| Welcome (23rd August 2017) |
Procter Periodical #11 |
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Welcome | 23 August 2017 Procter Periodical #11 Feb - August.I welcome sponsorship for this and my related podcast, if you are interested then just drop me an email. adamprocter@researchnot.es If you would however just like to buy me a coffee please do. 
Ok so lets get started; It's been a fantastic term at WSA with my first ever graduating cohort of Games Design & Art students it was pretty special and we had two fantastic shows in London and Winchester. It's very difficult to sum up how much we did with trips to Norwich, Women in Games, studios and a host of guest speakers, the semester went to plan and more. I was bowled over by the student responses to the final project it was excellent.   Images from London Show opening and Graduation. Well done class of 2017! Some of the games and the custom cabinets (thanks to Andy and his technical team at WSA) are in fact being showcased at the Edinburgh fringe FuturePlay Festival. Two graduates have helped support the set up for this and gained more experience.   Images from Edinburgh Show and Winchester. So far the graduates have already started securing future work, further study, starting their own businesses and Cameron appears to be travelling the world which is great! The best way to catch up with the fantastic work they produced for the final major project module is to watch the documentary we created with MIND THE FILM. https://vimeo.com/225135550 As you can see from the documentary we really did crack the games for purpose positioning of the course and will be doubling down on the research led game design curriculum to work on more game artefacts that try to say something and provide fantastic experiences for players. We have a linked in group too and if anyone would like to work with these graduates feel free to contact me. Bobbie is now working at Manga High an education games company based in London and her game she created for them "Deepest Ocean" was released just prior to her graduation has been seeing fantastic download stats.  Image from Deepest Ocean made by Bobbie for Manga High Bobbie wasn’t only working on this game however as you will have seen from the documentary she was working with Claudia to help execute the game Hurry Hurry Heal Me. Watch the trailer here.  Unity Screenshot from Hurry Hurry Heal Me The game is a local co-op for the Nintendo Switch and had been gaining even prior to completion super positive feedback at Norwich Games Festival, our Winchester and London Shows and at Develop Brighton they received more detail on the potential to take Hurry Hurry Heal Me to a publisher. Claudia is not only looking into this but has secured a 3 month placement at Sennep with Aaron (maker of Denizen) developing their indie game Holes (working title).  Unity screenrecording of early Holes development You can follow the design process both via Sennep's instagram and Claudia has set up and is running a process related blog. It's great to see the practices we use on the course now being directly applied in real world working practice! I love the open design practice as well! Amazing stuff and the game is looking like it could be another hit for Sennep. Watch this space! (I'm lucky enough to get to test beta versions too!!)  Claudia, Bobbie and Aaron at the London Show Claudia was also on BBC Radio 4 Woman’s Hour talking about Women and Gaming.  Jay-Ann Lopez and Claudia at Broadcasting House! It was such a blast this final semester with the graduating students and I can't wait to start again with the 2017/18 cohort! Keep an eye on @gamesdesignart on twitter and Instagram. I will be at a few conferences throughout September. I will be on a panel at Women in Games talking about how we at Winchester School of Art on the Games Design & Art programme are working hard to support and encourage young female designers into the industry. Panel 4: Evolving Education and Student Awards is Wednesday 6th @12:00. I am then attending Grapic Design Educators Network GDEN ! You can listen to two podcasts Derek and I recorded last year about GDEN in 2016 (episode 1 / episode 2) and you will hear a review of Derek's time there. Note that some themes have certainly come through into the Alt/Shift track that Derek has curated this year! Then quickly followed by The Future of Text Symposium which I had hoped to be an active participant in day two but my PhD research took some of a back burner although I have written up about 40% of my upgrade document which will be live online asap. I did however manage a staff seminar and have a pretty good recording of the here and would again really value feedback.  Panopto Recording of the session Connected to my staff seminar I was able to give a talk in Japan at the Open Cultural Heritage Workshop in Kyoto.  Not quiet Edward Snowden but it was cool My brief presentation was on the need to rethink our digital tools and the types of ethical considerations we should embed in our thinking. This was pretty exciting but as I was presenting remotely it was a little early in the UK and via Skype it was a little odd but cool new experience. Feedback was positive however. And finally in Sept I will be attending Digitally Engaged Learning I had a great time when I was there a few years ago, my own paper didn't make the cut as a workshop but I welcome feedback on the proposal either online or in person at DEL is cool! Ok so thats a bit of whats been happening but more recently I am pretty exited to have kickstarter backed and am becoming an avid fan of Micro.blog.
This is neatly explaned is this post which asks if services like Micro.blog could flip the iceberg, lets hope so.  My version of the iceberg image in this article Facebook and Instagram’s algorithmic timeline is terrible, twitter is not much better if you use the official page or apps. But they are all problematic as they rely on advertising revenue which is also key to why they are terrible to use now. Your data is not yours and is of course being mined to sell you to advertisers.  Image from post The nature of the self in the digital age Posting to Micro.blog (also backed up to github) is very easy with the iOS app or website and this also cross posts the same message to twitter and facebook. I also use OwnYourGram so instagram pics are posted on Micro.blog which thus also puts the image on twitter and facebook. This simple ability to openly share text and images, with control over your content in a delightful way is great. Micro.blog hosted accounts provide all this and at $5 a month it is well worth it. You can host elsewhere and use Micro.blog to cross post for only $2 pcm. I feel Micro.blog has managed a number of things ind.ie’s Heartbeat was also aiming at which is good to see. I would encourage anyone that got initially excited about twitter & Instagram but wants to regain control over their data check it out. You can see and follow my Micro.blog here; http://discursive.adamprocter.co.uk. Did I mention Micro.blog is all in Markdown too! So that's more than enough talking ! Thats also a lot of inline links anyway, so make sure you check them out however below is a few more recent links you may like. Follow me on Micro.blog, dctr.pro and pinboard to keep up with all my links.
