What good does information do if you don’t use it? The main purpose of collecting information is for analysis and application. This is the process of taking this information and deciding what it means and from there deciding how to apply what you have learned from the analysis of the data. This class has helped in making me confident in understanding data and applying the knowledge I extract from the data to make conclusions or changes. I will provide three examples of assignments in which I display my skills of application and analysis.
The first example is the “design crash course” assignment. This assignment was very interesting in the sense that it asked me to do and think about things in ways that I had never done and thought about. The objective of this crash course was to create an object to symbolize the gift giving process of a partner’s last gift giving experience. In order to successfully do this, we had to collect data from our partner regarding their last experience of giving gifts. Once all the data was collected, We had to use it to then decide how to create an object to represent that experience. The thinking involved was so abstract that it greatly interested me. My partner was giving a gift to a long-time friend that’s moving away from her. I had asked many questions regarding how this experience felt for her and what it meant to her. From analyzing the data that I collected, I came to the conclusion that her gift giving experience was about growing up and being genuine. There were a few other aspects that resulted from this growth that I symbolized in my invention. My invention that described the gift giving process was a ring in the shape of a tree made from pipe cleaner. The trunk was brown with green leaves. There was a few different colored fruits that grew from the tree in the form of small fuzzy balls.
http://mikey.ourdigitalplanet.net/design-thinking-crash-course/
My second example is the “beta test survey.” the analysis and application of this data is crucial to our serious game. In this assignment we collected data from the first people to test out our game. We used this data and represented it in a mathematical form (graphs). From there we analyzed the data and came to the conclusion that our game needed some bugs to be fixed. The first was that some of our questions were too ambiguous. We not only collected data on the effectiveness of our game but we also had a pre-survey in which we asked questions that would tell us if the people testing our game matched the personalities and qualities of our target audience. This way we could validate the opinions of the individuals about our game. For example, if there was someone that did not care much about being prepared for disasters and did not take interest in trivia games or learning by being tested then they did not fit our target audience. This means that the game we created was not intended for that person therefore we need not change our game based upon the data collected from that person.
http://mikey.ourdigitalplanet.net/beta-test-surveys/
The final example that I will display is the “memory and learning research presentation.” In this assignment we had to read an article that consisted of research and statistics done on the different types of learning and memorization techniques from this information we created a slideshow to summarize the main learning techniques. The final slide spoke about how we were going to apply this newly-learned information to our serious game. The article mainly talked about how most often people do not learn unless they want to and and are interested in the topic. Form memorization there are many techniques that people use. One of the best techniques that I often use myself is by asking myself the questions until I can easily answer them. We decided to apply this knowledge to our game by creating a trivia style where the main piece of the game is answering disaster preparedness questions. We added the component of phoning a friend in one didn’t know the answer in order to make the game more dynamic and involving that way people would have more fun and in turn, learn more.