BCM302 DA: TennisForLife68

Project Summary

Project name: Tennisforlife68

Language using: English for content and Chinese for IG stories

Target audience: Universities students who have played tennis before, who have the basic learning of tennis and seek for improvement. 

Platform using: Instagram and YouTube, Twitter (personal account)

Background

Firstly, I would like to develop this project because nowadays there are so many people start playing tennis, especially during the pandemic time, once the public sport facility was opened, there were many people especially universities students started playing tennis for several reasons, the first reason is they want to enjoy playing sports, especially during the pandemic time every entertain facilities have been locked down. The second reason is they want to learn a new sport just for fun. The third reason is they want to improve. I have been playing tennis since I was a child, and nowadays there are lots of people, especially university students who play tennis but always have the injury. There are different reasons for injury, but mainly is playing the incorrect form. Therefore in this project I want to use my professional knowledge and practice not just to help my target audience to make the tennis form correctly, but also make the video content look professional and cool. 

Proposed Utility

As I said before, the problem nowadays is that injuries happen because they use the correct method to play. Therefore my aim is through my project to teach them the correct method of playing tennis, and also telling my target audience and other users that playing tennis is very professional and cool, which may help more people try to play tennis or make them have motivation to play sports no matter what sports they play. 

According to stop tennis injuries, in tennis there are different types of injuries such as tennis elbows. But all injuries have the same characteristics which are using the wrong muscle. In other words, doing the form incorrectly and as a result it leads to an injury. After seeing this website it makes me want to utilize my project to spread this message seriously. 

Production method

Suppose I decide my social media platform will be YouTube only. However when I first make the video uploaded to YouTube, I found it difficult just using one social media platform because it is very hard to get the interaction with users, and it is very difficult to get the feedback as well because not everyone will look at my video in full length. Therefore after the first video that I made I instantly decided to use 2 more platforms to increase the interaction with users and awareness of my video content. These are Instagram and Twitter. I choose Instagram to be my second platform because nowadays the majority of teenagers are using Instagram, YouTube will be their second platform that they use, but since IGTV appeared many famous accounts such as fashion brands use IGTV to post the fashion show video first than YouTube. Therefore Instagram has now become my major platform to produce my video. It is easy to get interactions and feedback from users. And I use different IG functions to get interactions and feedback from my users. And for Twitter, unfortunately I haven’t opened an official account yet but I use my personal account to post my tweet and tell my users to like and retweet my tweet. 

Why we need to use different social media platforms is because this is the fastest way to bring connections between business owners and users. According to the marketing insider group, it said that “social platforms help you connect with your customers, increase awareness about your brand, and boost your leads and sales”. In other words, social media platforms have become an essential tool for everyone who wants to grow the business and awareness. 

Analysis of Important Learning Moments

1 – Idea Generating and Prototyping

Tennisforlife is not called tennisforlife, it is just called tennis because I haven’t thought of a good name yet. After watching different YouTuber’s videos, I want to create a platform that looks professional and cool. Therefore I instantly think of this name. But I don’t know how to stand out from the crowd, to make my target audience see my video. According to the digital marketing institute,  it said there are tips to help grow a YouTube channel. One of the tips I think is useful for me is to engage with the audience. Because the YouTube channel is a way to communicate with the audience, letting them know how they think the quality and content of the video and providing feedback to us. Once it has the name then it comes to the logo design. Initially my thought would be a player hit the ball and add some ball fly graphics on it, however it would look so childish. So in the end I decided to just use the tennis racket and tennis ball to be my graphic, and use blue and green colours to represent tennis. Green represents the tennis ball colour and blue represents the tennis court colour. 

Since I don’t know how to execute the branding image well, I researched it online. According to walker sands, it states that there are tips to build a strong brand image, which includes define persona, identify target audience and determine goals which makes me have confidence to start doing the logo design. 

