"Who is Yap Ah Loy to you?" Project Blog

I had open a blog specially dedicated to my Multimedia Degree Final Year Project --- "Who is Yap Ah Loy to you?"

Do spare some moment to run your mouse over the URL link below to stalk for more updates on my project!
"Who is Yap Ah Loy to you?"

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A change in execution...

Year 3 Sem A was over, project planning was reviewed and graded. After much consideration, analysis, consultation, plus a surge of intuition, the previous idea of making a live action documentary was discarded.

Reasons being:
1. It's way too difficult to execute.
Think about that. Actors, narrator, setting, props, costumes, etc...For an individual project, making a short film might be possible, but I'm talking about a full-length film (close to an hour), and the setting of the story is in the late 19th century!

2. The fire has resided.
This has direct link with the 1st reason. I admit it is way too stressful for me to coordinate such a large scale project. The passion in me to do this film is disappearing day by day. My initial dream of achieving a high quality documentary film seemed too far-fetched based on the skills I have now.

3. Seemed kinda fishy...
This should be a film about the history of Kapitan Yap Ah Loy. I am no historian, I can never be sure of the authenticity of the sources I found. Making a historic film based on sources which might not be genuine will kill the purpose of my project. Furthermore, this film should tell the audience about facts. Branching storyline could be misleading for the audience, and most decision points I planned, according to Sweii, is insignificant. "Made a choice = Did not make a choice". Now I wonder why I made this film an interactive storytelling project...hmm...

Well, all can be done is done. I rather work harder, sleep less (and play less games *sob*) to produce a final project which I can be proud of rather than continue on a project which I don't feel like I can achieve.

New idea for the execution of the project is coming up! This time, I'm gonna make it happen!

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The "should do"s and the "should not do"s in the future

1. Idea generation:
I came up with too few ideas in the start. Reason for this is I can't escape from my first impression of the solution to the client's brief, which is an information kiosk.

SHOULD DO: Train my brain to come up with a lot of ideas in a short amount of time. Practice San Yen's technique (design different things with 30 circles in short time)


2. Field interview:
I went to The Gardens' JustLife outlet the day before the pitch presentation to interview some of the shop assistants about how they work and who are their customers. I admit I was too lazy to make this move, and it is a very late move.

SHOULD DO: Do this field interview right before the idea generation process, so that the design solution is made to solve existing problems instead of "imagined" problems.


3. Company's brand image:
I did not really consider my solution to the brief to be fitting for JustLife's brand image until San Yen noted this in his sharing session. In the end, I had to modify my solution to fit for the brand image.

SHOULD DO: Research more on the client's company brand image, how they communicate with their customers. Then only start idea generation.


4. Target audience:
Based on the field interview, most customers are of age above 45. Even though I knew this, I had not considered their eyesight issues in my proposed solution.

SHOULD DO: Consider physical issues of the target audience in my design solution. For example in here, I should make my design with clearer and larger font, as for the screen size, it should be bigger than the small screen of iPhone.


5. Interface design:
The interface design for the iPhone app I proposed does not look like it's a mobile app. I did not study much about mobile app's interface design before actually designing it.

SHOULD NOT DO: Design interface based on instinct and own liking. A mobile app should have a mobile app interface.

SHOULD DO: Research on mobile interface design. Design mobile app interface like how it should be.


6. Presentation skills:
I felt very awkward while presenting during the pitch session. It's not how I usually present but I do felt that my presentation did not sound as boring as before.

SHOULD DO: Practice more before the actual pitch. Stay calm and be more natural during the presentation.


7. Communication skills:
During the 1^st client meeting, I displayed student-like behavior for not being proactive in the idea discussion. As for the Q&A session after the pitch presentation, I was stuck in speech when I was answering a question thrown to me about how to solve the eyesight issues of their customers.

SHOULD NOT DO: Be passive during discussions. Being defensive of idea is also not good during a pitch presentation. Instead, should be open for suggestions to improve the quality of the proposed idea.

