t know, is when an artist tells a story without spoken dialogue, it’s told through visual imagery such as the setting, and the characters’ emotions, rather than what they speak.

To attract more viewers for the Asylee Women Enterprise, me and Deandra Coleman have decided to create a Q&A slide-show to increase a viewer’s knowledge on the refugee issue. There will be a photo along with a question at the top. When the viewer clicks on the right arrow, the answer will be on the bottom-right of the photo. The questions could be seen as a test on the viewer’s knowledge, rather than ask personal questions such as where viewers see themselves five years from now. The questions and answers are based on studies found by the International Organization for Migration, or IOM, and the UN Refugee Agency, or the UNHCR. All numbers are estimate. The questions are aimed at visitors of the Asylee Women Enterprise website to make the website more interactive by making the viewer more knowledgeable on the refugee issue. By making the visitors of the website more knowledgeable, they feel the need to help the organization’s cause.

The first question will give the viewer an idea how many refugees the organization is looking to help:

How many migrants and refugees reached Europe via the Mediterranean route in 2015?

The answer is approximately 1 million. According to the UNHCR, in the year 2015, around 1 million migrants have crossed the sea from Turkey to Greece. About 150,000 reached Italy from Northern Africa.

The second question will aims to give the viewer how devastating this issue has turned out for some:

According to IOM and UNHCR, this is the number of dead-missing people who tried to cross the Mediterranean. About 20% were children.
The answer: Approximately 4,000

The third question will be the most mathematical, giving viewers an idea of the issue, percentage wise.

 According to UNHCR Global Trends 2014, 232 out of every 1000 inhabitants are refugees of this country:
The answer is Lebanon.

The fourth question will on how big an issue this is:

On average, how many people in the world flee their homes due to violence, conflict and persecution?

The answer is 1 million.

The fifth question will be a follow up the last question:

How many people in the world flee their homes due to violence, conflict and persecution per minute?

The answer is 24.

The sixth question aims to delve into what is a refugee to the person taking the quiz,  

Who counts as a refugee?

The answer is a person who fled natural disaster or persecution.

The seventh question, much like the previous, aims to delve into what an immigrant is for the person taking the quiz

Who counts as an asylum seeker?

The answer is a person who has left their home country and seeks safety in a foreign country.

The eighth question, much like the last two, aims to delve into what an immigrant is for the person taking the quiz.

Who counts as an immigrant?

The answer is a person who moves to a foreign country.

The ninth question will focus on refugees that returned to their country of origin:

In 2015, how many refugees returned to their countries of origin?

The answer is 200,000.

The tenth question will focus on how many refugees the United States are hosting.

In 2015, UNHCR submitted 134,000 refugees for resettlement. How many did the United States accept?

The answer is 66,500. The correct answer will also state that that’s 49 percent of the refugees.

The ninth question will follow-up with how many refugees the United States is hosting

The answer is 2.5 million.

The tenth, and final, question will focus on how the refugee issue impacts children accompanying the refugees:

According to UNHCR, how many children were unaccompanied or separated:

The answer is 100,000.

These questions aim to increase the viewer’s knowledge on the refugee issue, which potentially increases chances of getting customers since they now know that the refugee issue is not something that has an easy answer, and that this is a big deal. The Q&A hopes to draw in customers by increasing their knowledge on the refugee issue.

Making an interactive Q&A is a great way to engage and convert customers. By delivering interactive, relevant content instead of simply asking website visitors to fill out a form, brands and organizations forge stronger relationships with their ideas and customers and deliver something of value before asking for information in return.

 

WORKS CITED

  1. “Global Trends: Forced Displacement in 2015.” UNHCR: The UN Refugee Agency. UNHCR, 20 June 2016. Web. <http://www.unhcr.org/576408cd7.pdf>.

Annotated Bibliography – Visual Storytelling

Andrew Vetsch
ENG 256 ON1
Dr. Licastro
April 5, 2017

Works Cited

Lawrence, Sarah. “The Power of Visual Storytelling”. Getty Curve. curve.gettyimages.com, http://curve.gettyimages.com/article/the-power-of-visual-storytelling.

Sarah Lawrence is an editor and designer of Getty Images. Her thesis is that adding images and videos make content marketing more effective, claiming it encourages customers to become more engaged with the material. With the right visuals, the customer becomes deeply engaged with the advertisement. The intended audience of this piece are advertisers who want ideas when creating their own pieces of advertising to make it more effective and draw in more customers. No bias is presumed in the article.

