User Feedback (Part 2)

FEEDBACK "Is it a pop up interactive window of a bigger component? I thought so (maybe I'm wrong, but I have the impression because it is simple and the size of the window is not a desktop page size)."
REFLECTION It is sometimes hard to delineate the absolute boundaries of a digital piece of work -- whether creatively, ideologically or otherwise -- and we are often accustomed to "looking for more". Part of media literacy today involves a complex sense of -- and demand for -- interconnectedness, even across media and platforms. As explained in this documentation, Fast City is intended to propose an effective microcosm for a later series of related installations.

FEEDBACK "Your professor will not appreciate your choice of sound effects."
REFLECTION Inasmuch as this comment was based on stereotyping, this is perhaps an understandable but largely unjustified judgement. The assumption is that media literacy is highly generation-dependent; thus professors, being senior in age, are less likely to appreciate or comprehend the digital and popular culture genres implicated in Fast City because they are not in touch with the street technology of today, and how it is employed and indulged. Indeed, as with all cases of media authoring, the choice and appreciation of media elements reflect and impose particular paradigms of socio-cultural affiliation; whether real or imagined.

FEEDBACK "You should add more pictures to the interactive buttons."
REFLECTION A valid avenue for improvement. In exploring various forms of digital media, it appears that users often bring to bear their own abstract mental models of "perfection", in the sense that we readily judge if multiple media elements can perhaps be configured in a more "optimal" formula. As technology continues to offer increasing resources for both media producers and consumers, writers/composers of hypermedia narratives face the challenge of translating their work to engage new media conventions. All hypermedia is in this sense "work in progress", awaiting new technologies and creative ideas to enhance the work further in terms of both artistic expression as well as user and distribution features; as perhaps reflected in Mark Amerika's Grammatron project.

[OVERVIEW]

REF:
Amerika, Mark. Grammatron. www.grammatron.com. Online narrative project.