SHOULD DO: Be more open in discussion. Be proactive. When being questioned, be calm, stop and think. Form sentences in head before blurting everything out. This way, the answer will be more structured and easy to understand for the clients.

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Pitch presentation day

Today is the day where our class is going to pitch our idea to justlife. It's an exciting yet anxious day as we were told that San Yen will be attending too. Before my turn for presenting is up, I had rehearsed over and over in case I forget what I should say. This does help me in my presentation as I do not need to do impromptu presentations and do not need to think about what to say on the spot. The presentation went on smoother than I expected, but I did some mistakes during the Q&A session where I strayed off topic and did not clearly answer the question about how to solve the sight problem of non-iPhone users (words and images too small for them to read).

After reflecting upon my own performance, I figured out that I should come up with more unique ideas in the first place. I should also work on an idea which well compliments justlife's brand image and enhances human-human interaction instead of promoting the technology. I should not only analyse the surface problems the clients faced, but I should also find out important issues which should be taken into consideration such as brand image, target user and company's working culture before deciding on an idea.

This is a very valuable learning experience which had helped me understand more about professional design, and what to consider in getting creative and effective ideas in the future.

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Interactive flowchart for demo

To demonstrate the functions of JusJus app, I had created an interactive flowchart of interface designs using Adobe Flash. The .swf will be available in the documentation CD.

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Reminder for pitch presentation

To help us present better next week, Sweii had prepared us some reminders and tips for better pitch presentation.
1. Keep it short, sharp, concrete and concise.
2. Make slides highly visual so that it is memorable and can connect with the audience
3. 1 key point per slide
4. Keep it simple and stupid -> easily understood
5. Make it flow. Plan structure.
6. Better to show than tell
7. Presentation should not stand alone, compliment slides and speaker
8. Be honest, show enthusiasm
9. Prepare and practice, carefully plan everything you say

Within a timed pitch, 5% should be used on stating the problem and solution, 20% on the idea, and 75% on the demo.

These tips are extremely useful for my pitch presentation next week. I will consider them in my presentation planning so that I can give a good presentation.

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Some interface designs...

The rest of the interface designs can be found in my documentation CD.

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Interaction flowchart 3.0

Below is another revised version of my interaction flowchart:

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Reconsidering my proposed idea

After some thought, I did some minor changes in JusJus application.
1. End-user: Not only for customers, but also for shop assistants as a medium for explaining product usage and benefits to customers
2. Login function: No longer need account registration for application. Just need PayPal account and password for online shopping. This is to reduce the complications needed for customers to use the application
3. Reminder function: Removed from this app. Customer would not need to commit so much to this application.

So JusJus app now is not an all-rounder personal health adviser anymore. It now serve more like a personal encyclopedia about justlife. It aids shop assistant so that they no longer need to memorise everything from a big book/folder, and can use visuals/animations in the app to help them educate customers easier. Customers can also use this app for self-service on anything they do not understand. They can get info instantly using the QR code scanning function and the visuals will help them understand more and remember the facts easily.

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Lessons learned from San Yen's sharing

Today, San Yen, If Isobar's Creative Director came to have a sharing with us on creative effectiveness. I had learned a lot from this talk. Below is a summary of his sharing on creative effectiveness:

Strategy + Creative = Effectiveness

4 tips to stay creative
1. Seek your voice, be different
2. Embrace uncertainty, get out of comfort zone
3. Go for quantity, get a lot of ideas in a short time
4. Break the rules, don't do things the normal way

4 tips to stay strategic
1. Be empathetic, move at the speed of the consumer, think as though you own the brand
2. Unite data and creativity, pull numbers+narrative (Planner) and concept+craft (Creative Director) together by joining narrative+concept (Creative Strategist)
3. Live the media, B.O.E (Bought Owned Earned)
4. Be simple, do not complicate your solutions

He also pointed out that justlife's brand image is friendly, family-like and values human-human interaction. This contradicts to what we were required to propose to justlife, which is to create a multimedia platform. I had to seriously reconsider my proposed idea now...since it sort of replaces the role of human shop assistants. We should have had this sharing earlier! It's kind of late for me to realise that there is a big flaw in my proposed idea...

