Research - Hurricane Films.

Today I began to conduct my research further for the ‘Hurricane Films’ by using the internet to provide me with different opinions and statistics on the ‘older generation’. This generation seems to be classed as approximately 50+.  Whereas most people may assume that this ‘older generation’ may not be using the internet or even have a computer, this is not necessarily the case. 58% of 50-64 year olds in 2005 were in fact using the internet regularly. More recently, that number has dramatically increased 80-90% according to online statistics.

‘Older people are an important and growing sector of the population, of whom the numbers who use computers are increasing rapidly. Yet their requirements are not often considered in the design of computer systems and software, and as a result they often find them difficult to use’ - http://www.computing.dundee.ac.uk/projects/utopia/publications/bcs_hci03.pdf

This suggests to me that when designing and running websites, specific requirement need to be taken into account. The task now is to find out what their needs are, and what can help improve the ‘older generation’s’ online experience. Therefore, more research is required.

Groups and Questions (November 2011/December 2011)

After being set questions by Hurricane Films, Rebel Play and Cbeebies, we were put into groups of three. Each group was given one of the questions previously asked by one of the companies. The question my group was given is:

How can you engage an online audience in storytelling? – How do you encourage users, especially those from an older generation to participate?

Over the past few weeks our group have been discussing how to go about answering this question. We decided that we will devise a specific questionnaire to hand out to help gather results. We have also decided to conduct online research. We will look into statistics and gather up percentages. Not only this, we are going to interview people of different ages about their online use, as well as what they tend to use the internet for. This research has already begun with the handing out of the questionnaires last week and is currently waiting on these results.

Cbeebies, 20.10.11

On Thursday 20th October, BBC Cbeebies gave a talk on the importance of continuing relevance and engagement while maintaining a safe environment for its target audience of 6-12 year olds. They posed the question:

'how to create a safe environment for children online without discouraging participation?'

They then discussed the use of their notice board. It appeared that the majority of the message board users were female and between the ages of 10-13. They also stated that even though the target audience was 6-12 year olds, children are allowed to participate on the message board up untill the age of 16.

How to make signing in something people want to do and rewards for doing so were also discussed. The ideas of a hosted personality web-chats, personalised profiles and identities and the production of compelling content were all ideas.

Enticing people to sign up with new ideas, games and up to date content were used as ways to retain interest and ensure broader usage and exploration of the website.

There are many options open to answering this question, for example talking to both parents and children. Going into schools and doing some research and looking at statistics.

Rebel Play, 13.10.11

On Thursday 13th October a games company called Rebel Play gave a talk during the lecture. During this talk, they posed the question:

 'do media platforms and genres have specific gender appeal? why don't more women play console games?'

It was stated that males are the primary demographic for games creators as 58% and 42% of women play console games. It was discussed that women appear to be playing social games, for example, games on the networking site facebook. However, women over the age of 18 are one of the industries fastest growing demographics.

Do asthetics matter and do they need to change? It was discussed whether big or small text made a difference, colouring such as black and white, different controlls and advertising. Do any of these appeal more to a specific gender? Were the 'mechanics' of the games a 'turn off'? for example, hypersexualisation, violence, zero sum outcome and rinse and repeat.

Rebel Play provided ample amount of supporting questions which meant research for answering this question would be relatively easy to start and a great presentation overall.

Liverpool lives, 06.10.11

On Thursday 6th October Hurricane Films delivered a short talk about their new website Liverpool Lives on http://www.peoples-stories.com/.

'People's Stories: Liverpool Lives' is a web-based community reminiscence project. People can submit their stories, images and footage of Liverpool throughout the years on the website.' - Hurricane Films, http://www.blogspot.com/

During this talk, Hurricane Films posed the question:

How can you engage an online audience in storytelling? – How do you encourage users, especially those from an older generation to participate?

I felt that this question could prove difficult to answer as there are many varied opinions for example, what is classed as the 'older generation'. Do the 'older generation' use computers and the internet or not? Is there anything that can be done to improve the online services for the 'older generation' and so on. A lot of research would be needed to start to pull together an accurate and meaningfull answer.