Dot and the Kangaroo: Project Proposal

Because of my frequently changing ideas and project development, a lot of my relevant information is scattered throughout this blog. So here is a more cohesive summary of what I intend to do, with further details in each linked blog post.

Synopsis:

This will be an interactive website/iPad App which is essentially bringing new life to Ethel C. Pedley’s children’s novel “Dot and the Kangaroo”, originally published in 1899. Taking the form of a cross between an eBook and digital archive, I will create a prototype version of what I’ve been calling an ‘augmented eBook’ – giving users a traditional book experience with extra educational resources, interactive information and historical and environmental material.

Research information available here: On eBooks, audiences, pirates and kangaroos

Purpose:

The online doco has two main purposes: firstly, to re-introduce an old book and history to new audiences. The 1900s and 1910s were a fascinating time in our country’s past, but is not well known or accessible to today’s society. By digitising and renewing this accessibility, the site will hopefully pique new interest in the area and potentially inspire dialogue with the elderly, addressing the digital generational divide.

The second purpose of the site is to draw attention to Australia’s conservation issues and environmental causes, as per Pedley’s dedication to ‘the children of Australia’. The site will aim to highlight the current problems and encourage environmental activism.

Research information available here: Old books – the new adventure
More research about purpose here:  Old books: further development

Intended Audience:

The primary are Australians and those interested in Australian history. I’ve decided not to focus on children, because I want to be able to make it accessible for adults who may be interested in literature, Australia, history, wildlife and conservation issues. Its medium should appeal to the tech-savvy but I’d like it to be accessible for older audiences, wanting to reconnect with the old days. Although intended for children, the book is simply and artistically written so that ‘grown-ups’ can still enjoy it – and sometimes, looking back on things from childhood, people go ‘oh, now I understand’ – and this is what I hope to achieve. The website should still be able to be accessed by younger audiences if they are interested, as well as non-Australians – the key environmental messages really are applicable to the plight of animals throughout the world.

Content:

There will be three areas of content: the eBook itself, a section about childhood in the early Australian era and a section about modern day conservation issues.

Research information available here: Dot and the Kangaroo: The book, the era, the issues

Design:

Navigation of the content will be via the book and a desk interface, with items which can be scrolled-over and clicked on for other pages of information. There will be some items ‘tucked in’ the pages of the book, to be discovered at the reader’s pace. Interactions will be small but engaging with the content. The style will have a natural aesthetic, including images of found items and articles, and designed with a soft bush colour palette. The sound design will be minimal but relevant to the narrative and issues raised.

More research information available here: Dot and the Kangaroo: Design aspects
Images of the Dot and the Kangaroo book available here: Old books: further development

Feasibility:

My content is using material from the public domain and citable sources, so that is also feasible. The potential scope is quite wide, however, so for the sake of this assignment, I will limit it to the first two chapters (with the intent of doing more), and four sections about the early Australian context, and four sections about modern conservation issues and endangered species. The construction of the site would be in Adobe InDesign 5.5 and Flash, with embedding in WordPress. Technical specifications would be investigated for converting to an iPad App format. User generated content will be considered, but at this stage it would only make the project more challenging.

Dot and the Kangaroo: Design aspects

While writing about the users and content I’ve had some time to come up with some of the elements of design I could include…

I’m envisioning the site to be made in InDesign 5.5, and be available as an iPad App and website. Users would be introduced to the site with an original illustration and the dedication to ‘the children of Australia’ (as citizens, we are Australia’s children), and a small introduction to the site. The main interface while reading the story would look like the old-school book open with double pages, and viewers click on /swipe the pages to flick across. There’d be a few items surrounding the book on a table, which move or glow when you hover the mouse over them – like the interface of JK Rowling’s official site perhaps, but less busy. A few items would be found nestled in between pages – like the newspaper clippings I found in Webster’s Dictionary. Each item would be significant and transport users to a more in depth section about the issue – in the two categories of ‘the era’ or ‘the issues’. Across the bottom there’d be a more standard menu of the extra resources – I’ve learnt from the Waterlife doco that there’s lots of benefit in multiple methods of getting to content.

