Author: RSantos

Social Media Remix Assignment

Instagram is one of the most used platforms for the Greenspring Review’s audiences. Both students and alumni  use Instagram, two of our sub audiences as such, it is one of the best social media platforms to reach our audience and expand it.  (Perrin and Anderson)  Not only do our students and alumni use Instagram but there is also a large community or writers and literary fans on the platform. The hashtag #writerscommunity has over 7.5 million posts which means we can potentially bring a larger audience into our literary magazine.

Due to the versatility  of Instagram, we can employ a different number of strategies to reach our audience and get them to visit the magazine.

For events such as the  Greenspring Review release party tomorrow, we can make use of the story feature or a simple text post. This should also be used when releasing a new issue. Hashtags must be a permanent aspect of our posts and we should create a unique hashtag to use along side other standard hashtags. #Greenspring #magazine #literary are some of the hashtags we should use. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Aside from promoting greenspring review events, the magazine should also post some of the articles published in the magazine. We will make use of normal text posts and videos when appropriate.

In these posts we can include a small piece of the article with a link to the full article in the  caption. Along our standard hashtags we should include genre hashtags  to reach a broader audience  such as #fiction #poetry #poem and others. These genre specific hashtags should be the same as the tags used in the Greenspring Review website to maintain uniformity.

Posts should, when possible, have our school colors to emphasize our brand.

Posts should not go out too often. Too many posts and we clutter our audience’s feeds and risk losing followers, on the other hand, we risk being forgotten if we post too little. According to Union Metrics, big companies post 1.5 times a day with the highstest level of engagement being “thursday, not just at 3 PM, but at 5 AM, 11 AM, and 4 PM as well.” (Bercovici) (Arens) We should aim to post once a day, preferably on Thursday to maximize our reach.

 

 

Sources:

Perrin , Andrew, and Monica Anderson. “Share of U.S. Adults Using Social Media, Including Facebook, Is Mostly Unchanged since 2018.” Pew Research Center, https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2019/04/10/share-of-u-s-adults-using-social-media-including-facebook-is-mostly-unchanged-since-2018/. Accessed 29 Apr. 2020.

Bercovici, Jeff. “The Surprising Data Behind How Often Brands Should Post On Instagram.” Forbes, https://www.forbes.com/sites/jeffbercovici/2014/05/02/the-surprising-data-behind-how-often-brands-should-post-on-instagram/. Accessed 29 Apr. 2020.

Arens, Elizabeth. “The Best Times to Post on Social Media in 2020.” Sprout Social, 10 Mar. 2020, https://sproutsocial.com/insights/best-times-to-post-on-social-media/.

 

 

GSR Submission

Covid-19: A personal Timeline

January 11th, 2020,

I have seen on the news something about a virus in China. I don’t care. It’s probably sensational journalism to get more “clicks.” One or two people have died but these people had underlying health issues I am sure. In a few days, it will all be forgotten.

 

January 30th, 2020,

I read today on Reddit that the WHO declared the virus a global health emergency. An exaggeration. They’re just trying to be safe. Some are saying this is going to be really bad, but I don’t believe it. They just want to be fearmongers. Bad things only happen to other people, not me.

 

February 26th, 2020,

They quarantined a ship in Japan. Again, my naïve mind believes this is just another fad. Little did I know more than 700 people on that ship would test positive for the virus.

My school sent me an email about the virus, and that they’re following the situation closely. Is it really that bad? I’m just keeping calm and carrying on with my routine. People are just scared. Wash your hands, don’t cough into your hand and don’t touch other people and you will be fine.

February 29th, 2020,

It is Saturday and I have to go to work.  Working at a busy restaurant is very nice on Saturdays because I’ll leave with a lot of cash in my pocket.

It is 6:30pm and I eagerly await my first table. It has been two hours. Where is everyone? I leave my job at 7:00pm with $30 in my pockets. All in a day’s worth.

I open my car door, I sit down, close it and take a deep breath. For the first time it hit me, this is not fine. I shrug it off again because I’m young and bad things only happen to other people.

 

March 1st, 2020,

My trip to California has officially been cancelled. I am still optimistic that everything will go back to normal soon. We know it won’t last. People are nervous but it will all go away like everything else.

Death tolls in China are going through the roof. Health care in china isn’t the best from what I’ve read so I believe all this death is due to negligence rather than a deadly virus.