Before I began to shoot and edit the video, I was really confused about the meaning of persona. So I looked up the definition of persona. According to Cambridge dictionary, it said “the particular type of character that a person seems to have, which is often different from the real or private character that person has.” So after knowing the definition of persona it makes it easier to shoot and edit the content of the video. Initially for my idea generation, I thought it is going to be easy, just make the content look professional to my target audience. But here, the most difficult part is the persona, it is a particular group of people that what you want to achieve for them. So I start narrowing my target audience, and start thinking about the video prototype and shooting.

I remember that my tutor strongly told me the importance of persona. Initially I didn’t understand how important it was. So I looked it up online. According to socialbakers, it said that “personas help you remember the type of audience you are addressing so you can create content that resonates with them”. In other words, by remembering the importance of persona it helps me focus the content of my video shooting and promotion in social media platforms, it helps me to remind which types of audience am I need to focus with. 

2 – Process of Video Prototyping

After I consulted with my tutor about my idea, I tried to start shooting the video. The process of shooting the video is very successful. I contacted my tennis coach to help me, the process only takes about 2 hours. The content of my video is easy to understand, as my target audience and persona the playing level is around intermediate. The content of the video is much easier for them to understand the theory and knowledge of the correct tennis form. It is not necessary for them to learn such advanced scientific terms such as balance and opposite force.

During the consultation, my initial idea of my video is I want to show my target the full details of the tennis correct form, showing them doing this action will have the possibility of getting injured. But my tutor pointed out a good question that I never thought about. Which is why the target audience watches my channel, instead of other YouTubers’ channels. I immediately woke up. As I was too concentrated on my video content. I never think about the review of the target audience, what they will think after watching such a long video, my initial video duration was around 10 mins and it wasn’t my final version yet. After showing my initial video to my tutor, I immediately know the problem and try to fix it as soon as possible. In my process of video prototyping, the biggest problem is not the video content. It is the fist problem. Initially I had no idea what is fist, so I looked up the definition of fist online. According to the lecture note from moodle, it said fist stands for fast, inexpensive, simple and tiny. Fast means efficiency, to produce rapid prototyping, inexpensive means using less time to produce the prototype, simple means don’t make things complicated, and tiny similar means to simple, don’t make things big, takes a tiny step instead. In other words, fist is using less time to produce maximum quality of work. Rather than doing something that costs a lot of time, try to separate it tinier, tiny step by step. Once I know the meaning of fist, I instantly get the idea of what my tutor is commenting on my work. Therefore instead of doing such a long video, which I need to take time to edit and the video duration is long, I separate it by tiny step by step. I make a short and intense video, like a summary video in no more than 2 mins, it only takes me a maximum of 30 mins to produce. By doing this I can achieve the maximum effect of fist. So I can spend more time developing my prototype on my social media platform. 

Initially I didn’t know the importance of FIST because I really concentrated on the content and quality of video making. So I looked it up online. According to Linkin, is said that “implementing a full ‘fist’ of marketing tools, which includes TV, PR , digital, social, community engagement and influencer relations, and their combined strength, creates a powerful marketing punch that will deliver engaging communication and continued brand loyalty”. In other words, a FIST can actually bring lots of advantages in business and media, in terms of marketing and promotion. 

To make the video content look cool and professional, I not just make a short and intense summary video, I also take slow motion shots and screenshots some actions then write some points about the correct tennis form so users can pause the video and look at the important point and playback the correct form with slow motion. This effect which I think can enhance the maximum effect of fist. 

To make the video more entertaining, chill and relaxing, I choose an energetic background music when I edit my video. By doing this, it won’t make the target audience feel bored and they might have motivation to want to play tennis or other sports. This positive outcome is what I want to achieve in the final. 

3 – Social Media Platform

After I finish shooting and editing the video, I post it into different social media platforms. Firstly my aim is to just use YouTube as my main platform. But after consulting with my tutor, I find it difficult to just use one platform to increase awareness of my project and get more interactions and feedback. Therefore I started using Instagram as another platform to promote my video and Twitter as well. However, in Twitter I didn’t set up an official account as not a lot of people use Twitter so I post my tweets with my personal account. 