An interesting way to access the extra categories might be like Adobe’s Digital Publishing: Transforming the Magazine Experience with Wired. I’d love to have this kind of interaction with the book, but I would have to develop my technical skills somewhat. So I guess I will have to keep to the structure of a desk with things that can be delved into, for now. Here’s a really rough version of the wireframe. The extra content will also be available throughout the book, where relevant.

I’ve thought of a interaction design idea which I really like, but am not sure how to actually create… but I’m going to talk about it anyway. I like the thought of books as pre-loved treasures, and absolutely enjoyed discovering little things like Bern McClintock’s drawings in my copy of Treasure Island. So, I thought it could be cool to create some kind of interaction where users can draw some little pictures in the margins if they like – and if they’re appropriate, a moderator could approve them and they would appear on the site. As more people view the site, there’d be more evidence left behind. The idea is sort of like a strange combination of the sites ‘Doodle or Die’ and “Le Catalogue”. Doodle or Die is a fun online version of game I know as ‘Captionary’, where you are given a sentence and try to draw it and pass it on – the next person only sees the image and tries to come up with a caption for it, and so the chain continues. It’s revealed at the end like this:

“Le Catalogue” was an online art exhibit I saw at the beginning of the year, but I don’t think it’s available anymore? The link doesn’t work, anyway. Basically, whenever anyone viewed the images, they were altered. It’s described like this below:

“In “Le Catalogue,” the mastermind behind x-arn.org has created a database of documentary images (an archive) of art projects between 1990-1996 that’s available for public access. Every time an image is viewed, a horizontal and a vertical line that always intersect are added to the archived image, which is then again stored for access by another user. The more the images are accessed, the more they are abstracted or – if one thinks of preserving the object of art – destroyed. … The image is unique in time and space because next time the same file is accessed, there will be two more lines added, and so on. In this way, “Le Catalogue” takes on the idea of destruction as a progressive movement marking time, bringing on the new: one can look forward to destruction as a type of online collaboration between the author and the end user, where the archived information is not preserved but rather reinterpreted constantly—it is a constant remix, moving towards destruction. History is here dependent on linear traces that expose the instability of interpretation; much like tree rings, traces are left behind, marking time, leaving us with an allegorical database presenting destruction (death) as an inevitable part of life.” (Navas, E. 2006, ‘Remix: The Bond of Repetition and Representation’, remixtheory, http://remixtheory.net/?p=361)

Whereas I would prefer to see what people would be adding to my website, I think this could be a cool feature of the overall experience. People could have the option of turning the ‘scribbles layer’ on or off, according to their taste/disposition. But I don’t know how to make this! So: also technically unfeasible I suppose.

In terms of UI design, I’d like to keep quite a organic and intuitive layout. The colour palette will be like the bush – natural hues of browns, greens, blues, yellow, white etc. In that way, it will draw inspiration from the original illustrations:

Also, I really like the colours used Minnie Pwerle’s artworks:

The typography in ‘the era’ sections would be ‘old-timey’, but still readable on the screen. The typography in ‘the issues’ sections would be simple and readable. Both sections would include a few short paragraphs each, with accompanying images, basic interactions, links to further information, quotes from relevant people (eg elderly people reflecting, environmental experts). I’d like to keep a realistic aesthetic for these sections- faded black and white photos, yellowing newspaper clippings etc. I’m thinking of species profiles and little animated animals around the issues, with a more modern style but still matching the rest of the site.