 

March 5th, 2020,

I have been laid-off from my job. I have worked since I was 18 and never have I ever been laid-off. I have enough money for one last tuition payment, but I won’t be able to pay my car or insurance. I’ll go back to work in a few days, and I’ll pay it all off.

 

 

March 8th, 2020,

 

My state is in lockdown. I can no longer leave my house unless I’m doing something essential like grocery shopping or going for a run. This is historical, I think to myself.

 

Today I went grocery shopping and I was afraid. Afraid of touching the cart, afraid of touching doorknobs, I’m afraid of everything because we have lost control. Everyone has face coverings and I feel like I’m in the middle of a “biological fallout.” I keep scolding my dad because he touches everything he sees. “-Stop doing it. We don’t know if we are asymptomatic” I don’t want to be responsible for someone’s death.

 

March 9th, 2020,

I called my Mom today. She offered to buy me a plane ticket so I can go back home and “wait it out.” “-Mom, I can’t travel right now” “-Yes, mom I’m good on money, don’t worry.” I can’t possibly make my mom give me any money after everything they spent on those leukemia treatments. Everyone is struggling. I have been washing windows and managed to make a couple hundred bucks. Should be good for another couple of weeks.

March 10th, 2020,

My stepmom and dad’s boss has requested that our family move into her house to minimize risk of infection. Selfish. We have no choice. We either do it or risk losing our only two sources of income. I pack very little clothes, and my laptop. We won’t be there for long.

This virus is slowly taking away all good things from my life. I am away from my girlfriend, my bed, my home.

Most of the time, I don’t know what day it is. Feeling like Kurt Ville;

“But it was a Monday, no, a Tuesday
No, a Wednesday, Thursday, Friday
Then Saturday came around, and I said
“Who’s this stupid clown blocking the bathroom sink?”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=659pppwniXA

March 11th, 2020,

I wake up and chuckle. I find it amusing that I am now in lockdown in a multimillion-dollar mansion, but I only have about 53 cents in my bank account. At least I can cry about in the sauna. These hard times are marked by irony. I am a prisoner of the virus I once called dramatic.

March 25th, 2020,

The first dreaded email comes in,

“Dear Renato,

            I have not received your assignment. Hope you are doing well. Please submit soon.”

I don’t know what’s going on with me. I am having trouble developing a routine in this house. I’m working weird hours. I am afraid of opening blackboard because I know how much I have neglected my student life.  I just can’t do it.

March 28th,2020,

My mom calls me. She always waits for me to call her. Something is wrong.

 

I cannot believe this is happening. Bad things do happen to me. He died from the virus. I wasn’t even close to him so am I so hysterical? I cannot even fly home to the funeral. Is there even a funeral?

 

I could feel the optimism I have so proudly carried with me throughout the years seep away.

April 10th, 2020,

I have moved again, and I am back home. I couldn’t handle it over there anymore. I am isolated but I am okay.

 

I just want good things to happen to me again. 

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=659pppwniXA – Ville, Kurt. “Pretty Pimpin” “b’lieve i’m goin down..”

 

Style Sheet Exercise

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1paBdFMSFjJW6eL4IWOrRj9AQH1g41xy73Fq66meIooY/edit?usp=sharing

This exercise was somewhat challenging and at first slightly overwhelming. I began by reading the article once without making any changes. Then I started by going over punctuation and grammar. There were a few sentences that were confusing and I was unsure whether i should change them or whether i didn’t understand the sentence simply because i wasn’t too familiar with the subject. After punctuation I tested every link and  made sure every citation was correct.

Overall, the style sheet can be a very useful tool once one becomes familiar with them  and I’m sure having access to  one when editing an article makes the process a lot easier and straightforward.

 

HTML Reflection

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1UqN9yjsBiaIRnpDYTBmFTLSiknkwEdiLbPpnSGmc2sk/edit

I was a little apprehensive at first because i had never coded before but knew just how difficult it is. I had seen the “99 little bugs in the code, 99 little bugs,  Take one down, patch it around. 127 little bugs in the code!” meme float around Reddit a lot and knew how complex it can be. I took my time with each lesson but the learning process is slow and  there is, in my opinion, a huge learning curve when it comes to learning how to code.

