Wednesday, March 3, 2010
Chapter 14: Museum Kiosk
It's hard to say this chapter was interesting since Garrand doesn't really write in an entertaining way (in fact, he tends to put me to sleep). However, the information in this chapter was quite interesting, and I enjoyed learning about it, just not reading it...if that makes sense. :) I don't know why, but I have a really hard time with the case studies Garrand uses. I really can't stand to read the sections when he focuses only on the case study. In the case of this chapter, those were the sections that looked at The Nauticus Shipbuilding Company in great detail. Oh well, that doesn't really matter, and I should be focusing on the content and not the writer in this post. You might think I'm kind of slow, but I didn't realize I had used a kiosk until going through this chapter. It was interesting to understand what a kiosk was and be able to see how often I use them. Probably the greatest realization that I experienced during the chapter was how difficult it is to write the text for a kiosk. It would be pretty difficult to make the language of the text easy enough for a diverse group of people to comprehend it and still make it interesting enough to capture a person's attention within the 5-second gap.
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I can really relate when you say the information is hard to get through. It seems a little ironic that the author recognizes the need to be engaging and appealing to diverse group when writing for interactive media but seems to forget that when writing his book. For me the big problems are that the information covers an area of writing that I am not likely to participate in. The second problem is that the information covered in this chapter, is not really that much different from the basic requirement of the previouse chapters.
ReplyDeleteMontana, I hope it's okay that I comment on your post; my group members have not posted this week. I have a hard time with this author also. It seems the points in every chapter are the same: know your audience and make the information interesting. I think the shipbuilding kiosk writer did a good job with both of these areas. S/he made the program easy enough for most anyone to use, and interactive to capture the user's attention.
ReplyDeleteHello bloggers, Rob it's good that you chose to join the conversation despite the absence of your group's post! well, probably the reason why am thinking of revamping the required text material in the future if a better one arrives is the sentiments you all expressed. i can see where you're all coming from and, not to discredit the writer as there's a wealth of information that we can re-visit and use when we find ourselves in MultiMedia Writing, the language and style of the text should cater to its college readers. in this case, maybe he got a B or less.
ReplyDeletegoing back to the chapter, with a "general" audience the Kiosk should address and a "play" design that should not last more than 2 minutes, the challenge to the writer is on! well, it seems the shipbuilding company is a fun, entertaining project in this respect.