Weekly Progress
WEEK 1
4th Jan 2022
Reason for the project:
Waste pollution is a problem faced globally. Most of this is evident when pollution starts affecting lives directly. Last semester I interviewed a few people. One is a marine biologist, and the other is a swim coach. Both interviewees expressed how much of pollution they encounter while they are in their daily field job and how challenging it is tackling the issue. They expressed that practicing sustainability and leading a minimal lifestyle can help reduce pollution.
Furthermore, most people are not aware of how to properly dispose waste. They tend to mix all types of waste together, making It hard to recycle. Raising awareness about these issues and creating change is the first step to a blue earth hence, the name for this awareness campaign.
About the project:
‘Blue Earth Vision’ campaign with an aim to create awareness about waste pollution, management and practicing sustainability through interactive digital story telling. It is targeted to young children and students as they are the future. The more they understand the threat to the earth, the more they are likely to be engaged in reducing such events.
What needs to be improved from the last test:
From the prototypes I created last semester, I reflected and noticed that the pictures and the colors on my website were a little all over the place. Which in return doesn’t make the website look that exciting. There’s too much going on, so I plan to make the website simpler and embed the digital story animation with the help of the stornaway.io web software.
For this semester I plan to also have marketing content on social media platforms. I received criticism in my final presentation to create efforts to promote on social media to bring more traffic to the website as this is how people will find and hopefully share. Social media is something almost everyone in this generation use.
Finally, after the website and social media content is up and running, I will do a usability test, create revisions if necessary and write my report.
Essential steps to move forward:
Making Gantt chart
Creating animation in parts of 1-7
- Scene 1: Intro Jogging & encounter with mother nature
- Scene 2 & 3: Waste collection & Waste Avoidance during jog
- Scene 4: Continue Jogging and Seeing rubbish in sea
- Scene 5: Cleaning up rubbish & Walking to shop
- Scene 6: Avoiding Rubbish & Walking to shop
- Scene 7: Picking a banana Choosing Plastic Bag
- Scene 8: Picking a banana Rejecting Plastic bag
Implementing it on Stornaway.io
Updating the Website Feel
- Same branding but simpler
- Harmonize colors, pictures, and layout on the website
- Embedding stornaway.io on website
Social Media content (20 Posts)
- Teasers of interactive story
- Highlighting importance of leading sustainable lifestyle
- How one can be part of the movement
Marketing Plans
- Creating a twitter handle
- Volunteer cleanup sharing through hashtags
- Rules: before and after of a cleanup space through videos or pictures, share on Instagram or twitter.
- Transmedia story
Writing individual essay 1500 words
- Progressive every week a little bit
User testing
- 5 people minimum
- Creating Report
Create Final Presentation
Weekly Blog updates
Gantt Chart:
WEEK 2
11th Jan 2022
This week I updated my Gantt chart for its final time. This will be the timeline I will be following to complete my tasks for this semester. Following that this week I have started to complete my first part of the animation.
For my animation progress, I started with the walk/run cycle of the main character in the interactive digital story. This bit took a bit time because I haven’t ever animated a walk cycle. I have seen references and all but never have attempted to do it. This was the challenge I put myself up to this week.
Richard Williams is the master animator of hand drawn animation. It is also known as the animators survival kit. Although with times, we can achieve the run/walk cycle with less effort he has mastered this skill through hand drawn images (Wroe, 2013).
I referenced the Richard William’s run cycle for me to have my animation of the run cycle a success. This bit took a bit of experimenting and playing around to make the character look as if they were running. I first animated the legs before I animated the top half of the body
Following that I imported the background assets into my animating file and continued to animate the other parts of the scene. I quite enjoyed the story plot coming to life from the key frames I previously presented in my prototype. It gives the whole story much more life than simply key pictures of selected moves.
I also looked for royalty free sounds of certain moves such as running sounds or plastic sounds. I also used an artificial intelligence text to speech software to produce the sounds of mother earth talking. I felt it would be more appropriate to have a sound as such. I used the online software TTSMP3.com for it (Speech, 2022).
I also further discussed with my lecturer to include other story plots through transmedia methods on social media platforms. I have yet to ideate and visualize the content that I would be displaying.
Below are my progress:
WEEK 3
18th Jan 2022
This Week I progressed on my individual essay. I wrote the introduction. I planned out the content I will be highlighting in the writing by breaking it down to sections. This way I have a better understanding of what is I am planning to write.