Like others have said before, learning how to code is very similar to learning a new language. The first lesson was relatively easy but it I did have to refer back to the tutorial a few times because simply forgetting one sign is enough for the whole code to break.  After the first couple of lessons I felt a little more comfortable and felt like was finally understanding how HTML works. I became a little faster at understanding new concepts and putting them in practice.

It felt extremely rewarding when i did the “try it yourself” sections and my code actually worked. Every once in a while I’d click “Run it” and it would be a complete mess and I occasionally had a hard time understanding what was wrong and how to fix it. This is when i understood the importance of comments when it comes to coding. Write code slowly and document everything so that it is easy to come back to a certain part of the code and fix whatever is wrong.

One thing that I enjoyed about coding is that if felt a lot like writing legal citations. When citing a court case for example, there are rules such as whether the volume comes first, or the court’s name or even the year of the case. Everything is well-structured. Once you know how to cite a court case, you stop seeing random letters and numbers and instead immediately know where and when it happened and where to find the case. Coding was a lot like that. Once you master the rules of coding, things become a lot easier because you just follow the structure of the code using specific rules.

I would not  feel confident putting HTML in my resume because I’m very much a novice and still cant really grasp how in-depth coding is.  Overall this was a very interesting experience and was not surprised with the difficulties i encountered throughout the assignment.

Do’s and Don’ts Poster for Senior audience

Senior citizens use the internet almost as much as everyone else. In our case, we will find that past alumni, or relatives of current students who publish in our literary magazine may want to access and read the Greenspring review. With that in mind, it is important that these people find it easy to navigate the website and will not have difficulties reading the publications. Moreover, it is important every age group feel included in our community and not left out due to slang or other forms of communication that aren’t common across all age groups or audiences. For this poster, I focused specifically on the geriatric audience, or those over 65 years of age.

When considering a UX design for older people, it is important to maintain a streamlined, easy to read, easy to navigate environment. The main challenges this age group face in most websites are readability issues, and small targets such as clickable boxes or dropdown bars. (Kane) Fonts are usually too small, on a computer or mobile device, and often the color choice also impacts readability. Using jargon or wordplay can pose a challenge for this age group and “sabotage the experience [the website is] trying to generate.” (Adiseshiah) Senior may also face issues with sound. Those who are hard of hearing or suffer from any degree of blindness or eye impairment may find websites without subtitles or text-to-speech features too hard to enjoy and simply give up. Finally, it is important that websites don’t change their appearance too often because with age, “short-term, episodic memory tends to suffer” (Adiseshiah). Having to relearn how to navigate a website may prove to taxing for a senior citizen and they may just give up or not enjoy their experience as much.

Aesthetically, I chose a relatively  standard poster. Do’s on one side, Don’ts on the other. I used a pastel background and very little color. I used orange to give some color to the poster but tried to keep the poster neutral without bright colors to not impact readability or create eyestrain. For the body text, I used a large sanserif font. I also used bold for the body text so that users find it easier to read. I created a visual hierarchy and separated elements, the Do’s are not too close to the Don’ts and are not parallel so that the user intuitively knows they either reading the Do’s or the Don’ts reducing the chances of mixing them up. Overall, the aim of the poster was to be very simple and straightforward, without too many elements as too not create a confusing or difficult experience.

 

Kane, Lexis. “Usability for Seniors: Challenges and Changes.” Nielsen Norman Group, https://www.nngroup.com/articles/usability-for-senior-citizens/. Accessed 4 Mar. 2020.

Adiseshiah, Emily. “UX Design Thinking From A Senior Citizen’s Perspective.” UsabilityGeek, https://usabilitygeek.com/ux-design-thinking-senior-citizen-user/. Accessed 4 Mar. 2020.

Usability Summary

This article focuses on the five principles of visual design in UX. Principles of visual design refer to how “design elements go together to create well-rounded and thoughtful visuals.” It starts by stating that for the most part, at a glance, a user can immediately tell whether a visual is appealing or not. Kelly Gordon then states and defines those five principles.