Sound design will be kept fairly minimal, but I think it’d be nice to have an underlying bush track while the story is read. As in Gross’ film, I could insert some scroll-over sound effects of real recordings of the bird calls and other audio aspects of the book- such as Dot’s song (p.14-15) and the Platypus’s sorrowful tune “Oh, Troglyodites obscure – oh! oh!” (p.63-64). There’s frequent mentions to sounds which users may want to hear, like the Nightjar’s calls of ‘Mo-Poke’ (p. 26):

“I say, Nightjar,” she said, “I’m a little sad to-night, please go and sing elsewhere.”
“Ah!” said the Nightjar, “I’m so glad I’ve given you deliciously dismal thoughts with my song! “

The era section could include reconstructions of typical audiocscapes and some Australian folk songs (mentioned earlier) – which play if users choose them. In general, though, the sound design would be minimal and unobtrusive.

These design aspects are quite feasible. My content is using material from the public domain and citable sources, so that is also feasible. The potential scope is quite wide, however, so for the sake of this assignment, I will limit it to the first two chapters (with the intent of doing more), and four sections about the early Australian context, and four sections about modern conservation issues and endangered species.

On eBooks, audiences, pirates and kangaroos

I think it’s now timely to discuss eBooks. I can definitely see the value in digitising books and making them available online – for availability and access, production costs and time amongst other reasons. They’re certainly rising in popularity too, with Amazon saying its Kindle eBook sales are now greater than traditional books. The Australian website ebookish is a great source of information about local developments in this area.

Project Gutenberg is a wonderful free site dedicated to providing a huge digital library / archive of eBooks, of works in the public domain. I think it’s a very worthy cause, and it’s amazing and encouraging that there’s so much support for it – 36ooo documents so far. Project Gutenberg have a mobile version, and the texts are available in variety of formats. Here’s what the converted classic looks like: HTML Treasure Island.

So what do I mean by Augmented eBook? I guess I want to have more than the book itself, with links to other information readily available and ingrained in the site. Tagging could achieve a sense of nonlinearity if people would like to read it according to themes (like in Stephen Fry’s myFry App, see earlier post). I’d like the users to be able to navigate the additional material separately too. Also, essentially, It’d be nice to be able to bring some of the pre-loved, treasured feelings you can get about books, and bring that to an digital book. So its other resource material will make it more than a printed book, and its aura and user interactions will make it more than an eBook. Does that make sense?

Rightio, Treasure Island: I need to nut out who the book is for, and who my website would be for. In the preface to the novel, Robert Louis Stevenson writes:

               TO THE HESITATING PURCHASER

               If sailor tales to sailor tunes,
                  Storm and adventure, heat and cold,
               If schooners, islands, and maroons,
                  And buccaneers, and buried gold,
               And all the old romance, retold
                  Exactly in the ancient way,
               Can please, as me they pleased of old,
                  The wiser youngsters of today:

               —So be it, and fall on!  If not,
                  If studious youth no longer crave,
               His ancient appetites forgot,
                  Kingston, or Ballantyne the brave,
               Or Cooper of the wood and wave:
                  So be it, also!  And may I
               And all my pirates share the grave
                  Where these and their creations lie!

I guess my website would be creating a means for “the wiser youngsters of today” to access the book- it’s not so much the themes that are increasingly irrelevant, it’s their outdated format. The pirates and buried treasure will continue to entertain young minds, and the literary value of the book alone is worth sharing. But something I still have to figure out for my doco are the era and context disparities… with the story set in the 18th Century Europe and mysterious places, written in England in 1881 and Bernie McClintock read his copy in Australia in 1936. Hmmmmm. Is it getting too convoluted?

Unless….. I go with ‘Dot and the Kangaroo’? It was written in 1899 and published/read by Great Aunty Dot in the 1910s, so a bit more contained. Should I change to this book?
Pros- it’s contained in the one era. It’s Australian. It serves a cause (wildlife conservation). It’s intended audience is potentially clearer- children and people interested in that specific time in history. Whereas Treasure Island has heaps of versions and is possibly relevant to younger generations via other media, Dot and the Kangaroo is more due for a revival.
Cons-  I can’t remember anything of the story- but it’s shorter than T-Island and I can skim and refresh? Plus, I already know a lot more about Australiana than pirates. It doesn’t have the reader’s illustrations – but I can make them myself? And/or the original book comes with its own beautiful illustrations….

