This week I presented my interactive analysis presentation. I chose a website by the company Lemonade. Lemonade is an American owned insurance company based out of New York City. The website I analyzed itself is actually an individual article published by the company discussing their donations and contributions to different charities and other organizations in the year 2019. By completing this project, I learned that a website should have some sort of way to convey their message in a creative way. After browsing and visiting multiple different sites, I found that websites with more interactive components and less text heavy were the ones I found myself more drawn to. I noticed in everyone else’s project this week that most of these websites were based quite a lot on graphics and visual components instead of text and other information based material. We did meet briefly as a team at the end of class this week. We discussed our progress and what still needs to be completed media wise. We have a plan to get everything completed in a timely manner, especially with all of this extra havoc going on with the coronavirus. I am curious to see how our presentations go the rest of the semester because of this issue. 

At this point in the semester I feel as if my group and I have a very good start on things and are on pace to fulfill our schedule. Our interviews and media so far have turned out great. So far we have completed more interviews than expected. While not all of them are completely edited yet, we anticipate that will be done in no time. The one thing that we need to work on most is just fully understanding what the requirements are for each objective that we complete. The key to our success is asking valuable questions to make sure nobody is confused about what we are supposed to do on a particular part of this project. The biggest challenge so far have been organizing the interviews. We all have somebody or more than one person to interview it is just a matter of executing. I for example, have two interviewees who I have set up but it is difficult since they do not live in Lincoln. I am planning on inquiring whether or not a phone interview is acceptable since that does not have video recording. My contribution to the project this week was executing an interview, but have not finished the editing portion. I also made several statistical graphs for visuals. I still think that I need to create more graphs so people can really understand the details in our presentation and why it can be classified as a stereotype to begin with.

This week, I wasn’t able to physically make it into class because of an injury, but I was still able to contribute to our group’s project from home. Mackenzie and I each worked on half of the research paper needed for the preliminary content submission, and got it done smoothly and quickly! We communicated with each other about which half each of us would do, and she took the part explaining what information we’ve gained so far from interview insights and other data collected, while I wrote about our possible plans for the website layout. Since we haven’t talked about how it will be laid out as a group, I constructed a few options for how we could organize the media and data we obtain.

At the midterm point in the semester, I think our group is doing well with communicating and getting a lot of good media content, especially with the interview content. We were worried that would be one of the things we would struggle with due to possible scheduling issues, but that doesn’t seem to have posed a problem so far. I think now we just need to work on compiling the information into a website and coming up with questions and structure for a survey if we still plan to send one out. If we do, that will be our biggest challenge at this point, mostly because it could be difficult to reach a large enough number of people who are willing to take the survey.

Week 8 of the semester means midterms and also that we have almost made it to spring break. At this point in the semester, each of those are equally exciting statements. I think the good parts of our project right now has to do with the amount of media and data we have captured and continue to capture. We have lots of video clips from each interview conducted which is super good. Having lots of video allows us to pick and choose our favorites to use on the website when that step gets put into place. I think out team is also doing well on creating infographic visuals. I think the biggest thing our team needs to work on is to talk about and formulate a plan for the design of our website. We have yet to come together and discuss our ideas about that part of the project. I know we will do this in the next few weeks though, so I am not too incredibly worried about that quite yet. The biggest challenges that I have faced personally is struggling with figuring out what type of photos I want to use for the project. I can capture plenty of content, but it will just be fairly difficult to actually sit down and decide what I want to use for the final project.

I did not present this week but was very impressed with everyone who did. the first presentation about college athletic coaches was intriguing. I had no idea that some basketball head coaches were being paid so much money. I was drawn to them even more because they were all so interactive. None of the students who presented stayed in the same spot for a long period of time. This allowed me to stay locked in for the duration of all of the presentations. They all seemed to have pros and cons for their website which was good to see. I had an idea that everyone would compliment their websites throughout their entire presentations but that was simply not the case. One thing that I want for my presentation is to be prepared and know how much time I have covered when I am presenting. My goal is to not ask for a time check or stutter. I want it. to be clean and clear. Our group got a couple things accomplished but nothing major this week. Still. have good communication and all remain on the same page. There is no weak link in the group it seems and I am excited to see what we can do in these coming weeks.

This week I didn’t present an interactive analysis project, but I did notice a few similarities between the projects that were presented. Many of them were multiple pages that needed to be followed in order, with links that connected to the next step. This is a good idea for an interactive story because it helps the reader focus on one certain aspect or page of a once. It definitely helps the reader get involved with the story on a more in-depth level. Another thing I noticed between the articles was the animation of infographics. This was especially interesting with graphics changing either when scrolling through text or hovering over aspects of the graph. In both of these instances, it made it easier to focus on specific facts and parts of the graph. This again helps with the focus of the story, because the reader can process the information without feeling overwhelmed. 

Our group didn’t get to meet during class this week, so we’ll have to be in communication sometime this weekend. Mostly, all we have to do for the content submission is to get our paper done and make sure our media is compiled. Mackenzie and I will be writing the paper, so she and I will probably need to be in contact the most for the next week.

It was another week of the interactive analysis presentations. Five people presented their projects this week. I was not one who presented this week, as I do not present until after the midterm. I noticed that some of the presentations were more engaging than others for me this week. This being said, I need to make sure I choose a presentation that is engaging and interesting to the entire class if possible. The reason I say this is because having an interactive presentation now, will hopefully ensure that when the time comes for my group to present we can be engaging as well. Everyone knows that watching/listening to a boring speaker or presentation is the last thing on the “want to be doing” list. That seemed to be the the main problem this week. Some of the presentations were much longer than others which lead to a lot of people becoming uninterested or unengaged. The most consistent thing I noticed was that all the presenters this week seemed to pick a presentation that mattered to them, which I also plan to do. We did not have class time to meet with our groups this week. We are still working on getting together our preliminary work that’s due next week. All in all, things are going alright.