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Interface design

Below is the main interface design I did according to the revised mood board:

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Mood Board

Below is the mood board for JusJus application:After a tutorial session with Sweii, she pointed out that justlife's colour choice is more down to earth and not commonly percepted colour choices which I proposed in my moodboard above. I did a major change in the colour scheme of my moodboard.

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Interaction flowchart 2.0

Below is the revised and digitalized interaction flowchart:

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What I have learned after reading "Mobile Commerce Overview: why mobile is changing the way business happens"

I've speed-read Mobile Commerce Overview, and this is what I had learned from the important points which are related to my project.

1. Personalization is where mobile marketing is moving forward to. Creating a mutual dialogue between the marketeer and the consumer will create trust.

2. Personalized mobile marketing should include 4 key factors: permission-based, targeted, "live" and two-way.

3. Store location, In-store navigation, and Information & Extended Packaging creates convenience for users in store and also outside the store.

4. Using mobile phone to pay seems like a very convenient and useful function. But I don't think my application needs this function.

5. Reordering and delivery confirmation are important so that it is easier for customers to order the same products again, and confirmation of delivery helps customers keep track of their order.

6. Ensure that consumer receives clear info on how to use mobile application, and how info can be accessed via mobile app.

7. Legal aspects should be well researched to achieve trust from consumers so that they will use the mobile app.

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Tutorial meeting with Sweii

Showed the interaction flowchart to Sweii. Sweii suggested that my application could follow up on users' health. She also suggested that I do some research on mobile commerce. Besides progress review, Sweii also gave me her comments on my performance during the 2nd client meeting last week. I did not really do well, and presented myself more like a student than a young designer. I knew that I am not good in communication and presenting myself, so I should really focus on communication and presentation skills to improve myself.

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Personal Statement

After meeting with the clients about the initial ideas I had came up with, I had chosen my idea of a virtual personal health advisor as the solution to the clients’ problem. Both accessible through in store computer kiosk and iPhone application, this virtual personal health advisor is a digital character named JusJus, and its service ranges from product information searching to educating users about organic products. It has a vast variety of functions, which includes advising users on health issues, giving users solutions using JustLife’s organic products, providing healthy organic recipes, aiding users in product searching and locating, letting users to shop online, and most importantly, educating users on how JustLife’s organic product is produced and how special and different are JustLife’s products. There is also an area where the users can comment about a certain product or remedy, allowing for an alternative platform for customers to communicate with each other through JusJus. Besides than just creating this application, it is also important to come up with a branding strategy to make JusJus become a reliable and friendly personal health advisor. As suggested by the clients, an in store theme could be created to tell customers to “ask JusJus” about additional information or for any queries.

I had chosen this idea because having a personal health advisor can give the company a brand image that JustLife cares for their customers, instead of just being a typical shop that runs an organic product business. JusJus can replace existing shop promoters as JusJus will be more effective in providing accurate and detailed information compared to shop promoters. Besides that, users can also access to JustLife’s massive amount of information whenever and wherever they wanted to using the iPhone application, thus reducing the time and petrol for users to get answers for their queries. JusJus’ wide variety of functions allows for more flexibility for users to use the product, making JusJus a reliable health advisor-cum-shop promoter in the size of their palm. Moreover, JusJus can make customers feel attached to JustLife as JusJus can be personalized in its health advising and online shopping experience, as well as in its online community experience.

This idea can benefit me in researching deeper into personalized marketing and how it can benefit JustLife in its branding image and its service. I can also build upon my existing content management skills in managing the database of the chosen idea for a more effective presentation and searching of information. Other than all the above technical benefits, I can gain more knowledge towards leading a healthy lifestyle and the benefits of organic products.

