In the past week, I’ve decided to present my thesis as an application for Apple’s new iPad. Orals are just a few days away, but this video already has me thinking about ways to fine tune some of the screen interactions I’ve designed. (Thanks to Linc for sharing this video with me.)

1. Microsoft Live Labs Pivot (thanks Sidney)

2. COP15 Generative Identity Software: okdeluxe

3. TED Talk 2007: Blaise Aguera y Arcas demos Photosynth

4. TED Talk 2010: Blaise Aguera y Arcas demos augmented-reality maps

I made these behavior studies as a step in the process toward the work I plan to show at orals and presented them at my last committee meeting (2/16/2010).The premise is a system alongside an existing writing space, with a cluster of widgets for conversation and research and another cluster for mapping and transitioning into writing.

Kermit and Meredith were both more interested in the system logic and connections/interactions between each of the three spaces, which I had not yet explored. We talked about how I might create a more contained system or intervene in an existing system instead of one that felt like several disjointed pieces.

Some other questions they asked included:

How do tool-based metaphors set you up to think in certain ways? There is a spatial language going on with your widgets and mapping, but not in the writing space. How could these things be combined or function more fluidly? Are there possibly “zones” in the writing space that relate or react to certain tool-based behaviors?

Make sure you’re keeping your audience in mind—what do citizen journalists need/what problems do they usually face that this system might alleviate? What about the millennial generation—they are already digitally savvy and well-connected, so this system can push beyond the expected visual language of the desktop.

Lots to think about moving forward…

I’ve wanted to focus my thesis content within the environmental/sustainable realm, and I’ve really been leaning toward honing in on food. I’ve been fighting it for a while, but I know so much more about nutrition, local food, organic, etc. then I do about biofuel and I want to know more. There are a lot of stories out there about school lunches and fighting childhood obesity, so maybe that’s a good entry point into food. Not quite environmental, but in a round about way, I think it connects.

Through Marion Nestle’s blog, I found Fed Up: The School Lunch Project. In what sounds like a cross between Morgan Spurlock’s Super Size Me and Julie Powell’s Julie/Julia Project, Mrs. Q is a teacher who plans on eating school lunches everyday of 2010 and blogging about it. I could barely make it through Design Camp eating in NCSU’s cafeteria—I wonder if she will make it.

As far as this making the content cut, we shall see. Ethanol does have something to do with food too, so for now, it’s TBD.

Polyvore is a website where users can go to mix and match fashion-based mood boards. Polyvore is similar to one of my mini studies from study 1, the clipping bin storyboard. I think mood boards are a good way to generate the feeling of something—this same type of concept would be interesting to use in argument construction.

For mini study 3, my sketches are more detailed than the past two studies and I’m starting to get into content a tiny bit. Now, as Kermit says, it’s time to dip my toe into the water… time to start fitting some of these studies together and pulling in more info to create a system. Stay tuned.