Design Thinking
Film of Event - Almost forgot I was part of an event called Digital/Physical which was held at mother and was a one night exhibition and panel discussion with provocations from Dr Seth Giddings designed to examine the significance of gamification and interactive platforms to contemporary communication design. You can read a blog post here with some more detail. I was very pleased to be able to invite and have on the panel Carleigh Morgan and Minkette. It was a very busy and from what I heard well received.  Setting up at Mother Hybrid Design
Espresso 2 - my all time favourite code editor gained a fantastic update to a brand new version 2 and it's even better. I recommend for any web project. http://achariam.com/dataviz/ Simple but nice Five Principles for Good Data Visualisation. Ideo Design Kit Course - Design Kit: The Course for Human-Centered Design. Instructor: IDEO .org A free course from Acumen. Looks good if you can make a team and commit to the time needed. Automated Cars - Designing self driving cars sounds difficult but what about pedestrians crossing the road, great look at designing systems to support crossing the road in an automated world. BBC iPlayer - Series, Secrets Of Silicon Valley, great stuff on the bad aspects of the Valley. I also just found out Apple’s new HQ does not have any childcare facilities! There is a lot of bubble design happening in the valley, they want world change but so long as it makes money and is disruptive in their terms. Storyboarder - being able to quickly show interaction, movement and sequencing in a low-fidilty way is super important to design and this tool looks very nice in that regard as well as being a neat and free traditional storyboard and animatic tool. Web Typography Handbook - I kickstarter backed this and is a great tool for doing type right on the web. Type layout site - recently found this free tool to set type as well looks nice. UXPin eBooks - some great free UX ebooks. Icons In Motion - interview with Salih Abdul-Karim, Airbnb’s design lead and animator. Turning Noun Project icons into moving animations with new tool Lottie. Games
I don’t get as much time as I'd like to play games, what with Horizon and Last Guardian bought at full launch price and I've probably notched up only a few hours on each but hey here is some more to consider. No Mans Sky - gained a major update at 1.3 getting stories and more. This feels much closer to what Sean Murray wanted but not sure it will be as noticed as it should be. Also they created an Alternate Reality Game Waking Titan very nice. Elite Dangerous - I played a little but could get into this once I master the controls a bit more… going to save for a landing computer ASAP! Feist - Recommended by a friend and was on indie discount. Stunning visuals, super haunting soundtrack, get it on Bandcamp!. So far this is right up my street,only played a little and likely to get a lot harder. Nice bit of indie work indeed!  Check out the soundtrack onBandcamp Sonic Mania - Looks great yet to purchase but I will be. Spectrum Next - look interesting and my first computer was a rubber key spectrum so I am always excited about BASIC. Teaching
Finnish Schools - The biggest lesson from schools leading the world in terms of good education, turns out it is they trust their teachers. Who’d have thought… Intentions book - I was super fortunate to attend Amy’s Book launch in London and caught up with a few online friends in real life which was ace. Her book contains hosts of tips and ways to utilise creative processes in teaching a host of areas. I was also in town at a career day for ADA Digital Skills College which is doing some interesting stuff indeed. I met some of the staff at Somerset house Now Play This which was also excellent. Productivity
Ulysses - My favourite writing app Ulysses switched to Subscription charging this month. If you do any type of writing, blogging this app is for you. I use it to create all our project briefs and such for Games Design & Art, along with creating this newsletter and some blogging, I am hoping they will bring in mircopub support soon and then I can use it for Micro.blog too. Kanban Project Management Software - Opensource alternative to trello, seems pretty good and I manage to get it up and running in less than 5mins. The Force Quit Fallacy - you don’t need to force quits iOS apps and this is a neat explanation of why. Firefox 57 - Coming November - I love Firefox, Mozilla are a good company and there sync service was one of the first to sync everything including your history, where everyone else started with tabs only. I need/ed that! Anyway people tend to complain its slow. From what I know Safari is actually the fastest, not matter what Google tell you, but this update could change a number of peoples thoughts on Firefox, hopefully.  Firefox has a new style Mascot! Music & Film
Scott Walker Prom - I am a massive Scott Walker fan and this was something special. I couldn't make it in person but the BBC coverage was fantastic. I also was linked to this awesome Radio 3 BBC R&D high rate streaming experiment which is very cool and the link came to me just in time for the live broadcast, so plugged mac and Firefox (required) into my amp and speakers was great. Susanne Sundfør - All the artists singing Scott’s work where excellent but I had not heard of Susanne Sundfør before, well worth checking out. Guardian Long Read - Interesting article about why we maybe teaching people to sing in completely the wrong way. Current techniques seem to lend themselves to vocal injury and surgery, but there maybe another way. Randoms
Pollutions Solutions - Electric cars address only a small part of the problem – we need to rethink the whole crazy transport system. I like George Monbiot he writes some good stuff indeed, this makes total sense, we are caught up in pursuing lots of fixes to broken systems, most are plasters, rethinking and redesigning is hard but often yields better solutions. I also managed some time to quickly updated my main page adamprocter.co.uk this last month, it feels like its up to date and works a little better for me now. This edition is dedicated to Derek Yates, no he is not dead! This summer he left Winchester School of Art for a new adventure at Ravensbourne. I have learnt a lot from working alongside Derek for the last few years and will certainly miss his daily advise on education and design. We will no doubt be working together in the future.  Its been emotional - Vinnie Jones Please do tweet or micro.blog at mention me any comments or ideas and please do share if you like the newsletter. If you are in England hope you enjoy the upcoming bank holiday. I will be in Dreamland, Margate.  Thanks for taking your time to read this. Adam
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