  • Scale – This principle uses size to draw attention to certain visual elements. Something that is bigger is more likely to be noticed. A visual appealing design should not use more than three different sizes. The biggest size should emphasize the most important part of the website. Using different sized visuals also establishes a visual hierarchy.
  • Visual Hierarchy – The second principle in the article refers to how our eyes are guided in a website. Usually, the user knows where to look in a website when a visual hierarchy is well-established. “Scale, value, color, spacing, placement” can all be used to establish a hierarchy. Using a bright color to signal something more important and a muted color for something less important is an example of a visual hierarchy
  • Balance- Balance occurs when there is an even and satisfying arrangement or proportion of design elements in a website. Visual signals must equally distribute between both sides of an imaginary axis that either runs vertically or horizontally. The balance may be symmetrical, asymmetrical or radial, but balance must be achieved so that no one area draws “your eyes so much that you can’t see the other areas.”
  • Contrast – This principle refers to “the juxtaposition of visually dissimilar elements in order to convey the fact that these elements are different”. Contrast also helps empathize differences between two objects in order to highlight that they are distinct.
  • Gestalt Principles – Gestalt principles explain how humans tend to analyze images as a whole rather than as individual elements. Proximity, one of the principles of Gestalt is particularly important to UX design because humans tend to perceive images that are close together as part of the same group.

The author finishes  the article by stating that these principles help increase usability, provoke emotion and delight, and strengthen brand perception.

 

Experience, World Leaders in Research-Based User. “5 Principles of Visual-Design in UX.” Nielsen Norman Group, https://www.nngroup.com/articles/principles-visual-design/. Accessed 2 Mar. 2020.

UX/UI article summary

Rundle, Jon. “Designing Your Digital Product like a Concept Car.” Medium, 15 Jan. 2020. Retrieved from https://medium.com/snapdocs-design/designing-your-digital-product-like-a-concept-car-26e382eb56e.

This article talks about concept cars, and how car manufacturers spend millions of dollars, and thousands of hours on creating a concept car that will never actually roll off the production line. What does happen is that certain features in these concept cars do end up trickling down to current day cars. Like the 1938 concept car Buick Y-job with its electric windows and flush door handles which are now common in modern cars.

The article makes a connection between these concept cars and UI/UX design. Concept designs can have an influence on tomorrow’s car or website. By designing with the future in mind, instead of the typical normal restraints, a designer may be able to influence design and “help unlock ideas that … may have never realized or explore[d].”  If used as a tool, this design mindset can help designers picture their future designs and set out goals or steps on how to achieve them.

At the author’s company, this mindset helped develop a future workplace platform, because with zero engineering the company managed to evaluate what would be great design ideas that could work with the rest of their products.

In summary, the author of the article explains that just like concept cars help push the automotive industry forward, concept UX designs, even if not implemented, serve as learning experiences for the designers and helps push their work forward.

This article can greatly help redesigning the Greenspring Review website. If we are to compete with other schools, we cannot have a redesign that is plain and standard. A design that pushes towards the future and is unique, would help the Greenspring Review standout when compared to other school literary magazines.

 

The Paris Review rhetorical analysis

 

Script:

The Paris review publishes fiction, poetry, photography and other art mediums with the purpose of emphasizing “creative work as long as its good”. It also publishes podcasts and video interviews. It is geared towards literary enthusiasts and aspiring writers who can submit their work to the magazine. Although rich in content, it provides a mediocre user experience.

The website uses a white background with dark grey font for titles and light gray for author names and the body text. The title pops out due to its large font size. The font chosen by the Paris review is professional and adequate to the content of the magazine. Notice how the only color that pops out at the reader is pink. This is effective in drawing the user’s attention to certain elements of the website such as the subscribe button, the current issue, and the title of the featured articles.

The front-page layout is easy and intuitive with one big area for featured articles followed by three columns with other articles to choose from.

Other tabs such as the daily, follow a similar pattern, with one single literary work taking most of the screen with its image and some of the body text. To see more articles simply scroll down.

All tabs make great use of the spatial mode. The stick header at the top follows the user, eliminating the need of scrolling back to the top to change tabs, and also by spacing out articles or pictures into columns, such as in the podcast or video tabs it reduces the clutter on the screen, making it for a clean and simple to navigate UI for the most part.

Once a article has been selected, the text and images will take up the left and central area of the screen while the right side is left for showcasing other articles.

The layout changes drastically in the about page, with a grey background and pictures being side by side with no space between them. This about page is unique in the sense that it tells the story of the magazine with emphasis in pictures rather than words. This makes it hard for the user to find pertinent information fast.

The aural mode is standard for any website, sound only plays when the user wants it to play, however exiting a video without clicking the x bottom on the top left corner will close the video but audio will keep playing. Certainly, making it for a rather mediocre experience in that regard.