The biggest challenge in social media platforms is the methodology. In other words, it means how to use social media platforms well to promote the prototype to users, and how to increase awareness of the content and how to have interactions with users. In this case, YouTube doesn’t provide any functions to increase awareness and interactions with my target audience, whereas Instagram provides different functions such as quizzes, polls, questions and most common answers etc. And nowadays Instagram has become one of the most commonly used social media apps for teenagers. Therefore I changed my mind to use Instagram as my main platform rather than YouTube. Moreover, in Instagram it has IGTV, which allows users to upload videos that are more than 60 seconds long. So it makes me upload my video directly to Instagram rather than to YouTube. 

In this case, I deeply investigate the functions of Instagram, I mainly use the most common answers and countdown to get interactions with my target audience. There are other functions such as quizzes and polls, the reason I am not using them is because it doesn’t provide definite answers and sometimes not many users will answer the question if the question is hard to answer. By using a countdown function it can tell my target audience what when my latest video will upload and by using the most common answer roll it can show whether the user likes the video or not. For me, it is a more simple and inexpensive method. I will notice my target audience early when my video uploads so they can have attention to look at my video. 

I created my Instagram account on July 8, until now I already have 30 followers who follow my account. Although I started creating my account lately, in only three weeks time to get 30 followers is not a bad result, of course I want to achieve more positive and good results in terms of my video content, promotion and interactions. I realise that I haven’t increased the number of followers a lot, because I didn’t post the big posts constantly. According to my social buddy, it said that “the more frequently you post on Instagram, the more likes you’ll receive. Posting more increases engagement and also earns you more followers faster”. In other words, posting more on Instagram will increase more engagements, which means there will be more users following ig accounts. In this case I haven’t done it really well. 

Moreover, I haven’t received a good feedback loop. So I looked it up online. According to later.com, there are tips to increase the feedback loop on Instagram. Such as discovering the best time to post pictures and videos and create more video content. After seeing this website it helps me a lot, I know exactly when I need to post my pictures and videos at the best time and how to add more elements to the writing and video content after the first video. 

Conclusion

To conclude, in my Instagram account I already uploaded my video and I also provided a YouTube link where users can watch it in YouTube as well because some users prefer to watch it in YouTube rather than in Instagram because of the comfort level. By posting Instagram stories can help to increase the attention of my channel. Although there are few users who comment on my video, I optimistically reply to them and go like their comments. Initially, I just want to create a channel that looks professional and cool, but in the end I have found that there are many approaches that can make my account more entertaining in terms of the video content and applications of social media platforms. This will make the whole thing more interesting and fun. Finally I believe that my approach and methodology already increased user’s attention and they started looking forward to seeing my next video. And I have gained lots of experiences of promoting my prototype to my target audience and other users. In the end I really enjoy the process of shooting and editing the video, and utilize different social media platforms to increase the attention of my account and get more interactions between me and my target audience. It is a wonderful experience and I will continue using my account to promote high qualities of work. 

Photos of Evidence

YouTube

Twitter

Instagram

References

Definition of persona – Cambridge Dictionary. Viewed 24 July 2021, https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/persona

Definition of FIST – Moodle Lecture Notes. Viewed 25 July 2021, https://youtu.be/1lKfmWJxkBY

10 Ways to Grow Your YouTube Channel – Digital Marketing Institute. 2 February 2018, viewed 25 July 2021, https://digitalmarketinginstitute.com/blog/10-ways-to-grow-your-youtube-channel-in-2018

How to Build a Strong Brand Image –  Walker Sands. Viewed 25 July 2021, https://www.walkersands.com/how-to-build-a-strong-brand-image/

Preventing Tennis Injuries – Stop Tennis Injuries. Viewed 25 July 2021,https://www.stopsportsinjuries.org/STOP/STOP/Prevent_Injuries/Tennis_Injury_Prevention.aspx