This week according to the Gantt chart I, I planned the social media posts and challenges to kick start the circulation of the Blue Earth Vision message.On the social media side, I intend to show a story of a different character by using Trans-media Story telling methods. I want to highlight the importance of recycling and reusing and most of all refusing. Rather than an interactive digital story on the social media side, I intend to keep the content in a way that is informative even through a character representative graphics. Moreover, through this character’s story I plan to engage people in the challenges of waste collection.
All the content mentioned below will be randomly distributed to build the feed. This is to ensure the same information is not too crowded in one area but also to ensure that this information will be highlighted each week. A typical post during a week may look like one post from each topic.
Introduction of Blue earth Vision
- Who are we?
- Our goals and mission
Challenges throughout the weeks
- Count all the plastic waste on the road and share
- Streak your days gone by refusing plastic. Share your streak and journey.
- Share a picture of waste dumped on the road you saw today.
- Are you willing to clean up the beach if no one is watching?
How to Sort Waste at home
- Perishable waste separately.
- Glass can be recycled into sand or other types of sustainable products
- Plastic can be reused many times
- Sort Batteries separately because they are toxic waste.
- Metals can be reused by reforming
Sustainability
- Intro to the 4rs
- Life cycle of plastic bag Only used for 2 seconds live up to 100 years
- Importance of sustainability
- Impact of Using tote bags vs Plastic bags
- Average plastic collected during a month vs 1 tote bag
- Using a reusable bottle vs everyday new bottle. Is it worth it?
- Sustainability is the new cool – Take your own lunch box
- Funny post: What’s your favorite tea? Ours Is sustainbil-tea duh
Waste facts
- 4 Do you know questions?
- Waste is usually burned In islands that are less rural than urban areas
- Cigarette butts are the most common waste on the road. Do you do this?
- -% of waste comes from land, and -% of sea vessels dump trash into the sea
- When did you throw plastic waste on the road? A pic captioned did you do this?
Things you can re- use
- Thrifting Clothes
- Bags
- Books
Things you can refuse
- Plastic bags from shops – carry tote bag
- Takeaway packaging – carry lunch box
- Plastic bottles - Use a sustainable bottle
Things you can recycle
- Existing plastic bottles
- Food scraps as compost
Interactive digital story
- Coming Soon Posts
- Sneak Peaks of sections in story
Above is the Instagram feed arranged. At the top is the ones that will be posted last. The bottom is the ones that would be posted first. This is the content calendar I will be using to execute the graphics to put on the social media page of Blue Earth Vision.
I have color coded the content on the feed with the list so you can easily Identify how I have distributed the content in the feed.
_____________________________________________________________________________________
25th Jan 2022
This week I proceeded to create graphics posts for the social media. I created a style and harmonised the content based on the information I have collected. I want to keep the feeling of the social media engaging with colors and text. People are more likely to engage in content when it is visually aesthetic and informative.
For a successful campaign we must understand the goal and how we decide to promote it on the social media channels. Social media engagement is critical as we want people to interact with our posts. For that reason, putting out content frequently helps us pop up on people’s timelines (Fisher, 2018).
The goal of the social media posts is to help create awareness among the audience to take the baby steps to create change in their lifestyles. Curating the content especially for the people.
WEEK 5
3rd Feb 2022
This week is Chinese New Year holiday. During week 6 we have a project proposal for the outsiders to pitch our work. I proceeded to create the presentation putting together critical information that would help me pitch my project. The project proposal is still a work in progress. Apart from progressing on the project proposal, I proceeded to create content for my social media posts.
Hopefully by week 8 I can start posting content on the social media page to bring traffic to the website when I launch the interactive digital story. Awareness, Interest, Desire and Action. The theory of marketing based on AIDA. This formula is designed to lead people through a logical process that hooks them and gets them emotionally interested finally to take the action. This is how I plan to make most of the social media base (Medhora, 2021).
Without the audience’s awareness I would not be able to make them act whether it is making them buy a product or in this campaigns case, to lead a more sustainable lifestyle. Moreover, using the digital interactive story as an educational tool to help teach the younger generations that their actions have consequences.
WEEK 6
7th Feb 2022
This week I proceeded to show my presentation for corrections to my lecturer. We will be presenting the proposal later this week. All will go according to the plan. Fingers crossed
First draft
Presentation by Aishath Thuhufa
Presentation i presented after my lecturers comments.
