R.I.T. alternate reality game example

Found this example recently of a collaboration between the Rochester Institute of Technology and the Rochester newspaper, the Democrat & Chronicle, in an alternate reality game that involved local history and other elements that could inform our projects:

The Web site

Trailer



Recap

Chinuk Wawa

Lorraine Botros recently attended a weekly discussion group in which people practice and discuss Chinuk Wawa. Wawa is the jargon that was spoken around Fort Vancouver during the mid-1800s, allowing the more than 35 different ethnic groups living in that village just outside the fort's stockade to communicate. The local discussion group is led by Wawa language expert Evan Gardner. Botros and her CMDC 354.02 team plan to incorporate Wawa into their Fort Vancouver Mobile module under construction.

More information on Chinuk Wawa from the Oregon Encyclopedia

Here are some of the initial pilot clips Botros shared (Thanks, Lorraine!):

House1

House edited

Chluch

More public domain music resources

Music from the Romantic period in the public domain, via MusOpen.org:

List

And Civil War big band music from the Library of Congress:

List

Black holes on the Internet

Per our recent class discussion, a map showing where digital information is choked broadly by institutions concerned with controlling content, or service simply isn't available. Courtesy of: Reporters Without Borders.

Internet visualization

Courtesy of the National Center for Supercomputing Applications.

What size should the mobile app buttons be?

Like everything in mobile design right now, the answer is never simple (and notice how these sorts of questions make great research projects).

Here are a couple of academic writings that address the issue (both of which should be available via the WSUV Library):

Target size study for one-handed thumb use on small touchscreen devices, by Pekka Parhi University of Oulu, Finland, Amy K. Karlson, University of Maryland, College Park, MD, Benjamin B. Bederson University of Maryland, College Park, MD

Designing Gestural Interfaces by Dan Saffer

The recommendation from the Apple development camp is: 44X44 px

I've read elsewhere that 60 px diagonally is a good baseline measurement, but the consensus seems to be that the best approach is to create the buttons and, surprise, test them on users. ...

More bonus material - Overview of the mobile app development environment right now

Came across this video clip interview with Lino Tadros, CEO of Falafel Software, at Silicon Valley Code Camp in October. He gave, according to this video, "a presentation on developing across the three most popular mobile platforms: Windows Phone 7, Android, and iPhone. His number one tip for developers is not to try to write once and have it run across all three platforms." The content in this is conversational, and it does, I think, give a brief overview of the environment app developers are facing right now.