Why Social Media Is Important for Business Marketing – Marketing Insider Group. 9 August 2018, viewed 25 July 2021, https://marketinginsidergroup.com/content-marketing/why-social-media-is-important-for-business-marketing/

5 Reasons Why You Should Use Persona Mapping for Your Social Media Strategy – Socialbakers. Viewed 25 July 2021, https://www.socialbakers.com/blog/persona-mapping

Harold Chizick, THE FIST OF MARKETING – Linkedin. 4 September 2020, viewed 25 July 2021, https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/fist-marketing-harold-chizick

How Often Should You Post On Instagram? – Socialbuddy. Viewed 25 July 2021, https://socialbuddy.com/how-often-should-you-post-on-instagram/

Nikki Canning, 11 Ways to Increase Instagram Engagement in 2021 – Later. 14 February 2021, viewed 25 July 2021, https://later.com/blog/how-to-increase-instagram-engagement/

BCM300 Game: Single or Double

Single or Double

Theme: Love and Relationship

Stages: 1. Dating   2. Relationship    3. Marriage

Game mechanisms: Drafting

Players: 4-6 

Age groups: 16+

Game features: a deck of cards

Content: 6 character cards, 6 NPC cards, 12 traits and qualities cards, 12 obstacles cards, 6 temptations cards, 2 break-up cards, 1 rule card

Overview: 

Game Description:

The theme of this game is love and relationship, which not many competitors will make because of the sensitive content. This game is about will you successfully get married in the end or a tragic divorce or break-up? The game starts off with players behind singles, players need to try to find their true love in the competitive dating world. Players have to make decisions that could lead to a happy marriage or they could choose to become alone again because of some reasons. 

Rules:

Here are some rules of the game:

1. Players need to pick up one character and two traits randomly. 
2. In each round players need to pick one obstacle and temptation, players have two choices of action to overcome obstacles and temptations. 
3. Players cannot exchange cards between players, only when the game is finished players can pick up another card also by random draw.
4. The choices that players choose and decide will affect how far the player’s journey will go. 
5. The winning condition here is whoever makes the longest and steadiest journey wins.
6. However, the losing condition is when players receive two break-up cards, players lose the game. 

Game Background

The game’s background is actually inspired by the American TV show – Gossip Girl. It is a love and relationship TV show that teenagers make love and try to find their ideal partner in college. In this TV series it involves lots of characters and they nearly try to make love with everyone therefore the scene is very exciting and dramatic. The game background is also inspired by the hottest and the most popular NETFLIX TV documentary – TOO HOT TO HANDLE. This TV documentary show is about some hottest boys and girls who try to go to an island to try to find their true love, but during the process they cannot make any intimate relationships. The setting of this game background is inspired by these two greatest TV shows and documentaries. But I am not telling my target audience that to find true love it needs to have intimate actions. What happens here is I try to use these two TV shows and documentaries to give my target audience the true form of love, teaching my target audience a lesson about the correct values of love. 

Game Mechanics

The game mechanics here are that we have different types of cards. Character cards, we have 3 boys and 3 girls, each character has their own unique personalities and appearances. Traits cards, this is the card where players pick up positive and negative personalities randomly. Obstacles cards, where there are many different social problems, these problems will affect the player’s journey, will determine whether your relationship with your partner will remain positive or not, it is something that is outside of the player’s control. Temptations cards, similar to obstacles, where there are many different social problems  but players can overcome. If players cannot overcome it then players might have chances to receive the break-up cards given by your partner. NPC cards, other characters, also 3 boys and 3 girls but they do not belong to the main story, their goal is the same as main characters which are to find true love. Rule card, it is an extra card that lets the target audience know about the game rule. Break-up card, this is a card that players have trouble with. When players cannot overcome obstacles or temptation because they do some actions that players do not like, the partner can actually give them the break-up card. The break-up card system is inspired by the football game system. We have two types of break-up cards, yellow and red. The yellow card is like the warning card, first but also the last warning. And the red card is like the end-game card, where players finally end the relationship with their partner or the partner does not want to continue the journey with players. This break-up card is very similar to the reality when we have relationships and it depends on the situation. If you or your partner think the situation is very serious, then you or your partner can decide to give the card. However, if the situation is not that serious, you or your partner can decide not to give the card, as you or your partner choose to forgive rather than argue and break-up, in other words, having a cold war. We also have another card called the good impression card, which is in each round to decide the stage, whether you and your partner want to advance the relationship stage or not. From meeting to dating, from dating to relationship, from relationship to marriage etc. In each stage players need to collect certain amounts of good impression cards in order to move on to the next stage. Just like in real life, everything needs to be processed slowly.   

