May 2010
11 posts
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Folklife
I ended up not blues dancing at Folklife because 1) I wanted to bring my camera for pictures, but then would’ve been so worried about it that I wouldn’t have danced and 2) the weather was awful. Either way, my practically-a-cousin was hulaing at Folklife today, so we we had to show our Ohana support.
I took some awesome hula pictures and made a point to see if I could find any other...
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Learning the Webz!
I don’t want to tell you my website address yet because it’s just a “this is under construction” page that links to another under construction page… but in no time at all, I’ll have a website! I’ve got an awesome CSE major helping me code it. I’m hoping he can take a little time to explain how exactly to do it. So far, all I can do is some very...
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First plotter print ever.
Does it seem weird to anyone else that I’m a graduating senior with but 2 weeks left and I just used the SOACC plotter printer for the first time? I expected this to print so easily but, as it goes with printing anything and everything, that wasn’t the case.
I was up last night making adjustments in design/text on my Symposium poster and got very few hours of sleep. When I finally...
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Don't go with your first idea. (Whaaa?)
What I find hilarious about design is that everyone says, “Don’t go with your first idea! It’s never as good as you think it is!” …And yet most of my projects end up going through a lot of brainstorming only to land on the first idea being the best.
For instance, the first button design I made in this game I put thought into, but assumed would just set an example...
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YID
I had been trying to come up with a three-part acronym type of name for my game, and out of the blue, Lauren totally pegged the best name ever (based on one of my early button designs that I’ll now be continuing with instead of the new ones).
Yes I Dance (YID)
It says everything I want to say! It has the word dance in it (which was on my “what makes a good name checklist”), is...
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Just a quick update.
I’m at a point where I just have to DO STUFF. I don’t really like “double posting” - in this case it would mean posting online the same thing/picture I talk about in a presentation. Most of the things I’ve been working on have just been in refining my final presentation. I still desperately need to figure out the visual language of the whole game, but I keep...
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Thanks for the feedback!
I got a ton of great feedback from everyone in class on Monday! Plus, I had the opportunity to quickly explain my project to a friend at work (who hadn’t previously heard about it). All this talking has gotten me pretty good at quickly explaining how I got from point A (why don’t people dance?) to point B (let’s make a game!). Now I need to work on POINT C (the finished game)....
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A game about dancing should...
increase dancing confidence
encourage fun
encourage creativity
encourage dancing to happen more frequently
teach basic leading and following
teach basic dance moves
introduce players to dancing communities
I think I’m doing well with not losing sight of what the vision of this game is. I wrote these guidelines up today because I want to have something that I can go back to and say...
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Naming
I’ve been working on naming parts of the game. I think part of the reason it didn’t feel like a game was because everything was still in the context of dancing. One of the exciting things about games, though, is that you aren’t you, you’re a character. Even if it does take place in the real world, there’s no reason to avoid the fun that comes with having a name....
April 2010
9 posts
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The End & The Beginning
LIFE
I’ve mentioned it before, but I’m becoming ever-more aware of the fact that I’m graduating soon. It’s a little strange to think that I won’t have to commute up to the UW anymore or go to classes to prepare for some future job… Does this make me an “adult”? (I hope not! Hahaha.)
In class on Wednesday, Dominic said I should think of some...
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Simple Lessons
Lessons 1-5.
The only dancing data that my game would supply from the very start would be lessons 1-5. These lessons need to be fun, easy, and teach people that anyone can dance with anyone else. Currently, my order is like this:
Asking Others To Dance. Being the first lesson, one person already has to ask another how to dance - so that lends itself to a lesson (if the person doesn’t...
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Change and Unchange
I was feeling a bit unconvinced with my project, so I trimmed it down to something more in-line with something I could actually picture myself taking part in. My game’s end goal is not to have people playing the game, but to have people dancing. I think the game works well for drawing in a more diverse audience, giving a communal goal to dancers, and establishing a lesson plan… but...