The gestural mode of the website is also lacking with the same gesture having different functions in different tabs. In the video tab, clicking on the side of the video will close it, but clicking on the side of a picture in the about page wont. Clicking away from the search bar at the top will prevent you from writing but the search bar won’t disappear.

Navigation isn’t the easiest in this website, there are more categories besides the ones at the header however, because the Paris review does not make use of the tags features even though it is available, it makes it hard to search for a particular topic the only way to do so is to click here.

Overall, the website satisfies its purpose of providing the user with literary content, but it is not easiest website to look through, with some aspects of the website being empty such as tags or videos playing even though you’re no longer watching them. Along with some categories being hard to find it makes for a frustrating user experience.

 

The Paris Review. https://www.theparisreview.org/. Accessed 13 Feb. 2020.

“Paris Review – Writers, Quotes, Biography, Interviews, Artists.” The Paris Review, https://www.theparisreview.org/about/. Accessed 13 Feb. 2020.

“Paris Review – Writers, Quotes, Biography, Interviews, Artists.” The Paris Review, https://www.theparisreview.org/about/submissions. Accessed 13 Feb. 2020.

 

 

Visual rhetorical analysis

The Villager is a user-friendly newspaper that caters mostly to students who want to quickly access concise and brief information while staying up to date with Stevenson related news. The Villager accomplishes this by creating a fast and easy to use layout and publishing relatively short length articles.

The Villager’s front page is heavily populated with images. Clicking on any of these images will then take you to the article. Although the reader can sort their news by category, the user can also easily access the featured articles since these occupy the largest area of the front page and rotate every few seconds.

The colors and font choices are standard for any newspaper apart from the header. The title heading indicates that the newspaper reports on Stevenson related news by using the University’s colors and a large, bold font. The body text is in black in an easy to read font against a white background.

The article thumbnails are well-spaced out and do not feel cluttered. All articles appear to be accompanied by an image and occasionally a video. Although The Villager occasionally uses videos to complement the articles, these do not automatically play. As such, The Villager makes very little use of sound.

The university newspaper has a very minimalistic feel to it. Articles are organized into a grid-like front page making it easy for anyone to find their way in the website.  The left and right side of the page are usually left blank, which helps frame the articles into a position where the user typically expects them to be.  Another great use of space is the simple pop-up that appears at the bottom right of the page when the user is about done with an article. The pop-up is not invasive, it does not occupy a large section of the screen and does a great job of guiding the user to the next article prolonging the time the reader spends on the website.

The desktop website offers very little gestural interaction. The most a user will do on this website will be point, click, and scroll. However, The Villager does offer a mobile version of the newspaper in which the gestural interactions will resemble the typically interactions with mobile apps such as Instagram and reddit. The user simply swipes down to scroll through the various articles and then taps on the article they which to read. This facilitates navigating the newspaper by offering a familiar layout to the reader.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

This online newspaper makes use of various modes to deliver an effective but simple experience. The major benefit of The Villager is that it is fully online. This affords the user the opportunity of accessing previous issues of the newspaper through the archive tab, searching for a particular topic by using the search bar or the tag feature and watching videos related to Stevenson. It also offers a subscription feature which lets the reader receive the newspaper in their email inbox. The downside of The Villager is the lack of sound, and the lack of interaction that it provides for the user.

 

In conclusion, The Villager does a great job of captivating its primary audience through an effective use of the spatial and visual modes which provide a simplified but effective experience for the user.

 

 

 

Catch 22

 

Two people arguing back and forth
Two people argue about the “catch 22” of trying to find a job after college
u/TrevorX5J9. “R/Memes – We Want 5 Years of Professional Experience for This Entry Level Job.” Reddit, 3 Feb. 2019, https://www.reddit.com/r/memes/comments/ams2sp/we_want_5_years_of_professional_experience_for/.
I picked  this meme because it did a great job of portraying how I felt when I started looking for jobs in my field now that I’m close to graduating. Almost every single entry level position requires years of experience. The only way to gain significant experience is by working unpaid internships. Unfortunately most of us can’t  pay bills working just internships. That leaves us with very little options on what to do after college. Either get a job that is not even remotely close to your field of study, or go all in and  go to graduate school, risk it all and just postpone the inevitable mountain of debt that you put yourself in because there was a time you believed life would be easy.