How to play

As I mentioned before, there are rules in this game. Once the player knows the rule. They can start the game. 

First of all, players need to pick up one character card randomly and pick up two traits cards randomly. Players won’t know about the character and its personalities until they pick up the card. In the first round, we call it stage zero, in which all players are single. Players need to find their ideal partner with other players, players need to communicate with other players to find they are suitable to move on to the first stage, dating. The first stage dating is not yet confirmed to be a couple. It is a stage to test whether both players want to be a couple or not, and try to fall in love with the partner. If the first stage is successful, it moves on to stage two, relationship. The second stage relationship is that both players confirm that they become a couple and try to do normal behaviour like a normal couple will do in real life. Once a couple achieves a target, they will move on to the final stage, marriage. The final stage of marriage is when a couple confirms they are engaged and planning to marry, the relationship will change from boyfriend and girlfriend to husband and wife. They will begin a new journey. In each round we will have a good impression card. The good impression card is to decide whether players are suitable to continue moving on the journey or not. In each round players need to collect certain amounts of good impression cards in order to move on to the next stage. For example, from stage zero to stage one players need to collect 3 good impression cards, from stage one to stage two players need to collect 5 good impression cards, and finally from stage two to stage three players need to collect 10 good impression cards. The method to collect the card all depends on the communication with other players. In each round players will decide whether they want to give the good impresion card to another player or not. 

Second, to make the game more dramatic and exciting, we add the card obstacle and temptation. In each round players can pick one obstacle and temptation card, and they need to overcome these issues by communicating with their partner. If the player cannot overcome these issues, the partner can give them a break-up card. The yellow break-up card is like a warning card, to warn the partner you are in a very serious situation now and there might be some chances to break-up in the end. In other words, it’s like a warning card, first and also the last warning. The red break-up card we call the end-game card. This is the card where players finally decide to break-up with their partner. The end-game card can also be known as the divorce card as well. 

Finally, to conclude, the winning condition here is whoever makes the longest journey wins. However, the losing condition here is when players receive 2 break-up cards. 

Furthermore, to make the game more exciting and fun, we add NPC cards, where players can decide to fall in love with an NPC, instead of other players. 

All situations that happen in the game are based on the reality that happens in the real world. Everything is based on communication. 

Game Prototypes

This is the digital final prototype of my game Single or Double. In my prototype I plan to create a deck of cards and a packaging design for my card game. Initially I want to create the board as well. However, considering the convenience and the user feedback, since my game is decided for adults, creating a board will be quite childish. Also, when I plan my draft showing to my friends, they all think the colour tone does not go too pink and red because not all people love red and pink. Therefore in my final prototype I try to design the style quite elegant and romantic, but the colour instead of pink or red, I decide something different, which are black, grey and white. These colours are based on the user feedback, after what I did for my initial draft, my friends said that black, grey and white are easier to admit and it won’t sound too childish or girlish. Therefore this is my final prototype for my game design. 

I will upload my game-testing and my physical prototype at the bottom. 

Feedback

When I show my game design initial draft to my friends, they are so confused about the game concept. Which includes the rule is confused, the game structure is confused, and the winning and losing conditions are also confused etc. As initially this game is decided by me and my groupmates. After I showed them my initial prototype, I decided to reform it correctly. 