The strengths lie the examples Lawrence gives when she delves into what advertisers should consider when employing visual storytelling to draw consumers, such as authenticity, cultural relevancy, sensory currency, and classic storytelling archetypes of the visuals. The main weakness, though, is that each category is very brief and needs more content. The information in this source strongly supports the thesis of my research project because it explains how visual storytelling is one of the most, if not the most, captivating methods of drawing consumers in. This piece, though brief, is very relevant to my research since it demonstrates archetypes that are extremely relevant to my analysis on visual storytelling as a means of communication.

Rhonda, McEwen, et al. “Through the Lens of a Tetrad: Visual Storytelling on Tablets.” Journal of Educational Technology & Society, no. 1, 2016, p. 100. EBSCOhost,

Rhonda McEwen is a university professor of media and communication at the University of Toronto Mississauga’s Institute of Communication Culture and Information Technology. Her thesis is that social interaction and self-initiated communication are observed better when tablets were used to create art, as a result of a study . The intended audience of this piece is academic students who want to know how visual storytelling affect artists. No bias is presumed in this article.

The strengths of this article lie with the study McEwan explains to support her thesis. Her outline of the study is very thorough. She presents the process of the study by showing how visual storytelling is beneficial to education technology as opposed to traditional paper-based media. It may not seem so relevant to my thesis, as this is more about using visual storytelling as a means of education for the intellectually disabled, but this supports my thesis to the extent that it demonstrates how visual storytelling is a more effective means in social interaction, which supports my assertion that visual storytelling is an effective alternative method of communication through empowerment to web-designers.

Lafferty, Justin. “Visual Storytelling UX: Why Stories Need Design – Ceros Blog”. Ceros Blog – Interactive Content Marketing & Design Tips. Ceros, Inc., 19 June 2016. Web.

The author of the article, Justin Lafferty, is a blog writer for the Ceros blog. His topics range from storytelling inspiration to marketing practices. The thesis of his article is that having well-designed content will keep consumers interested. He argues that no matter how clean an advertisement’s design may seem, consumers will turn away if it doesn’t meet the consumer’s expectations. His intended audience are people who want to learn how to create engaging content to give a great presentation. No bias is presumed in the author’s article.

The main strength of the article is the simplistic approach it takes for each category to make his point easy to understand. The main weakness, though, is that a lot more could have been said. It would have been interesting if the blog post itself was more engaging. A simple way the writer could have done this is by adding a few photos to show what he is pointing out. The information strongly supports the thesis of my research project because it’s very simplistic about what makes storytelling work. This material is relevant mostly because it explains other aspects of visual storytelling my first source did not. Unlike the other source, which was about the categories of visual storytelling, this source explains how to find the right format for visual storytelling in advertising.

3 Questions for Chris Friend

  1. What obstacles did you face as you created Hybrid Pedagogy?
  2. In this day and age, would you say it’s no longer possible to be independent of digital technology, are there things we can still do without the use of digital technology?
  3. Do you feel that the widespread shift toward digital technology feels largely exciting because we now have a greater means of communication, or threatening since some people think integrating our lives with digital technology diminishes our character?

Book Traces

Book Traces was a very interesting course. I really like the way the professor, Andrew Stauffer, showed how annotations and note-taking were different the modern world than in the past. It was like looking at several ancient artifacts from the past. People seem to have felt different about books as tools. Though readers then and now have the same idea about reader response theory, their interpretations were different. I feel that the reason reader responses changed is because of the separate realities which we live in. In our own modern world, we have technology that remains central to our every day lives. People can exchange information not only to our friends, but with people from around the entire world. Individuals use television as their primary source of news. Whereas in the past, the only way to reach someone was through telegrams or telephones. The only source of news individuals had was whatever newspaper they could even get. It seems that books were, and still are, the most central form of communication. Even with the existence of the internet, people still take the time to write books, fiction or nonfiction, to communicate their thoughts and ideas. And people still read them. Even though technology is integral for most of our every day needs, we still turn to old fashion technologies to gain different insights on different subjects. I am glad to have attended Andrew Stauffer’s Book Traces, because now I have new insight on how people exchanged information with one another.

AWE Pitch

Andrew Vetsch
Professor Licastro
ENG 256 01
March 20, 2017

 

When watching a video, people tend to find it easier to follow visual storytelling, than textual storytelling. That’s because in visual storytelling, the story is told through pictures, or visuals, whereas in textual storytelling, the viewer has to rely on the things characters say, so the viewer has to work a little bit if he or she wants to follow the story. The website of a company asking for donations should never be boring. To motivate viewers to donate to the Asylee Women’s Enterprise, the company’s website should give the viewer an experience that makes them feel that donating to their cause is the right thing to do. To advance the AWE’s message on the website, there should be elements of not only visual images that demonstrate the refugees’ situation and their plight to get to a safer place, but sound effects that add noise and music that helps create mood for the viewer.

