T Chow's Blog

Final Interactive Visual Representation (Assignment 2) - revised version based on classmates feedback

2006-08-18T22:51:00.000-07:00

Dear Daniel and Classmates,

After receiving some feedback from classmates about our final product of "Final Interactive Visual Representation", we have done some amendment as below,

1) amend the font size of attraction's information to increase its visibility
2) add the attraction websites to provide more information for users

Terence and Amy

Flash source file (fla) - tourist-attraction-revised.fla
(best viewed by 17" LCD monitor 1280 x 1024 resolution)

Flash Object Format (swf) - tourist-attraction-revised.swf

Flash Publishing Format (html) - tourist-attraction-revised.html
(best viewed by 17" LCD monitor 1280 x 1024 resolution)

A brief description on how the representation works

2006-08-17T04:35:00.000-07:00

A brief description on how the representation works

The purpose of designing this representation

Scanning the websites available, we find that there is not one from which we can search information about all the tourist attractions in Hong Kong. For the convenience of both local and foreign tourists, it is essential to have a more comprehensive website in a visual and interactive format to introduce the sightseeing spots in Hong Kong. In recent years Hong Kong government has done a lot to attract more tourists to visit Hong Kong, it is believed that a well designed visual and interactive representation could help. This project is just in an initial stage trying to bring out this crucial and workable idea. This time we have decided to introduce four most popular Hong Kong attractions, the Ocean Park, the Disneyland Hong Kong, Madame Tussauds Hong Kong and the Giant Buddha. Undoubtedly, there are many other attractions which are worth visiting. Perhaps we can add some more into the representation in a later stage.

The use of the representation

This interactive visual representation is mainly designed for communication of information. Target users are able to get information they need from this representation. We try to make it more user-friendly. Users just need to have a few clicks to get information they want.
This representation can also be used as a reference material for teaching and learning. For instance, when students are asked to write an essay or do a project to introduce tourist attractions in Hong Kong or to plan a trip in Hong Kong, they may collect useful information from this representation, Though it is not the main aim of this design, we believe that it may help in learning in a certain extent.

The functionality of the representation

Through this interactive visual representation tourists can get information about each attraction on five main areas. They should first choose an attraction they would like to visit by clicking the picture. Then the picture chosen will be highlighted with a RED frame. At the same time, five icons appear at the bottom representing “Historical Briefing”, “Entry Fee”, “Opening Hours”, “Ticket Booking” and “How to get there”. They may put the mouse on one of the five icons to get information they need. Then certain relevant information will pop up. The design is simple enough for all kinds of visitors who want to know more about the tourist attractions in Hong Kong.

Reflection

As we have mentioned above, this representation is just in an initial stage. With our limited IT skills and due to time constraint, we are sure that there is still room for improvement. For example, more tourist attractions and information icons can be included in the representation. Based on our idea, we hope the organizations and departments concerned can develop it further in future.

Cheers,

Terence & Amy

Final Interactive Visual representation (Assignment 2)

2006-08-14T03:00:00.000-07:00

Dear Daniel and classmates,

Please find our final internative visual representation project as shown below, and please kindly comment.

flash object format (swf)

web publishing format (html)

Revised prototype of our final product

2006-08-12T03:14:00.000-07:00

Dear Daniel and classmates,

Please find our revised prototype and kindly comment.

Terence and Amy

The first one is our entry screen and you could "select" any attraction you want. After selecting your desired attraction, it will highlight with RED color, put the mouse "on" at any function that you want. It will prompt up your desired information. These functions include "Historical Briefing", "Entry Fee", "Opening Hours", "Ticket Booking" and "How to Get There".

Reflection on how to improve the final product (based on some feedback from classmates)

2006-08-12T02:03:00.000-07:00

Dear Danial and Classmates,

After getting some comment from our classmates, Amy and I decide to make our project a bit simple, but we will keep the same ideas of this "tourist attraction" project. Our main idea is to attract more tourists/visitors outside Hong Komg to learn more of our major attractions. It is understand that there are many attraction (e.g. 18 districts and attractions). we will emphasis four major attractions in our project. It is believed that the majority of tourists/visitors would not miss these attractions.

They are Ocean Park, Disneyland Hong Kong, Giant Buddha, and Madame Tussauds Hong Kong.

We may consider extend this project to include more attractions after the end of this module.

Cheers,

Terence and Amy

The revised prototype (based on feedback) are shown in the following blog and please kindly comment.

Details of our project storyboard

2006-07-21T00:59:00.000-07:00

Reflection of lesson 7 and lesson 8

2006-07-14T19:48:00.000-07:00

Dear all,

It is nice that we have learnt some technical skills in Flash which are very useful in our module project, particularly in creating slider (both continue and discret) , movie, button, and special effect. We have also learnt the concept of frame and layer when creating the object.

Thanks for Daniel's patient guidance.

Cheers,
Terence

Storyboard of our project

2006-07-06T19:01:00.000-07:00

Dear Daniel and Classmates,

We have created the story-board of our project as below.

http://iln.cite.hku.hk/com/1238/users/cwchow/story-board.ppt

Please kindly comment.