Things seems to be swaying in Dot’s favour. Luckily a lot of my research and conceptualisation applies to this new old book. Here’s Project Gutenberg’s version: HTML Dot and the Kangaroo. Oh hey, also, whereas Pedley dedicates her book to ‘the children of Australia’ for a specific and ongoing cause, Stevenson seems a bit more laissez-faire about whether his book stands the test of time, with his “so be it”s and being apparently willing to submit to the grave. I reckon if I were to ask the authors, they’d tell me to go with Dot. So be it!

Old books: further development

I’m really quite warming to this Treasure Island idea… I feel it’s more of a “goer” than what I’ve been talking about in earlier posts. I hope that its combination of fiction and historical details makes it a stimulating and worthwhile experience of a doco. By making it an online piece, hopefully I’ll be tapping into and interacting with a new audience – and hey, if they have a technology addiction then maybe this’ll provide a distraction from their online time-wasting… “A successful novel should interrupt the reader’s life, make him or her miss appointments, skip meals, forget to walk the dog. In the best novels, the writer’s imagination becomes the reader’s reality.” – Stephen King, cited here.

As “research”, I decided to call my Granma this afternoon. After a good ol’ chat about adventure books and how girls’ boarding schools were portrayed and illustrated fairy novels, she told me about some of her key memories from childhood. They used to play a lot of hopscotch, with complex rules with balls and things. She tended a ‘Victory Garden’ – personal vegetable patches to help the war effort. She also made felt brooches for the war, and had to save every skerrick of silver paper, which wrapped lollies and things. Children liked to collect things, like stamps and bottle caps. Isn’t that sweet? I’m not suggesting we necessarily start to live like this, but I think it’s important to preserve and learn about personal history.

Before I can really start to develop UX and UI design I need to figure out my target audience. You know what, I think I’m going to go with a fairly broad spectrum, not so much children as young adults perhaps – people like me I guess, who like reading and could share the site with older relatives (who ideally would be able to pick up the computing skills and then find other benefits of being online). I’ve decided against making a site for young children for now, because I want to preserve the aesthetic of the old books and curiosities from the 1930s, and I feel that their appeal is more suited to a slightly older audience. Ideally, most people (including middle age adults as well) will be able to find benefit – afterall, we were all children once!

Further “research” today – I scrounged around a bit in the garage to try and find any more old books from the McClintocks, and came up with some amazing items! Particularly noteworthy was Webster’s Popular Illustrated Dictionary from 1933, which included a handful of photos, newspaper clippings, a letter etc tucked in certain pages. It was an adventure!

I told my mother about what I was doing, and she found an amazing book for me in the cabinet. It’s a 1913 edition of Ethel C. Pedley’s Dot and the Kangaroo, originally owned by my Great Aunt Dot who first read it in 1918 and gave it to me in 1992. It’s really wonderful.

Its dedication reads:

TO THE
CHILDREN OF AUSTRALIA,
IN THE HOPE OF
ENLISTING THEIR SYMPATHIES FOR THE MANY
BEAUTIFUL, AMIABLE, AND FROLICSOME
CREATURES OF THEIR LAND;
WHOSE EXTINCTION, THROUGH RUTHLESS
DESTRUCTION, IS BEING SURELY
ACCOMPLISHED

I would love to make an online documentary about this, with all sorts of links about Australian animals and modern day conservation issues. I think if I were to choose this book, it would be more child-orientated… but unfortunately I can’t remember much about the story. So perhaps, if this project went large scale, I would do other sections in the website about different books like this. But for the purpose of this assignment, I think I’m going to stick with Treasure Island because of Bernie’s drawings and the richness of pirate imagery (a treasure map could be a really great interface) and the era he’s from. Stay tuned for more info about design aspects!

Old books – the new adventure

(I’ve decided to scrap the serious alternate reality game thing – I really wouldn’t be able to make such a thing and none of the ideas were really shining for it anyway.)

So: Completely new idea!