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Things to DO
Being the end of the quarter, I feel like I have so much to do that I can hardly do it all! I’m sure it’s possible, but I need to be super organized. So, this is more for me than anyone else, but perhaps you want to know what I’m specifically working on for this project:
develop dance lessons 1-5 (video? photos? illustrations?)
talk to instructors of various dances about...
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Being content and speech content
Though speeches take me a bit out of my comfort zone, I think I’m to a point where I can feel good speaking and not be stunted by being uncomfortable. I say this because I’m thinking about my most recent presentation about my game. I had intended for it to be very simple and to get the facts of this complicated game across in a few slides. The thing I hate, though, is that...
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Overload of character information
There’s a lot going on until school is out. The planning of a game project like the one I’ve got going could easy take ten times as long to plan as the time I actually have. Right now, my game has so many different parts: stuff for the old dancers, stuff for the new dancers, levels, ranks, teaching, feedback, a website, buttons, and information about where to find dances by area. I...
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What to do about those older dancers?
People don’t realize how much fun dancing is until they try it!
My most recent conundrum has been figuring out how I can get current dancers involved in a game that aims to interest new dancers. Without the more experienced dancers, a game would feel incomplete and dancing would have to spread from new dancers to new dancers (instead of experienced to new).
So here’s what...
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Bringing the Old into the New.
I have a lot of things I plan to test, but this post is dedicated to testing buttons. It doesn’t have to be buttons. It could be nametags, stickers, pieces of paper, etc. The point of these icons is to let people a) know you are participating in something and b) let them know what level you are, what type of dancing you do, or at least something about you. (Lauren mentioned that...
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Basis
Right now, this whole alternate reality game has very sketchy details (names, details, etc), but I want to lay down what I’ve been thinking about! I feel like I’m in August’s research/game design class all over again! I sort of doubt that people will read through this entire thing (it’s a brief version, too!) - it’s almost more for me just to have it written down in...
March 2010
6 posts
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Dancing THE GAME
Without getting into too many specifics of my project - because there aren’t any yet - let me explain why I think making dancing into an alternate reality game is the way to go. (Very simply put, an alternate reality game is a game that takes place in the real world and is run by people, not artificial intelligence.)
Games clarify the goals for you. Goals are defined by the games. People...
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Spring Quarter
This is my last quarter at UW… and that hit sort of hard yesterday, the first day of the last quarter. I have so much I have to do and so much that I want to do. Between resume/website preparation, this dancing project, and the end-of-the-year design show, I wonder how much time I’ll have to pursue all those other things (the millions of craft projects and paintings I want to start...
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Post-Winter Quarter post
It’s winter break and a week since I gave my mid-project “final” speech. I think it went well both in that I felt confident and that I got lots of good feedback!
The solution I proposed for my project was to start a person-to-person dance curriculum where “lessons” are very short (5 minutes) and start by teaching how confidence is the #1 dance step for success and...
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Solutions?!
So how exactly do you move a culture from wanting to dance to actually dancing? What do I want to spend another quarter to design and refine?
#1 Idea of the Moment: One idea that’s been in my mind for a while is the idea of a simple lesson that any dancer can teach anyone - similar to the mini-lesson I gave in class. So, for example, you’re at a party and someone says, “Hey,...
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Results!
What are the main causes of people not wanting to learn to social dance?
principal benefits of social dancing are unknown to non-dancers
dancing has the connotation of being old: for instance, many people say they “don’t like the music”, but really, there is a social dance for just about any type of music, new or old. People who listen to hiphop so seem to be at the greatest...
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Inspiration
“As a psychologist who loves to dance I find people’s stories of their low levels of confidence and high levels of self-consciousness very emotive. When people tell me that they want to dance but cannot because they feel too clumsy, awkward, unskilled or un-partnered it convinces me of the need to reframe social dance as a fun and natural activity where there are no hidden agendas and...
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57 responses so far!
Of the 200 or so people I sent facebook messages to, about 1/4 of them have responded to my survey so far! Though it’s a fairly small survey of people, it has definitely shown me that everyone interprets dance differently. Here are a few of my favorite responses:
In response to “why do/did you dance?”:
“I’m never too nervous to enjoy touching girls.”
...
