During todays workshop, myself and Alex wanted to develop the main idea/function of the project in order to create a strong ethos.

After developing and finalising this we would also be implementing the ideas into the design and functionality of the website.

The main issues that we needed to overcome was how the main basis of the project (a platform in which people can make contributions) was sounding like a redesign of the Moon project.

This was due to the fact that at the projects core, it was a contribution website where the platform is left completely open to its contributors.

This then lead to the idea that we need to find a way to direct, focus and funnel the users of the project in order to eliminate random contributions that seem to arise when platforms (such moon) are left completely open.

From the research carried out into particular topics, we wanted to make sure the projects basis was focused on the issues that are currently effecting the planet.

Between us, we came up with the idea the use ‘prompt’ sentences when entering the planet creation.

The prompts will be complete random but will be contained within 7 different topics.

The idea behind using the prompts will be to simply give the contributor something to think about before making their planet, maybe leading to the prompt effecting what their contribution will contain/be focused on.

We also decided on using tags (based on the different topics) in which a planet can be ‘tagged’ to a particular topic during the creation stage.

Once the planet has been submitted the tags will be used in order to categorise the different contributions.

Website Flow Diagrams:

Once we had agreed on the ideas stated above, we wanted to clearly construct a layout of the website in order to apply the ideas to the projects and gain a further understanding of how the website would work in terms of functionality.

Contribution Path: 

The first stage of the flow diagram (numbers 1 to 7) details how the website will be navigated from the welcome page to seeing our contribution in orbit.

At stage 3, the user will click the center of the galaxy in order to proceed to the ‘prompt’ page, which will then proceed you to the planet creation page etc.

Exploring Contributions: 

The bottom right section details how the filter list will be used to rearrange what planets will be visible in orbit.

Contributions Comment Feature:

This flow diagram details how the website will be used / navigated to add a comment or reply to a contributed planet.

In doing so a ‘moon’ will be created in the form of the reply, which will then be seen in orbit around the  contribution/planet in question.

– Michael

Taking on some pointers made during the tutor meeting with Clive, I wanted to look into some material on certain subject matters in more detail to help develop the ideas myself and Alex had for the further fine tuning of our projects ethos.

When trying to develop a project idea early on, I knew I wanted the ideas behind the project to stem from my own concerns around the issues we face as a species, that seem to be withdrawn from our knowledge.

‘The Big Oil Lie’ was a video I had come across last year that reinforced my interest in the subject of the pending energy crisis.

It seems that the issues what we as a species are heading towards are not transparently being spoken about towards the general population, being left for the discussions to take place between the ‘conspiracy theorists’ wearing their tin foil hats.

I have always felt strongly towards to seeming ‘lack on interest’ of these huge issues, both within mainstream media.

My first exposure to these subject matter was through my interest in Radiohead’s Thom Yorke.

Thom Yorke’s solo album The Eraser features the song Harrowdown Hill, a song that expresses Thom Yorkes anger over the death of Dr David Kelly and the circumstances that surrounded it.

The events surrounding the death of David Kelly have still not been fully disclosed, resulting in the continued questioning by a select percentage of the population.

This led (and continues to lead) people to question the real reasoning behind the UK government’s decision to go to war in Iraq.

The following link is an article explaining the events surrounding Dr. David Kelly 10 years on:

http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2013/jul/16/david-kelly-death-10-years-on

During the talk with our tutor it was mentioned that our projects ethos was extremely similar to the moon project.

It was at this point that Clive pointed us towards two different documentaries, Collapse and fahrenheit 9/11.

The first documentary that I watched was Collapse.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MPL2CReZaHI

The documentary is based around the life time research of Michael Ruppert and his findings into how the government are keeping the rate at which oil is being used a secret from the population.

He also explains how there is basically no real alternative for the future production of energy… which is a scary thought considering the lack of information we are currently being told as a population on this subject.

The main factor of this documentary that concerns me is, again, the obvious lack of transparency between the population and what is really going on in the world.

Another aspect to the Collapse film that resonates with me is Ruppert’s quote of Thomas Jefferson 40 seconds into the film, stating that we need ‘a revolution every generation’ and that we are currently ‘many generations overdue a revolution in terms of our thinking’.

It was this statement when listened to that made myself feel that the whole concept of Planets of Change should be worked towards the fueling of a revolution such as this.

The original basis of the project idea was focused towards getting users to explore these current issues to revolutionise the way we think as a collective community.

However after the tutor talk with Clive it was clear that we needed to work on the way in which our project will be further developed. Stepping what we have at the moment away from being too similar to the Moon project.

The next stage of the projects development is to work on how our project idea can be worked on to build a stronger ethos.

– Michael

During week 5 we had a discussion with our workshop tutor to make sure that our project ideas were heading in the right direction.

Myself and Alex gave Clive (the workshop tutor) a rundown of our project idea, explaining how the project idea was going to be further developed from my original Research and Development project idea, ‘Planets of Change’.

We explained how we wanted the project to be an open space for users to talk about certain issues for others to see, along with also being able to explore the different contributions that have been made by the various users.