Something that came up in my other research was that some old things, past-times, stories etc are being lost to new generations of children because of technological developments – but there’s no point in trying to fight this, I’ve decided we should work on ways to embrace the ways people use the Internet etc, possibly in order to revive these wonderful old things.

Earlier this year I discovered and read a really old book in a box at my parents’ house – it’s Robert Louis Stevenson’s ‘Treasure Island”, owned by a schoolboy in 1936. His name was Bernie McClintock, and was the husband of a lady I used to know when I was young. I really loved reading this book because of its age and because of all the scrawling little drawings and notes Bernie made.

I’d like to use the book as a starting point (and possible navigation tool) for a website with a potential range of functions: firstly, to re-introduce old books and history to children, to open up the Internet and its possibilities for the elderly, and to inspire appreciation and dialogue between grandchildren and grandparents. Brainstorming, a site based on the book could:
-help children discover the Treasure Island world of pirates etc, re-invigorate the story for a new audience
-follow the fictional story with links to other stories and historical backgrounds of the work (like Re-Enchantment)
-help children discover the life of school boys in the 1930s
-be used as a connection method between generations  (could I make a site they could navigate together?)
-be a portal for old people to rediscover and remember their childhood. I remember reading somewhere that the Internet has become a great medium for the elderly- it provides access for so many things that have been lost to them for decades (songs, historical items and icons, snippets of media, etc) as well as providing social connectedness (here’s a psychological study ‘Using the Internet to improve the wellbeing of the elderly’)
-close the generational digital divide? It’d be lovely to make a site that acts as a catalyst for grandchildren to be curious about their relatives’ childhoods – I know that when I watched the Up series I became a whole lot more curious about my parents’ earlier lives (as they’re the same age as the series’ participants)

So, I guess the product I would be making would be an augmented eBook / interactive kind of digital archive, preserving and providing access for life before our modern day gadgets. At the moment I’m thinking of using the book as the main navigation somehow, possibly animating Bernie’s little drawings, and providing links to other information about childhood in the 1930s, such as school life, home life, contemporary music, games (see previous post), photos, the local and historical context, and personal stories. There’d also be more information about the book’s story and relevance, other versions of the work (looking up Treasure Island on Wikipedia shows heaps of  film and stage adaptions), interesting words and concepts that arise from the book, etc.

Some questions and initial areas which I’ll need to work out:
-How will I distinguish between the era the book is about, the era in which the book was written and the era in which it was read and decorated by Bernie? Is this getting too complicated?
-For a larger scale project, should I include other books with histories imbrued in them? (different classic children’s books, read in different eras…)
-Is it possible to make a site that is designed appropriately for both the elderly and the young? Simple layout, easy navigation, large text etc are fine strategies, but will there be a style that is suitable for both? And if not, which is the main audience I should choose?

The myFry App gets where it’s at

In class last week we were discussing new online forms of publishing and e-magazines. I have a mixed impression of these – some are really great and interactive, and others are clearly “we have this publication, let’s make it digitalised and add in a swipey page function”. In my opinion, that’s pretty lazy. The best online publications and interactive magazines offer users experiences which are unattainable in traditional formats. The same with documentaries in general- they can be great as feature films, but might not necessarily translate well to be great online docos if they’re simply broken up into smaller videos and posted together on a site. Something that I think really helps in this web conversion is nonlinearity. It requires engagement and allows people to delve into the doco as much as they want (and we all know about Internet users and their notorious attention spans).

Sorry if you’ve heard me wax lyrical about Stephen Fry before, but this is relevant dammit! His autobiography ‘The Fry Chronicles’ has been effectively rendered to the App format and is a truly digital book.

You can still navigate chapter by chapter, but each section is tagged according to themes of his life, like comedy, acting, love, Hugh Laurie, and so on, which you can pick out and read in the order of your choice, which is pretty cool. Although I actually preferred to read the printed book (I don’t have an iPhone or iPad afterall), I’d like to think I would have appreciated the myFry innovation if I was that way inclined.