Because what I want to send the message through this game is to teach my target audience that love and relationship is a wonderful experience, we should all be blessed of what we have right now, and also to tell my audience that cannot do something that cause harm to the relationship, because clearly everyone don’t want to have a bad and negative relationship. 

Therefore after the adjustment, finally it comes up with this, my final game prototypes. After the game-testing with my final game prototype my friends love it so much. They know the true form and values of love. So it may sound like an educational tool, to teach the correct value of love.

Final thought

To conclude, I hope my game Single or Double will inspire all other adults. Letting them know love and relationships is a lone journey and hopefully players will learn from the experience of everything when they have a relationship in future. And also reflect on the negative sides such as the obstacles and temptations, what will go wrong such as having an affair or cheating and how to avoid this won’t happen again. We want to break through these stereotypes. Because love is love, love is inspiring us to become a better person.

If I have more time on my final design, I would do the board and my game card look will make it more elegant and classic and romantic. Also to add more features to make sure all the situations happen in the game is all based on what will happen in reality in the real world nowadays. 

Physical Prototypes

BCM303 Interview Case Study Analysis

Christian Broadcasting Network – Rachel Ng

Nowadays, in order to promote the product and service to customers and clients, we need a team that helps to promote the idea. All promotions are based on the behind the scene team, which thinks how to present the concept to clients and how to shoot the video and edit it and publish to the public. The behind the scenes work, not presenting the concept or idea to clients, are very challenging and difficult because they need to think how to put different elements and shots into one single video, plus they need to do all the subtitles, sound recording and finding the best bgm for the video. Therefore the workload is very huge, the task is super hard, challenging and involves lots of extra time off the working hours and requires professional skill sets. Being a crew member in film production is one of my all time dreams and favors, because my personality is quite shy and I am afraid of making mistakes. So I like doing something that belongs to behind the scene work, video editor is one of my favourite jobs. Luckily, my sister Rachel Ng, who just entered the film industry, I am very happy to interview with her. 

Background

Rachel Ng, my sister, who entered the film industry as a video editor less than a year ago.  The reason why I would like to interview with her is not just because she is my sister, but because her qualities of work are very professional. She graduated with an architecture degree and she graduated with an animation master, which allows her work to be creative, innovative and produce a high standard of work. As a professional designer, we are looking for qualities not quantities, and just entering the industry is not a major problem. As her brother and as a person, I am very proud of what she is doing. 

Interview Questions

I asked some essential questions about her and her company about the professional values, collaborative production skills and creative skills, such as: 

Q1.How does video production work in your company?

Q2. What is your style of video-editing? Can you share some experiences?

Q3. Do you think the collaborative skills or the creative production skills being limited as the client’s need?

Q4. What do you think about the future of your work? 

Q5. What do you want your target audience to understand about your company ?

Q6. How are you utilising the feedback you receive from your target audience? 

Q7. What do your viewers describe your company? 

Q8. What are the design elements that catch people’s attention? 

Q9. What do you think are the most successful examples that you have achieved? 

Q10. Why do you want to enter this industry, to become a profession?

Interview Answers

And these are her answers:

A1. We film and edit the video and post on YouTube every two week mainly. We also have other video productions such as promotions. 

A2. Our company mainly produces documentary style videos. We interview the guests and film their daily life and edit together.

As a cameraman, I experience that timing is important for filming.

As a video editor and cameraman , my experience is that working for this company I will need to work at a fast pace but accurately . 

A3. Sometimes. Our company produces certain style of media and the director and producer has a certain taste to video style

A4. I think I will continue to try different media and see where I can progress in my career.

A5. Through the video, I want the audience to understand that there is God and he loves them.

A6. We receive comments from YouTube pages or other apps such as email, whatsapp, wechat.

A7. They think our work is good and appreciated. Because not many companies will produce such similar content.

A8. I don’t know…probably the content and the video.

A9. All the episodes that I have used.

A10. It was because I think videos that explain the amazing things that God has done to people are important.

