Week 10 - Slowing Progress

Progress has slowed again for the project as I've had to devote a lot of time to my final studio, however we're finalising some designs for the website and how the website will be structured. We decided to go along with trying to promote the rock stars of science in Australia, alongside those that are already known from the USA. We are hoping that this will align them with well-known scientists and carry over the theme to Australia.

The visual development of the website is a bit slow as we aren't too sure whether to go with a space theme, or to go with something more simple and colourful; along the lines of which Scishow uses to market their Youtube Channel.



The Space Federation logo below is an example of what we've been considering with our logo design, but we're not sure if it will suit our target market as it is too suited to the nerdy/Star Trek demographic that not everybody will appreciate. For now we will use it though as it is something we like, and the theme can be changed later.


Source: http://www.isa-hq.com/corporation/documents/certificate_incorporation.htm

Week 9 - Collaboration Progress Reflection

The collaboration thus far has been an insightful journey. So far I've learned a lot not only about working with somebody I've only just met, but also about what it means to work on a collaboration while you have several other collaborations going on at the same time. I was involved with three other collaborations with people I had only just met.

Working with people you're not too familiar with puts you in the deep-end a bit. This is because in the past I've always been grouped with people I knew quite well and what their strengths and weaknesses were. In this case it was simply meet somebody with a common interest, and dive into the project after splitting up responsibilities.

It taught me a lot about not worrying about what others were doing and simply doing my part of the project as well as I could. This made focus more on my responsibilities.

Looking at the way we've been collaborating it's been pretty smooth. I think the reason for this is that we're both personally engaged with the project; we're both interested in the cause, the topics, the intentions and the overall project. This is what we've identified as an "Interest-based" group model as talked about in week 2 of semester. If could relate this to the way my final studio project is going where we had to pick an issue we were passionate about and then develop a project from there it helps to make the project more engaging. I feel the same thing has occurred with this project which is why it has run quite smoothly.

Another thing that I've noticed is that if we can't find a collaborator out there who has the skill-set we need, we have been able to make-do with what we've got until we find somebody to fill that space. I have no explanation for this for, however I think it might be due to necessity. The old saying "Necessity is the mother of invention", seem to ring true with this project as we've been able to find a piece of software that helped with the web design.

Week 8 - Interesting Developments

This week has been a slow week having a series of other collaborations take front-seat, such as UNSW Cookbook and UNSW Sunswift solar racing team. As a result development on the website has not progressed much. However Nick has received some emails from Neil degrasee Tyson.

The contents of this email informed a new direction, or at least another facet to consider, for our entire project. Neil degrasee Tyson suggested that contrary to our original understanding that people don't care as much, and that we should try to inspire them, the truth is really that people simply don't know. If the information was there for them to understand and absorb they would learn more simply because humans are intuitive.

[screenshot]

This makes our job a lot easier. We don't necessarily need to convince people that science is important, but rather just put it out there in a palatable manner for them to understand. The next job is to spread it through social media and public avenues so that more people can be exposed to it.

With this in mind, and the intension to create not a science network, but rather a hub that connects existing networks, we decided to look at the way other people have tried to communicate science in an easy-to-understand way for the general public.

We came across such resources as:

Scishow


Scishow is a youtube channel that publishes short videos on science topics that are not only visually engaging but speak in plain terms so that people can get the basic gist of a topic without needing to learn too much. The narrator is funny and charismatic making him a suitable spokesperson for this sort of media.

How Stuff Works


How Stuff Works is a website developed in the early 2000s that explains in a few shorts pages how something works; from nuclear bombs to toasters. If you want to learn about the basic mechanisms that keep our world ticking this is the website for you. It touches on the applications of science and how they're used in every life making it a really useful and engaging source of information for people who don't already know too much about science. Another useful thing this website does is that throughout their articles, they include hyperlinks on keywords that might be prerequisite knowledge for a topic, so that if you don't already know about something, you can quickly jump to another link, and get a basic understanding.

The Theoretical Minimum
This is a book I was recommended by the PhD candidate I'm collaborating with. It's a bit more mathematically demanding, but with high school maths you can cruise through this book and learn some more complicated ideas that will help you better understand the more intricate topics that scientists talk about. It's a stepping stone that most people can take to get from knowing nothing to feeling like they can join a conversation about Black Holes.

Nick has a few other resources such as books which have "public-friendly" counterparts, which have been "translated" for the general public. he is using them as tools to understand how we can take any information we find, provided we understand it ourselves, and turn it into something easier to understand for the general public.