This is our submission for the ExplainIA competition put on by the IA Institute. It was a really fun project to work on - you should go check out the other submissions as well, if you haven’t yet. Lots of great ideas!
Developing our submission was an interesting process for me. It began with some initial brainstorming and talking with the other members of our team, which gave me a pretty clear idea of where to take the project. From this early stage thinking, I knew I wanted the project to be shot with an iPhone to give the submission a "democratic filmmaking", "citizen journalist" type feel. Given that what we do in UX involves helping people to express their ideas and tell their stories, this seemed appropriate. But I soon learned that in filmmaking, knowing what you want in the end is not the same as having a plan to get there! Something I would surely have thought of if the project had been in the realm of work I’m used to doing - but for some reason when making a video submission, it didn’t seem necessary to plan out the project as I normally would in UX. My logic being that the video would only be two minutes long at most and I could keep everything organized in my head. I was wrong. Monday night I had to admit to myself that I really did need a storyboard to follow and spent some time thinking through how and where IA touches our daily experiences. I ended up scrapping most of what I had shot and redid the pieces I needed. Once I had a plan, the process was much faster and I was much more confident in getting together a final submission. Goes to show you, planning out stories, like planning out experiences, is essential.
Posted in Announcements on February 5, 2010
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