Friday, March 13, 2009

the Process/Communication Book(let)

As deadlines have come close-close, it has urged me to think about my goals for the Ecological Perspectives deliverables. Over the next couple of weeks, I will be focusing on organizing and designing our project's process/communication book(let) as I feel this will end up being my deliverable.

I am sorry if this post seems slightly irrelevant to the actual research and exploration going on with Myhomeyourhome, but I feel it requires everyone's input nonetheless, and I would appreciate any feedback/ideas in terms of what information needs communicating.

The way that I see it, the book(let) will be short and concise as possible, displaying as much visual content where possible.

My hopes for this booklet are:

1. To summarize the goals of the project, foremost. (So, basically to start, a nutshell 'big picture' type thing that basically tells the reader/audience what we are about)

2. Highlight the components (and the complexity) of the project, in terms of how open source and communicational it is. (displaying community) so, the blog, the wiki, etc

3. A section that synthesizes the research we are doing with the concepts we are applying into the house (so, showing the types of things we considered? and possibly a page that highlights all the design technologies that are being incorporated into the house)

4. Illustration and Visualization of the project 'in concept', and 'in application'. So, showing the reader how we imagine our homes to work in the real world. Things that could support this are drawings and/or renderings or people living in the home, etc etc.

Smaller additions to the book will include:
- short and sweet profiles of people in the project, our personal goals, etc
- possibly in the version we give to duane, we could have some sort of foreword outlining how exactly we have met the criteria of his project in particular (thoughts?)
- floor plans, architectural perspective drawings (I would love to delve, can I delve?),
and as I mentioned early renderings that include humans and humans interacting with the space we are designing

I understand that this is hardly the time to make a 'finished' item as I know this project is so ongoing, but I would really like to think of this book as a piece that communicates our intention and allows the viewer to visualize our project beyond just description.


I would appreciate thoughts and feedback that anyone has.
Hopefully I will have a draft of the structure of the book(let) as soon as this weekend or this coming monday :)



2 comments:

  1. re: :)

    "1. To summarize the goals of the project, foremost."
    a good way to deal with this portion would be to use the blurb we're developing for Patrick/ the show.

    "2. Highlight the components (and the complexity) of the project, in terms of how open source and communicational it is. (displaying community) so, the blog, the wiki, etc"

    This should probably be a key focus- open design is a growing movement, it's the thing that I think we've been doing best. We've developed what could prove to be a very powerful framework/ foundational research for others in the future.

    The layout you showed us on monday looks very lovely. Let me know what things you require- I'll be working on the google sketchup doc.

    Just a thought- we really need to start getting images up on the wiki... Thoughts? Scott?

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  2. Re: images
    Images are easy.

    1. Upload your image from your computer at the http://wikieducator.org/Special:Upload page

    The 'source filename' is the name and location on your computer of the image.

    The 'destination filename' is what the image will be when it is on the wiki.

    Note: the wikieducator community has been having difficulty keeping track of all the images, so it has been asked that images for specific projects be marked in some way. For us I'd suggest starting all media filenames with: "mhyh_..."

    2. once it is uploaded, link to the image with:
    [[Image:Name_of_Picture_goes_here.jpg]]
    so we would use:
    [[Image:mhyh_Name_of_Picture_goes_here.jpg]]

    3. More complex placement of the images in pages can be achieved. See the short media tutorial here: http://wikieducator.org/Wikieducator_tutorial/Images_and_Media/Frames_and_Thumbnails

    ReplyDelete