February 2010
13 posts
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New News!
Near the beginning of my project I found this page. It’s one page that asks people, “Why do you dance?”, created by the dance psychologist, Peter Lovatt, that I mentioned a while back. Because the results weren’t back, and that was the only tested information regarding dance [that I could find] existing, I went out and decided to do my own survey. How fitting, then, that...
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How to Get a Story
After the failure of my first survey, I’m doing things a bit differently. I just sent out facebook messages to everyone I know asking 2 questions:
Do you social dance? In your experience, what factors are the hardest to deal with that could have (or did) keep you from dancing?
What factors were the most motivating for you while learning to dance?
The nice thing about sending these...
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Project Abstract
Here’s the abstract I wrote about my project for the upcoming research symposium:
Sixty years ago, dancing wasn’t a decision; it was an activity that everyone participated in. Children learned how to social dance (e.g. Waltz, Swing) at a young age. Adults, whether or not they excelled, had a proper understanding of the structure of dance: how to lead, follow, and connect with a partner. ...
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"By any chance, can you lead?"
I went dancing last night and for the first time, a guy asked me if I could lead. Not just one guy, but two guys. The first said that he was just learning to follow, so I thought it would be too hard with both of us being beginners (I have very little experience leading). The second guy I could feel was a really great lead and said he was a good follow. So, we had this awesome dance where...
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Dance Basics
I’ve been wondering lately about what the least number of basic dance skills is that you could quickly teach to someone and have them leave feeling like they could learn to dance. For instance, if you taught someone how to lead/follow and didn’t teach them any steps, would they still be inspired to learn?
In every class I’ve ever taken, beginning to expert level, you always...
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The Best Question
If someone invited you to a social dance today, would you go?
No.
Only if there was a lesson beforehand.
Yes.
Depends on: ____ (and then you can write what it depends on).
I found this to be the BEST question on my survey. It got me the closest to understanding what the primary issues are for getting people to dance (regardless of their skill level) with the least amount of user input....
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The things you think you know...
I always hear that surveys are difficult things to write, etc yada yada. I think I’m a rather thoughtful writer so, knowing that I wanted to survey people, I went right ahead and created a survey.
Goal of the survey: To gather peoples stories about dancing. I want to learn about their interest level in dancing before they started, the first time/s they ever went dancing (if they went with...
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Take my Survey! It's about dancing! (?) →
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Studies on Dancing
I’ve been attempting to do some research of previous research on dancing, and have had a lot of trouble finding information! Perhaps I’m searching the UW databases wrong, but it appears that there is practically no knowledge on dancing and literally nothing contains the words “social dancing”. Other internet searches I’ve done to find information regarding dances...
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"Overcoming Some Fears of Social Dancing"
I read this article online that reminded me of my early experiences dancing. It gives advice for dancers who are experiencing that feeling of inadequacy or cliquishness between great dancers. Some of their headlines are: “IF I GO OUT ON THE DANCE FLOOR, PEOPLE WILL SEE I’M NOT THAT GOOD” and STRATEGIES - HOW TO DANCE MORE AND BITCH LESS. What I found especially interesting was...
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Personalizing It
One question I’ve been wondering a lot lately is: Is it harder to get someone interested in dancing in the first place, or it is harder to get an interested person to go to a dance/lesson? I want to gather a bunch of personal experiences from people about either how they started dancing or their experiences up-til-now on dancing (whether they’ve done it, thought about it, etc). The...
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How Dancing is[n't] like Public Speaking
Many people are scared/embarrassed to go social dancing in a way that is somewhat similar to public speaking. I want to explore the two activites and see why that might be and what other trends stand out.
Similarities:
You do it in front of others.
You generally have to come up with your own material.
It’s more interesting if you’re clever.
It can be rehearsed beforehand.
You...
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Association Game!
When I came up with that drinking metaphor for dancing last week, I did it because I wanted dancing to be more like drinking in the sense that people get to know one another and make connections around drinking. Not only can drinking arise out of social situations, but it also can spur them on! By thinking about what I want to see as compared to something that is currently that way already,...
January 2010
13 posts
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