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Interaction flowchart

Below is the interaction flowchart I sketched in my sketchbook:

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2nd client meeting

Today we had our 2nd meeting with the clients to talk about our initial ideas. After explaining to them my initial ideas, they seemed to prefer my 2nd idea which is the personal health adviser app.
They also pointed out some important features which I should consider adding in for better user experience.
1. Provide health tips other than just selling products
2. Give advice and reminders to users
3. Better shopping experience
4. As a customer, what would I want to get from this application?
5. Use posters and promotions to lead customers to ask the avatar

Although it was a long day of waiting and traffic jam, I had learned a lot from this meeting. But I am not satisfied with my performance today as I stuttered a lot and I don't think that I presented myself well enough as a designer to the clients.

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Final year MM project idea (old)

Ask any high school students in Malaysia what is the subject they hate the most in school. About 90% of them would have answered "SEJARAH!", meaning history in Malay. What makes them hate this subject so much, that they rather pass up blank exam papers during SPM(O-Levels)?

For myself, I wouldn't say that I hate history. In fact, I love history since young. But, my interest in history had been drastically reduced during my high school times as the textbooks were VERY VERY VERY BORING. 80% of the books are text, while the remaining 20% are small, low definition, monotone images. It cannot suck me into the realm of the book as storybooks can, and very soon, learning history became a chore rather than enjoying the historical stories of our past. This kept me thinking, what could be done to make learning history as fun and as enjoyable as reading storybooks?

After some thought, I've decided that introducing interactivity and narrative into the curriculum is the main ingredient to keep readers interested. We can learn better through stories, and we definitely can learn better through interactivity. My idea for my project is to create an interactive film with a series of short clips posted on Youtube, which tells the story of Kapitan Yap Ah Loy. Each short clip tells a segment of the story and by the end of the clip, users will be able to make decisions. Each decision they made will direct them to another short clip, and this process continues on until a story path is completed. The reason I chose Kapitan Yap Ah Loy as the main character of my interactive film is because he was an important figure in shaping Kuala Lumpur to how it is today, yet his story was not elaborated in the History curriculum in high school education. I believe that it is essential for younger generations to know about his achievements since Kuala Lumpur is the heart of Malaysia. If we Malaysians do not know a single thing about who brought glory to Kuala Lumpur, are we worthy to tell others that we are Malaysians?

P.S. This is the old idea for the execution of my final project. Currently the execution is no longer an interactive narrative. For more info in my newest execution of my final project, please read the newer posts =)

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What I have learned after reading "Hamlet on the Holodeck"

I've came across this book during my 2nd year studies in Degree in Multimedia Design, but never had the time to read it. After 2 weeks of starting my 3rd year now, I finally realized the importance of reading as I could never write a good 6000 words essay without a bank of media theories at the tip of my fingers. So I rumaged in the library book shelves and grabbed this book --- thanks to Anderson's help for borrowing this book as this book is only for lecturers to borrow --- as a research material for my essay as well as for my 3rd year final project.

I would say that this book is not a difficult read. The author, Janet H. Murray, had included in some of her personal experiences with interactive narratives as interesting examples of her arguments and I've learned quite a lot from reading this book.

Murray's analysis on both optimistic and dystopian perspective on the idealised form of interactive narrative - immersive, hyperreal simulations of narratives - intrigued me to think about how human values can be questioned by technology. The human values here are love and faith, as shown in the example in Star Trek whereby Captain Janeway's lover, Mark (disguised by enemy) questioned her about her faithfulness towards him about she having a "virtual affair" with a virtual character named Lord Burleigh whom she meets everytime she enters the holodeck. Does kissing a virtual character means betrayal to your lover in reality? If the answer is yes, that means that the fine line between virtual and reality has vanished. Virtual characters can actually be as real as, or more real than real life people. If the answer is no, does this suggests that cyberspace is a platform for people to express their inner desires, fantasies, or what not?

