Week 4

In this week’s contact session, the team discussed our availability in order to set a time for weekly team meetings. This was done in a google sheets document, so each of us can easily collaborate on it and see a visual representation of when people are available/busy

Sorting out team availability

In terms of the individual concepts that each of us contributed, it was decided to further analyse HistoriFinder as a team, for potential weak and strong points. This was done through the coloured hat system. It was also advised not to tear down ideas too much, and to look at them with balanced perspectives. That is why the coloured hat system works well to take on different perspectives of an idea and make sure it isn’t being criticised too much through one perspective. The notes from this session can be found below:

White - Facts

• Data pulled from Trove about location may not be accurate or relevant

Yellow - Benefits

• It is educational - people can learn about the historical events that occurred around the city they live in
• There is an element of fun
• It can be beneficial for tourism

Black - Cautions

• Difficult to pinpoint exact location (technology was scarcely available back then, hard to document exact longitude and longitude of certain events)
• Difficult to implement - would have to deal with GPS and mobile development as well as Trove

Green - Creativity

• Perhaps if an exact location can not be pinpointed, the app could allow users to deduce the location based on photos
• Could use augmented reality technology to view surroundings as it were in older times through the phone camera (patching together old photographs and viewing them similar to Street View in Google Maps)

Red - Feelings

• Can potentially revolutionise how users view the city around them, and reconnect them with its historical past
• There are a lot of technical things involved and this might be out of the scope of this project

There was also some feedback/criticism received from the tutors surrounding this idea. HistoriFinder should not just become a search engine, and the information retrieved from Trove should be more focused - e.g churches, libraries etc - rather than the broad category of places where historical events have occurred. The project should also be a web application, and HistoriFinder had been designed to be a mobile application through its GPS functionality and portability.

The plan for the following week is to refine the project idea and work on the poster and pitch. After hearing the tutor’s feedback and analysing the idea more comprehensively, the team will need to rethink whether it will be feasible to implement such an idea given the time constraints and skills available.