Company Overview

Christian Broadcasting Network (CBN) is a non-profit international Christian organization established in the United States in 1960. It provides gospel programs to nearly 200 countries around the world through the Internet and satellites, and sets up a 24-hour prayer hotline to watch the audience. Based in Hong Kong in 2004, CBN produced life stories to convey the faith, hope and love of Christ. They co-organize more than 100 meetings of various types with churches and schools every year. They actively preach the gospel, countless people have decided to believe in the Lord over the years. 

As my sister is Christian, she is super happy to work with a Christian community. 

Analysis of CBN

Collaboration Approach

During the interview Rachel presented her works which collaborated with different interviewees. All her interviewees are Christians as their main purposes are to document the story and publish to the public. In each collaboration they have different target audience age groups, some are for elderlies, some are for disabled people and some are for teenagers. Her jobs are doing the video editing, which involves adjusting the sound recording, finding the best bgm and adding filters for the video, making the video look alive, touching and meaningful. When she presents her works during the interview, I am speechless. I have never ever seen some beautiful, touching and meaningful videos in my lifetime, this all belongs to her professional skill sets. Because of her professional skill sets, she now has more opportunities to take more jobs and try to master her skills into another level. 

I will post her works at the bottom for references so please check it out. 

Critical Evaluation

To conclude, what works that Rachel shows to me, it gives me a huge confidence that I firmly want to enter the film production industry. Although I won’t enter a Christian community, I will enter the fashion industry because fashion is also my all time favourite. Video editing is a hard and challenging job but with time being she takes her skills to another level. I am sure by the time being she can work with her skill sets in advance. The collaborative also can engage and increase the awareness of the purpose. All in all, I am looking forward to seeing more of her works launched to the public. 

References

CBN company website

Home

Rachel Ng’s work:

BCM302 Peer Review 2

In this blog I am going to comment on another 2 different student’s DA beta to give them constructive feedback and improvements. 

First Beta: Joanne’s Beta

I really appreciate and like the idea of Joanne’s digital artifact. Nowadays, Hong Kong has diversified the music channel, since other countries’ music has risen up such as Korean Music, Rap, Hip Pop, Japanese Music and Mandarin Music etc. Many teenagers have now followed the overseas trend rather than the local trend. Of course there are reasons why overseas music is more popular than Hong Kong music, this is why Joanne’s digital artifact reminds her target audience that Hong Kong music still contains very high qualities, Hong Kong music still remains highly competitive to other overseas music. 

I like the way she uses her own types to write the lyrics, it gives a warm and special feeling to viewers. It sounds like a harmony, having the connections between the editor and the viewer. If she wants to show that Hong Kong music still contains high qualities, then I think she can add different generations of music into her accounts. It is very hard to find some meaningful and inspirational songs as not all target audiences will have the same feelings. However, she can add her stories in the description as well to enhance the feeling. Furthermore, I think she uses the functions of Instagram well, but to engage more interactions, I think she can make the lyrics alive, such as video editing the MV or creating her own lyrics MV. It will be more touching and meaningful. 

Second Beta: Miki’s Beta

I really appreciate and like the idea of Miki’s digital artifact. Nowadays, the vintage products have become a trend to all different age groups, which includes fashion clothing and old tech items like cameras and black-disc. Although these items are expensive, they have its value and it definitely shows to friends that they have the fashion sense, they know how to enjoy life. Also, doing a podcast definitely presents an old-fashion way to her target audience, as nowadays not many teenagers will listen to radio. In order to attract and interact more teenagers to listen to her channel, instead of Spotify only, I think she can expand her approaches to different social media platforms like Facebook and Instagram. Instagram for teenagers definitely is the fastest and easiest way to make connections and interactions. Letting them know the old-fashion sense will expand their lifestyle. Additionally, I am not sure whether her target audience will listen to the podcast fully so I will suggest Miki to shorten the length of her podcast, or divide it into small parts. To make the podcast more interesting, I think she can find some relaxing background music, to make the atmosphere more chill and relaxing. And hopefully her target audience will learn some knowledge about vintage items. 

