Month: April 2019

• 

• 

• 

This time, our week started on Tuesday as Monday was Easter. We started our day with a meeting with Emma to discuss the script Sascha worked on the Thursday before. Emma gave us some recommendations and suggested rephrasing some terms but all in all told us that the script was well written and had an entertaining edge just like we wanted. Based on these amendments, Sascha finalized the script and made a table for all the scenes to be shot and the sequence guide needed for Unity as well.We all bought the TNW tickets, finally! For the rest of the day, we did this sprint’s planning where we decided to plan only for the first week because everything depended on each other. But the main goal was fixed as preparing the prototype for TNW and we would divide tasks to finish it. Lama decided to try out and ask people about their vision of the future using one of the methods in the design method toolkit called Break-up/Love Letter. Neel looked more into Unity and Martin had some free time to help him out. Ola was busy making sure all the equipment she would need the next day was available.

We all met at the studio on Wednesday morning and moved together to the HvA’s Amstel campus to help Ola in the shooting. Ola and Sascha arranged the location to be the labs where the engineers work as they had machines that matched with what we had in mind for the look and feel of the video. Neel stayed at the studio to work Unity out for a while and then joined us later. We spent the whole day shooting the scenes in order and in different locations around the labs and were lucky enough to find some project leftovers that we could use in our installation.

Thursday was a very productive day. We cleaned up our desks and changed the setting a bit. Lama found an old TV screen that can be used in the installation. It needed a specific cable that she ordered on the same day and will test it when it arrives. She looked at possible materials that could be used in building the installation. Neel had some progress on Unity and got help from Martin and Lucca from teh Grow kit team. Sascha spent the day figuring out how the buttons work using the Makey Makey Kit. She succeeded in making them work and connecting them to the computer. Ola stayed home and worked on editing the scenes for the video.

On Friday, we started the day early with the second part of the workshop on design ethics with Charlie Mullhond, a professor of ethics from the CMD department at HvA. We worked a bit afterwards as we waited for a special King’s day mini Olympics that the coaches arranged for the community.

On Friday last week, Ola hosted a brainstorm session at her place after our prototyping workshop with our coach Mick. We sat down together with a couple of her friends whom she thought could help us in generating ideas for our prototype. Laura Ghitoi, a researcher, consultant and journalist, volunteered once at TNW and gave us insight on what kind of people we should be expecting at the conference and what the environment was like there. Other than Laura, there was Erik Anyone, a creative, storyteller and builder who helped us visualize the form in a more realistic way. There was also Marco Grandia, a director and storyteller. Ola presented our process to them and afterwards, they just started proposing different ideas and approaches we could take on. It was a fruitful session that paved the way for narrowing down our focus and settling on an idea.

On Monday, we started with the notes Neel and Ola took during Friday’s brainstorm session and while discussing them, Ola came up with an idea. We found that it kind of combined all the aspects we want the prototype to include. Sascha also had a refined idea so we voted to choose one between both and Ola’s idea had the most votes. It was centered around the idea that the participant is a reporter from the present time trying to explain the current developments in tech to someone from the past in the 1970s when AI was just starting to bloom. We thought it would give some sort of a reference/context to the participant while answering the questions. For the rest of the day, Lama worked on the sprint review’s presentation and creating a list of everything the team will need to make the prototype. Neel spent his time trying to find digital platforms to use instead of programming something from scratch. Sascha wrote a version of the script and created a word-web of the results of her workshop with the community at DSS. Ola was trying to find a location to shoot the video. Also, Martin, someone from another team in DSS showed us how to get started on a game developing software called Unity to setup the input/output system for the prototype.

On Tuesday, Sascha, Neel and Lama went to the Ministry of Justice in The Hague for the third sprint review and presented the team’s progress so far and the final idea for the prototype at the TNW. It was the same audience as the last sprint review plus Sandra so we did a quick recap of what happened during the last two sprints to bring her up to speed. The sprint review went smoothly and at the end we had some time to brainstorm for amendments/additions to the prototype idea. Ron said that he would like to have the next translate session for revising the questions with us before we shoot the video. We scheduled a meeting with Emma next Tuesday as well to work on the questions. Ola stayed home and worked on her thesis.