It was explained that ‘Moon’ (a project previous spoken about in this blog) was a key area of research that formed the ideas around the current project idea.

However, although clive understood what we was heading towards, he pointed out that the current idea/ethos is very similar to the ‘Moon’ project.

Myself and Alex had already thought about this certain issue as we don’t want the idea behind our project to simply be a re-designing of Moon.

Clive had suggested some further research into certain topic areas, such as the oil and energy crisis.

After this was mentioned I stated that when first conceptualizing the project this was the main thoughts I had in mind.

These ideas were brought about by my personal worries over the current oil and energy crisis. These are issues that will be effecting us in the 15-20 years and the rumble of these issues are starting to be felt in todays society. However I feel that these issues are not being spoken about widely enough, leading to a lack of interest with the general population around these topics.

I originally wanted the project to be a tool to be used to bring about the widespread discussion of these issues, allowing them to be widely acknowledged by the various users of the project.

Between myself and Alex we brainstormed different ways in which we can develop our project idea to separate it from being too close to ‘Moon’.

We went back to think about the initial plan for the project, to produce a project that brings about discussions.

Leading on from this we felt that adding some way to comment and develop someones contributions to the project further would uplift our project idea away from a simple ‘contribution’ project.

When exploring the ‘Moon’ project you come across a range of different contributed drawings and messages, but a lot of these messages contain some ‘explicit’ content, a lot of which has no relation to the main idea of the Moon project.

We saw the creation of this issue was down to the fact that Moon is left completely open to what can be contributed. There is no direction in which the user is pushed towards, resulting in information that has no real value.

To stop our project being subjected to pointless/random information, we felt that by targeting our contributors towards certain issues (for example a title such as ‘climate change’) it would help to form different pockets of contributions related to the chosen title/starting point.

We also felt that to form a project strongly centered around the discussions between its contributors, it should include a feature that allows users to reply/respond to the contributions made by others.

To achieve this we came up the idea that when someone replies or responds to a contribution, the response will take the form of a ‘moon’ that will orbit around contribution that was replied too.

Overall the project discussion between myself, Alex and Clive was extremely useful in the sense that it helped us understand where we were in terms of development and what still needed to be done in terms of developing a strong ethos.

– Michael

Given that the idea we want to create would be too difficult to achieve in the timeframe we’ve been given, we decided that we wanted to build a website to house our concept ideas on at least.

The purpose of the website would be to illustrate what our idea would be in an interactive way, whilst also showing what the visual style of the finished project would look like.

I first had to brush up on my HTML and CSS skills using a website called codecademy.com, and W3Schools. This was my first attempt at the welcome page.

After consulting with Mike, we decided that we wanted to make the welcome page as simple as possible, and move the information to the about page. We also decided to replace the image of the planet with artwork designed by Mike for the project. Before long, this was the second iteration.

I want to give the site some interactivity, to demonstrate how the website would function if it could be completed. I decided to have the welcome message link to a galaxy with planets orbiting around it.

This would require me to have a knowledge of CSS animations, so after learning some basic fundamental skills, this was what I initially put together. The galaxy rotates clockwise, and the planet is animated orbiting around the galaxy.

My next aim is to have multiple planets, and when they are clicked on, they link the viewer to a separate page with information.

I would also like to be able to keep this all as one page, or have other pages seamlessly transition although I am currently unsure how to do that.

– Alex

After the creation of the welcome page design, I wanted to try and conceptualise what the main page of the website will look like.

To do this I continued to work in the previous style created for the welcome page.

The first stage was to sketch out a rough design of what the main page will look like.

While sketching out the rough design I also wanted to think about how the welcome page would transition into the main page, along with what graphical elements would be seen.

After completing the design of the welcome page, I had in mind that the spherical graphic would fade away to reveal the center of the solar system or galaxy in which the contributed ideas/planets were situated.

So from this idea I started to work on the digital version of my sketched out design.

I created a galaxy spiral graphic that was positioned in the center of the design, so that the transition between the welcome page and the main page is what myself and Alex had in mind.

The mock planets were positioned around the spiral galaxy graphic to try and show what the main page will look with the different contributed planets in orbit around the center of the galaxy.

After the mock design was completed, I went ahead to again mock the design in order to get a better understanding of what the website will look like when viewed.

The next stage of development was to try and visualise what the selection of a planet might look like within the main page.

We had the idea that when a planet in orbit is selected/click on, an enlarged image of the selected planet will appear.

The enlarged image will be connected to the smaller planet in orbit via some graphical elements to make it clear to the user which planet has been selected.

Having an enlarged image of the selected planet is a way of having a clearer viewing before finalising your selection.

Again, the concept was mocked up the computer housing to get a better understanding into what the website will look like.

The next stage of the projects development is to allow Alex to work from these conceptualized designs in order to start/continue the building of the website.

For myself I need to design the other pages/areas of the website along with how these will flow into one another.

We also have our tutor meeting with Clive.

In this meeting myself and Alex will explain where we are in terms of the projects development in order to make sure we are on the right track.

– Michael