WEEK 7
14th Feb 2022
Overall, I am quite satisfied with how my animation progress is going. Below are a few clips of the first few scenes of animations I have finished and the progress of my social media posts.
_____________________________________________________________________________________
21st Feb 2022
This week I have completed the animation completely. Now I have to implement it on my website after I finish making amendments to it. That is the next step. It was very satisfying to see the all the scenes moving. I furthermore put it in the stornaway.io, the website that I will embed into my own. This software helps me achieve the interactive digital story without much coding. One of my weaknesses.
The software did a really good job putting all the scenes together. I am overall quite happy that I am way ahead of my timeline. I further progressed on my social media posts. I have started posting it on the Instagram side.
1st March 2022
This week I embedded the animation into the website and proceeded to design the website further. It is still a work in progress. I am happy to say that the hard part is now over =. Which is the animation. I will try to finish the web design by the end of the week and do some user testing before I proceed to create my presentation for the 10th. I will be presenting it on the 17th of March.
Here's the donation link I will be embedding in my website to redirect the audience to a trusted partner to handle donations and take the necessary action. I can only create awareness but a huge team can take the action of providing a better life for some kids.
Donation by UNICEF to create school with trash.
https://www.unicef.org/stories/turning-trash-building-blocks-childrens-futures
_____________________________________________________________________________________
This week I tried to finish up the presentation deck and send it to my lecturer so that she can send it to the guest that will be attending our presentation next week. It is a tight timeline and i am trying to finish up the website so that I can present the full working one to the guest and not the prototype that I presented last semester. I am happy that I am working according to my Gantt chart timeline. Excited to see the comments the guest has for my project.
_____________________________________________________________________________________
15th March 2022
This week I finally finished the website and will be creating the usability test questions. We also had a presentation this week that we presented where one of the lectures friend came to see our presentation. I received very good comments from him and I am happy with the work that I have completed. Below is the presentation I did.
Furthermore, created the usability test questions with 10 questions. Short and easy.
Here’s the Usability Test Form
_____________________________________________________________________________________
22nd March 2022
This week I created the usability test report with the findings I received. I created a separate blog post which I will link here where you can further read about my results and findings
https://thuhoo-final-project.blogspot.com/2022/01/user-testing_10.html
_____________________________________________________________________________________
Wroe, N., 2013. The Guardian. [Online] Available at: https://www.theguardian.com/film/2013/apr/19/richard-williams-master-animation [Accessed 14 January 2022].
Fisher, S., 2018. 8 Steps To Creating A Social Media Campaign That Gets Results. [Online] Available at: https://www.mojomedialabs.com/blog/8-steps-to-creating-a-social-media-campaign-that-gets-results
[Accessed 25 January 2022].
Medhora, N., 2021. The AIDA Model in Marketing (Why It’s Important + What It’s Used For). [Online] Available at: https://copywritingcourse.com/aida-formula/#:~:text=Why%20Is%20The%20AIDA%20Formula,Buy%20a%20product.
[Accessed 3 February 2022].
IUCN, 2021. International Union for Conservation of Nature - Marine plastic pollution. [Online]
Available at: https://www.iucn.org/resources/issues-briefs/marine-plastic-pollution
[Accessed 20 January 2022].
Renee Wever & Jasper Van Kuijk, 2008. User-centred design for sustainable behavior. International Journal of Sustainable Engineering, 1(10.1080/19397030802166205), pp. 9-20.
James Ellsmoor, 2019. Forbes : Environmental Education Will Shape A New Generation Of Decision-Makers. [Online]Available at: https://www.forbes.com/sites/jamesellsmoor/2019/08/25/environmental-education-will-shape-a-new-generation-of-decision-makers/?sh=78c46c5d4e31[Accessed 1 April 2022].
Available at: https://www.unicef.org/stories/turning-trash-building-blocks-childrens-futures [Accessed 1 April 2022]
Shiraz, A. Z., 2021. How does Plastic Pollution Effect Your Life [Interview] (1 September 2021).
Afeef, F., 2021. How does Plastic Pollution Effect Your Life [Interview] (1 September 2021).
Wroe, N., 2013. The Guardian. [Online]Available at: https://www.theguardian.com/film/2013/apr/19/richard-williams-master-animation [Accessed 14 January 2022].
Speech, T. t., 2022. Text to Speech. [Online]Available at: https://ttsmp3.com [Accessed 14 January 2022].