Terence and Amy

Reflection of lesson 6

2006-07-02T23:06:00.000-07:00

Dear Daniel and classmate,

After lession 6, I have familiar more about the nice feature of Flash and find that it is very sophisticated and object orientated. Thank you for Daniel kindly assistance of this hand-on skills during the class and explain the whole planning process of this project.

Our next task is defined the "story board" of this project

Cheers,
Terence

Project Proposal

2006-06-29T06:25:00.000-07:00

Dear Daniel and Classmates,

Our proposal is developing an application such that it could help Hong Kong visitors learn more about our tourist attractions. Currently, the Hong Kong tourism commission is using a hyperlink under the web to introduce different "attractions and 18 districts" to our visitors.

However, it is find that they are in the form of information only which do not have any visual interaction with the web surfers.

http://www.discoverhongkong.com/eng/touring/hkiidistricts/index.jhtml

Scope of work

Proposed add-on visual/interactive ideas for these attractions are:

1) identify the bus, tram, boat and other routes to these different attractions

2) highlight some attraction important parameters (i.e. visitors count, opening hours, entry fee, discount for overseas visitors, etc) for web surfers

3) hyperlink to these attraction websites

4) faciliate its entry ticket booking, etc

5) propose route to visitors for their planning of trip (e.g. what attractions are suitable for your one day or two days local trip)

Since this proposed scope of work is very preliminary, we will add more nice features to this project in the later stage.

Technical Issues

Developing tool is using "Macromedia Flash" for this project. There may have the limitation of this software, we will revise the scope of work accordingly if necessary.

Please kindly comment and suggest some functionality you find interest.

Cheers,

Terence and Amy

Reflection of lesson 5

2006-06-28T21:03:00.000-07:00

Dear Classmates and Daniel,

After lesson five, we have familiar more details of software "flash". Since we will use it for our project of this module, we have tried it a bit at home. However, it is find that it is not as easy as we expected. We need to have more hand on of this software during these couple of weeks. In the mean time, apart from these technical thing, the utmost important thing is to brain storm the story board of our project.

Cheers,
Terence

Task 4 - Shape of a rain drop

2006-06-22T07:47:00.000-07:00

Dear Classmates and Daniel,

Amy and I have done the task 4 as below link,

Task 4 - Shape of a rain drop

Enjoy it and cheers,

Terence and Amy

Reflection of lesson 4

2006-06-22T07:35:00.000-07:00

Dear all,

This lession give us a background knowledge of learning object such as simulation objects, practice objects, presentation objects, information objects, conceptual models and contextual respresentation. Particularly, the information objects and conceptual models recall our memory of database design E-R diagram, etc.

I have tried the evaluation version of "Crystal Xcelsius" , but it seems that it is not easy as we think. Consequently, Amy and I do the task 4 still stick on our familiar powerpoint software. We wish we could try our next exercise with this new software tool.

Cheers,
Terence

Reflection of lesson 3

2006-06-22T07:26:00.000-07:00

Dear all,

In this lession, we have learnt different kind of digital stories and the story development process. This give us a foundation to build our final project (Accessment Component 2) of this module.

Cheers,
Terence

Task 3 - Digital Story

2006-06-15T22:50:00.000-07:00

Dear Daniel and Classmates,

This project is working with my partner, Amy Kan. The first story is using an active voice and the latter one (same story) is using passive voice to teach a class of F.2 student.

Please link to my digital story as below. Enjoy it ...

Story 1
Story 2

Reflection of this task

We have a great experience when we are doing this project.

We have learnt how to create a digital story using this user friendly "Photo Story 3" tools. It is a nice tool which help us authoring all videos, texts, photos and music stuffs together in a story board within a timeline. We don't need to worry about any technical issue and could finish the digital story in a very short time.

Cheers,
Terence Chow

Task 2 - Design a Visual Display

2006-06-08T08:13:00.000-07:00

Dear Classmates and Daniel,

Amy and I have created an information object of task 2. Please kindly have a look and comment. Thank you.

Cheers,
Terence and Amy

Some reflection when we do this information object:

It seems that the source of text has rich information and we need to present it in visual and interactive form. We have trace off some unimportant facts and details in exchange of less wording and self-explanation. We are using powerpoint for this exercise and may be we could try some other tools next time.

Finally, it is a good start for us in visual thinking.

Terence

Reflection of lesson two

2006-06-06T09:03:00.000-07:00

After this lesson, it is glad that I have chosen the right module in my MSc program. Traditionally, we have learnt reading and writing in our studies. It is rarely to learn how to present our ideas in a visual form.

From this module, we could use same data in different visual form to present to our audience with different ideas. A good visual representation is consisting of less wording but more creativity.

Cheers,
Terence

Reflection of lesson one

2006-06-06T08:17:00.000-07:00

It is nice to learn from this lesson that there is a tool called "blogger" which could help us to share and present our ideas in a visual and interactive form.

Terence Chow

Introduction of Terence Chow

2006-06-01T08:37:00.000-07:00

Do you want to know more about Terence Chow ?

MITE/MLIM6323: Hello from Terence

2006-05-26T18:29:00.000-07:00

Hi,

It is nice to meet our MLIM & MITE 6323 classmate yesterday. Wish we could learn more about visual and interactive respresentation of knowledge in this module.

Terence