On Wednesday morning, we had the peer pitches during which we gave a more concise presentation than the sprint review’s.

Neel had food poisoning so he didn’t come and we worked from the Makers Lab that day. Martin showed Lama how to navigate on Unity while Ola and Sacha worked on the script and the questions. Sascha read the summary of the Online Harms White Paper Emma sent us and Ola found a couple of sets for shooting the video. 

On Thursday, Sascha and Ola went location scouting and found a very good one at HvA’s Amstel campus so they booked it for next Wednesday right away. Sascha spent the rest of the day finishing up the script while Neel focused on learning how we can use Unity for our input/output mechanism. He also checked the studio for some electronics we might need for the prototype. After meeting up with Martin, he sketched the scenes for navigating the video and created a coding to-do list. Lama worked on a more general to-do list for the whole prototype and wrote the week’s WordPress blogpost.

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

On Monday we had a meeting with our IT-guy Jake to discuss the technical feasibility of our designs. He recommended that instead of doing a 3D model, we could better focus on a 2D design. He also recommended us to look for opensource examples which we could edit. Sascha created a Venn diagram to group all of our previous research topics and get an overview of our research directions. Neel had another look at our research questions. We agreed that we should not reinvent the wheel and want an accumulative data visualisation. Lama and Ola showed us their reworked designs for their prototypes.

On Tuesday Neel and Sascha showed us their reworked designs for their prototypes. We printed all of our sketched and we did a more in-depth brainstorm about the content, purpose and goals of the prototype. We then had a session with our coach Mick to condense all of our ideas and talk about feasibility. We divided tasks for the further development of a prototype. Ola would be responsible for the overal theme and narrative, Sascha for the content of the questions, Lama for the interface and Neel for the data visualization. On this day we also received the unfortunate news that Eva will have to quit the project due to personal health circumstances.

On Wednesday we wrote down all of the questions we thought could be used for the prototype’s content. We then had a meeting with Sanne, a digital security specialist and new media scholar. She advised us to make our questions more embedded in reality through the use of case-studies or scenarios. This will help our participants to imagine. We also had a meeting with our track consultant Emma, who agreed with Sanne’s advice and emphasised that we should first settle on the content before agreeing on a certain form. We also learned that Mick can help us with the developing part of our prototype.

On Thursday Sascha spent time looking for case-studies of the use of AI for policing in the Netherlands. She also read the article Ron provided us with about principles of AI for policing. She also did a workshop with our peers to find out what personas the police should resemble. Neel and Lama worked together to generate ideas for a visual language of the prototype. Neel tested different ways of interaction and Lama created different interface design ideas. Ola was working from home on her thesis.

On Friday we continued our research working both separately and together. We also had a workshop by our coach Mick for making paper prototypes and working together with other teams on their prototypes.

On Monday we started our third sprint! We planned our sprint and had a feedback session in which each team member discussed their strengths, desires and pitfalls. Neel was working hard on his participation in a design competitions. Sascha digitised our sprint planning and cleaned up our office space. Lama organised our drive and Sascha looked up precedent studies

On Tuesday we presented each other with the precedent studies that we found. Out of this we created 4 final which the prototype has fulfil. We also sent out our requests for student tickets at the Next Web. Neel filled in the relay document of our second sprint.

On Wednesday Neel and Lama worked together in the studio whilst Eva, Ola and Sascha worked from home. We also got the news from Jesper van Putten that there was space available for us at their stand at the Next Web!

On Thursday the team got back together and worked hard on forming a prototype idea individually with a mood-board and sketches and presented it to the team at the end of the day.

On Friday we invited Jesper van Putten to the studio and had a successful presentation of our individual prototypes and we learned more about the police’s plans for the demo’s and workshops at the Next Web conference. Eva and Lama attended a workshop by Zlatina in which a DSS alumni gave tips on the ideation process. Ola wrote another Medium blogpost and Sascha updated the WordPress board.