Time to settle on the content and user experience design for Dot and the Kangaroo! I’ve researched a bit more about the book and its story, enough to know that this would work well as a website on its own and I would not consider expanding to other old children’s books- there’s so much to cover here. Before I go into the UX design, time to settle on who the users are and what the content is…
Audience profiling:
Primarily 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. The book is simply and artistically written so that ‘grown-ups’ can still enjoy it – and sometimes people looking back on things from childhood 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 messages really are applicable to the plight of animals throughout the world.
The story:
Dot and the Kangaroo tells the story of a young girl called Dot, who gets lost in the bush but is befriended by a red kangaroo. When it feeds her some berries she becomes able to talk to animals, and has some adventures before making her way home. She finds out about the ways humans interact with the environment through her discussions with the Kangaroo, Willy Wagtail, Platypus, Satin Bower Bird, Emu, and many other birds and native Australian animals. According to ‘Bottlesnikes and Other Lost Things: A Celebration of Australian Illustrated Children’s Books’ (Juliet O’Conor, 2009, The Miegunyah Press, Melbourne, p.66-7), Dot and the Kangaroo’s strong conservation message deals with Australians’ treatment of wildlife in the late 1800s. In ‘Revisiting Dot and the Kangaroo: Finding a Way in the Australian Bush‘ (2007, Australian Humanities Review), Ulla Rahbek asserts that one of the key messages in the story is of the importance of security and having a safe home.
Yoram Gross made a film version in 1977, combining live footage of Australian settings with animations of the characters.
A truly Australian film, it makes use of some great ideas for incorporating our culture and locations. I like the way it uses found recordings of the bird calls and animal noises. My material will stick with the book’s original illustrations I think, because of the issues with copyright and not over-complicating things more generally.
The era:
I’ve been researching further into the life and times of Australian children in that era. Like in the old books I found, I’d like to include some little artefacts about the times, as if they were tucked into the book’s pages. Old photos, newspaper snippets, letters, scraps of paper, perhaps a small toy – those kinds of things.
The ABC provides succinct interesting timelines of the historical context and local events.
The Government website also provides some fascinating information about colonial history (eg the changing face of early Australia). But what was childhood like?
The UTS library provides some interesting books which I will enjoy delving into further:
–The Endless Playground: Celebrating Australian Childhood
–Australian Childhood: A History
–Stories of Herself When Young: Autobiographies of Childhood by Australian Women
From books and oral histories in museums and other sources, I will glean some stories of childhood for Pedley’s original audience – what life was like at school, at home, some clips from Australian folk songs from the time, what kids did for fun. I’d also love to include some pictures and old photos. I managed to track down some photos of my Great Aunty Bet:
Great Aunty Dot as a baby
Great Aunty Dot (Dorothy Jones) on the right, with siblings, c.1915
Girls at ‘Empire Day’
Either Dot’s mother or grandmother: Eliza
Hopefully, by exploring the personal histories shown in the website, users may be inspired to try and chase up their own pasts. Finding these images have shown that if these kind of things aren’t recorded, they just aren’t known, and are lost in history.
The issues:
I’d also like to include some sections on the current climate for conservation of Australian animals. I think it’s striking and rather sad that the conservation issues in Dot and the Kangaroo are still pertinent more than a century on. I am passionate about environmental issues, and I think that using this book as a exploratory method could be a good way of introducing the ideas to a new audience. Waterlife is a brilliant example of an online documentary which shows how these kinds of ideas can be presented (see earlier post). Australia’s endangered species are still very much under threat, and there isn’t enough money to conserve everything. How do we choose which species receive funding and which are left to fend for themselves? I could create small profiles or ‘scenes’ of a number of issues, with links to further information and ways for the audience to actively address the problems.
Several organisations/websites are very helpful for this information for this section, including:
–Australian Conservation Foundation
–World Wildlife Fund
–The Wilderness Society
–Earth’s Endangered Creatures: Australia
–Caring for our country
–EPBC Act List of Threatened Fauna
And there are many more. A simple search of the SMH archives reveals many topical issues, such as:
–Unregulated wildlife trade
–The logging industry and forestry
–Recreational hunting
–Natural disasters and pesticides
–Lack of action
These are the kinds of topics I would like to address, and I believe that exposing audiences to them though a documentary via a story like Dot and the Kangaroo will help the cause.
Gosh. The scope of my project has become rather huge. For the sake of this semester, I would only be able to provide a few examples from the history and issues, and probably only be able to cover a few chapters of the book. However, it would be nice to make a complete version one day…