Exercise 04 - Reading Responses - Krigney

Collective Curiosity - Exercise 04 | Kate Rigney

Reading 04 - Classifying Lassie - This article is about how to look at the information presented and organizing that information. The article suggests slicing it up into smaller categories, such as alphabetically, by weight or by country of origin as with the dogs. This helps to get a new look at the information by comparisons and looking at smaller details instead of getting overwhelmed by all of the data.

Reading 05 - Subculture - This article is about subcultures and their history in the fields of sociology and anthropology. A subculture is a small group of people within a larger culture that share connections and similarities within this small group. These collections can include things such as music preferences, style, hobbies,etc. What I found interesting is that a lot of the explaination has a negative connotation to the description of subculture. Originally the term was used to describe groups that were in opposition to mainstream culture due to thier negative “relations” to values and actions of mainstream culture. This was interesting because after taking the Interactive Zine class last semester where our target audience was a specific subculture, our idea of what a subculture could be moved from something negative and in opposition of mainstream culture, but a group that exists within and alongside the mainstream and are just connected through similarities.

Reading 06 - Audience Theory - This article ties in very nicely to our major, which in many cases is about communicating to a specific audience. It is about understanding that when, in our case, you are designing something, it will give that audience some sort of reaction. It is our job to realize what we want that reaction to be and if what we have made will create that reaction.

Reading 07 - Persona (Marketing) - This article is a more in depth look at who is using the design. Like Audience Theory, it promotes the importance of knowing and understanding the audience. It suggest that breaking all users into smaller groups (demographics) and using market research methods to undestand who the user is: what they know about the subject, how and in what context the design is used and the users’ skill level. This is extremely appropriate for our project. We are using surveys to collect data about fears and are creating personas in order to direct our design toward a specific audience.