Computer games and the internet were under constant blame for the unhealthy phenomenon --- from short attention span to obesity --- of kids nowadays. It is true that the instant feedback provided by the cyberspace pulls users away from the slow, and visually and audically unexcited collection of text printed on papers. Instead of pointing fingers and playing a tug-o-war with the cyberspace, why not assimilate the values of novel reading into computers? As Murray stated, what we look into are values and meanings rather than on the medium. Function over form.

Murrays explaination on immersion and agency is also helpful for the content planning of my project. To achieve user retention and keep them excited throughout the process of an interactive narrative, immersion and agency is important. By having the fourth wall (could be an avatar or rules to adhere by), only can users be immersed within the plot of an interactive narrative. The fourth wall draws the fine borderline between virtual and reality, enabling users to feel that they are part of the interactive narrative while not disrupting the flow of the narrative. It marks a set of rules to follow within the cyberspace, which in turn adds the users' believablity towards the narrative. If the fourth wall is removed, and users were to be invited into the cyberspace to roam freely in the narrative, users will not feel attached to the story itself and will bore out easily, or maybe worse, destroy the whole narrative structure of a particular interactive narrative. Agency, however, empowers the users and letting the users feel that what they do has a certain impact within the gamespace. A simple click could trigger a nuclear explosion within the gamespace. It is the feedback system which keeps users hooked on to the game/interactive narrative.

This book gave me more confidence in developing my final project on educating high school students on history through a narrative in the form of interactive videos on YouTube. Overall, this book really do benefit me by keeping my brain juices flowing.

A thought for my project --- to make my project appeal to my target audience, immersion and agency is a must. Probably the user can be the main character of my narrative, and each choice the user makes at each decision point will affect the storyline and reach to different endings.

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Initial idea revised

After meeting with Sweii today, she pointed out some key points regarding this project and I did some minor changes to my initial ideas.
1. Focus on educating the user instead of making it just like a product catalog.
2. In-store experience is important too. Consider adding in functions like QR code scanning.

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Initial ideas

I came up with only 2 ideas for this project. 1st is a kiosk with 2 PCs which can access to justlife's revamped website (either CSS or Flash website). 2nd is an app which features an avatar as a personal health advisor. Both ideas share common functions:
1. Quick search for products, remedies and services
2. Clear categorization of products (reduce to 6 or so)
3. Product information including name, price, brief description of product, usage, stories behind this product
4. Suggested products appear when user search for products
5. Photos for each product
6. Eco-education messages
7. Promotional posters and information
8. Card holder benefits

Below are some scans of my initial ideas:
1. CSS website 2. Flash website 3. Personal health advisor
Coming up with unique ideas is hard...I kept having ideas which are similar to other classmates. Tried my best to come up with different ideas, but in the end I stick to these ideas as I think they are more practical.

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Project details and 1st client meeting

Competitions, Festivals, and Exhibitions (CFE) is a Level 6 (Degree 3rd year) module which gives students a chance to experience dealing with real life projects, with real life clients. For this module, we were required to solve justlife's (an organic retailer) problems by creating a multimedia platform to integrate massive product information and promotion within HQ, outlets and end users. In week 9, we were required to pitch our idea to the clients.

Today, we went to visit our clients in The Gardens' justlife outlet for better understanding about the project. This is what I get after the a conversation with Terrence and Desmond from justlife, and after reading through the project brief:
1. Wastage of paper (brochures, ads, magazines)
2. Too much information
3. Categorization of information is not efficient
4. Lack of in-store space to contain massive information
5. Lack of interaction (website)
6. Lack of manpower to provide service to customers
8. They aim to educate the public about the importance of eco-lifestyle
9. It is important to increase brand loyalty and confidence
10. Highlight feature products, introduce "by the way" products, product benefits and usage
11. Budget is 35k (5k for each outlet)

This should be a fun yet challenging project to work on, as it is hard to have a unique idea because it seemed like almost everyone in the class had the same idea in mind --- product catalog in an interactive kiosk.

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