Today, I presented the ‘Glasshouse Birdman’ prototype in a MCD studio postgraduate session. Many people present where not aware of my research topic. I decided not to provide any context to see what people thought I was researching. Initially there seemed to be some frustration with how the prototype was presented, especially if as I described the plan was to present VD for use in real-life scenarios. People suggested that the prototype looked to polished and finished rather than being a work-in-progress. A version that looked more like a sketch (drawn in crayon) with other supporting visual diagrams was the suggested alternative. Something that showed the process and behind the skin structure.

With the floor open for what this specific practice was researching there was some discussion about exploring non-linear narrative with a point made that this was not necessarily a new area of research. Therefore, where was the research going to be taken? A question that instigated some ideas on what the practice was exploring in terms of new territories. Classification, Tagging, Folksonomy emerged as one tangent - social media. The semantic web another. The idea of looking at how narrative is being compressed led to thinking about new types of audiovisual literacies. I mentioned that one thing I found myself doing is comparing production processes. These are the differences between how I would have recorded and post-produced a work like this for a linear montage edit. There was a suggestion to look at how this content would be structured in a linear version which I have been planning.

I pointed out the difficulty of working with so many new fields of study like interaction design, design research, software development and how none of these fields are where I come from in terms of prior knowledge. One idea was to find a specific theoretical model to bring all these together as way of critiquing and theorising the research. Experience Design was one suggestion. The session was useful particulary in terms of thinking about a revision of the research focus and questions. The original research topic is very broad but has influenced the resulting practice as a form of critique on online video practice. But, the topic could be revised along with the research questions in terms of shifting the focus at this stage to a focus on a new emerging territory.

Reference: Bill Buxton, Sketching User Experiences,: Getting the design right and the right design, San Francisco, Morgan and Kaufmann, 2007.