The “About Us” page could be greatly improved with visual elements such as sound effects, oral language, written language, music and still or moving images that are combined to create a lively experience for the viewer to feel more welcome. The page is too straightforward and is more concerned with getting to the main point of AWE’s cause, rather than making it appear engaging and emotionally right. If the message cares most about the message, then the viewer has little reason to care about selecting AWE as the cause to donate to if they want to help refugees.

An example would be the website for The Climate Reality Project, which uses visual imagery and textual language to communicate its views to the viewer. Rather than playing it safe and greet the viewer with an abrupt “please sign out petition,” users join a question-and-answer game” The AWE website doesn’t have to use a quiz to engage the viewer. It’s not just the sarcastic, simple questions that the CRP website uses to engage the viewer, it’s viewer’s ability to watch and re-watch cute animations and videos that make the concept of helping refugees slowly seep into their consciousness.

Citation:
“Our Mission.” Climate Reality. N.p., n.d. Web.

 

The Nether Evaluation

On Saturday February 25, I saw The Nether, a show that the Studio Theater put on. I saw it alone as I did not know anyone that took an interest in seeing it. While there are things that I would change, I found the play enticing and very alluring with its dark, creepy atmosphere and its crafty storytelling.

The Nether is a virtual wonderland that provides total sensory immersion. Users simply log in, choose an identity and entertain themselves in any way possible. It seems like a flawless entertainment system, however, when a young detective uncovers a disturbing brand inside the Nether, she triggers an interrogation that sets off deep revelations.

For a student play, they did a fine job creating the atmosphere, showing that the play is not all cheerful as it the play makes it out to be. Director Linda Chambers made the play very elusive, which was the right move as there is no other way they could a story about sex crimes in a virtual world. They keep the viewer interested, albeit the scenes are rather short and very straightforward.

The cast embodied their characters well so that the audience believes them. The performances that the actors give exemplify the theme of secrecy, or how we have secrets that we don’t want others to know. Matthew Van Nostrand-Young embodied his character so that you could feel his secret that he was a young girl in the Nether. He clearly conveyed that fear in his character that told the audience that he didn’t want even the interrogator, Detective Morris, didn’t want to know even if it meant bringing a sexual offender to justice. His performance did not miss the mark on anything.

Now as I said earlier, there are one or two things that I would have changed as the director. For one thing, the soundtrack that they used to transition between scenes was too recognizable and did not sync that well with the play’s tone and the dark moody theme.

One thing major disappointment in Chambers’ direction is the hesitance to use the interrogation mirror. She could have directed the cast so that their reflections are always within the mirror to demonstrate the fragmentation of the characters. If the director does not plan to use a decoration of the set, then there was little to no point for the presence of the mirror. Chambers could have just filled that will mirror with gray bricks to further demonstrate the grim atmosphere of the interrogations.

In short, while there are a few elements that could be changed in the Studio Theater’s production of The Nether, it was alluring and captivating enough to warrant a must-see. Hopefully, this play has en

Letterpress Evaluation

The letterpress demo that I attended was really interesting and informative. It gave me a new idea on how printing is done. It let me know how letters are printed onto text, and that the method of how printing is done. Rather than stick to the usual type-and-print method we college students do on our essays, the printing press still use the texture machines that plaster letters of all sizes onto paper. And it’s all in the digital age when the newspaper is supposedly dying in favor of the internet.

I learned a lot about the texture of printing onto a newspaper is still going strong even if we neglect the people who probably work hours printing hundreds of the same copies of newspapers every day. Even if I knew some newspaper companies use this method to print their newspapers, I still never knew that the print workers need to have proficiency if they are to make it through the whole day. From locating specific letters and punctuation in the letter box (I assume they have a name for it but I have forgotten) to placing them in the precise spot require proficient organization on the workers. That part about placing the right letters in the right spot interested me the most since one wrong misplace and it could cause the worker to start all over again entirely from scratch. I say that because of the misprint that occurred as I was printing my own paper.

The previous student noticed that one of the letters did not print and, after he informed the teacher, had to reset the entire machine all because of one single letter. Imagine if that was in a company printing thousands of printed copies of a newspaper for the following morning. This makes me wonder if they would need to recall and restart printing 500 copies of an entire newspaper all because one teeny tiny letter did not print right or there was a misprint. Would they even take the time to track down all the newspapers that had the mistake, or would they let the mistake fly since it was only a fraction of all the newspapers that will be printed.

After taking this demo of the class, I am proud to say that I honor all those workers who presumably work tirelessly making sure everything is in order when they print the newspapers, even if customers neglect the importance of them and their job.