Conclusion

To conclude, I hope my constructive feedback can help them improve their work before they hand in the final digital artifact. I am looking forward to seeing their final digital artifact. 

BCM302 DA Beta

Hey guys, I am Jeffery. After I received the feedback on my pitch from my tutor and classmates. I realised what my problem was and I made changes afterwards. The first problem was the video duration, as I first edited the video, I wanted to include all the elements about how to improve tennis skills in one single video. After what my tutor gave my feedback, I realised it was impossible to put so many elements into one single video. He gave an idea to try to separate lots of steps into different videos, each step per video. After I tried I found it quite hard to catch up because not everyone knew about tennis. So instead of creating many videos, I created a short intensed video, trying to shrink everything up so the video duration won’t be so long. The second problem is the video style, during my video editing I found it quite hard to achieve what I wanted, so I immediately found some cool, energetic and motivated BGM to help me for my video editing and as a result I really liked my editing, the style which was cool and professional. The main problem was the persona, after consulting with my tutor he often asked me “Why do I need to click your video, instead of other YouTubers’ videos?” I soon realise a few things, the image, the captions and the slogan. They all have the same points which were eye-catching. I soon started to work out the best image, captions and slogan that will let more of the target audience click the video and watch. 

In past few weeks, I analyzed lots of YouTubers, how they taught with students and after what I observed the video duration were all too lengthy and they provided some terms that made people hard to understand, so in my video I muted all talking, but instead I write down captions in my video.

For my finalization, I have a few more videos I need to upload and I still need to create the app surface for my channel. What I want to achieve in the final is I hope my target audience and others can easily understand tennis. This is always my goal. 

BCM312 Research Proposal

As in my previous blog post, I am interested to discover more on politics in the media. How the media affects politics. These years, the media has become a great tool to spread the message all around the world, and also is a platform that collects all the information from others so that we can analyze it easily and accurately for knowing the truth. Therefore the media has become a huge influence on our life. It has become essential in our life. In this research proposal, I am going to explain my research area more in depth, to narrow my interest area that I would like to discover and analyse more and to develop a research question afterwards. 

Ideas

Media has become essential in our life. Without media we cannot get accurate information and we cannot express our opinions to other users. With technological development, with the help of media, social media such as Facebook and Instagram we can gather information quickly and easily and we can express our views easily. These years, in Hong Kong more and more young people are using social media to share, gather information and express their views about politics because they care about the society, they care about the future of Hong Kong. Media is a tool that can lead to either a positive or negative result, because we can use media to expose the dark and crucial truth behind some politicians, police, organisations and the government. Also there are high class organisations and individuals such as the politicians, the police, organisations and even the government to spread the wrong message to the public. In other words, from a political point of view, the media has become a tool to brain-wash citizens in Hong Kong, letting them know the wrong fact but in fact they try to hide some dark truth. This is why after all strikes and movements in Hong Kong such as the umbrella movement, the anti-extradition law movement and the national security law for Hong Kong, many young people using social media like Instagram to spread the correct message to the public, on the other hand the government or other old people using Facebook to spread the message to the public. This actually becomes what we call the generation gap, because what we think as a young generation is different from what the old generation thinks. Therefore the media really affects politics, because we nearly talk about politics every day and this leads to a bad communication with children and parents. To conclude, the media has become a huge influence in our life, it really can change everything up.

Therefore, in my research proposal, I draft some research questions that I would like to discover and investigate more. Such as:

1. Do you think media is important nowadays? Why? 
2. How often do you comment, post, or discuss government and politics with others on social media? 
3. How important is it to you to stay informed about political and social issues

These are just the draft of my research questions. I will modify it when I finish my questionnaire. 

Methodology 

For methodology, I have two ways, the primary research and the secondary research. 

The primary research is that I am going to do an interview.  And I am going to interview young people and old people, mainly young people, because I want to hear different voices in different age groups. I believe that not all old generations are stubborn, they know what is the dark and crucial truth in Hong Kong and they are still willing to fight for the future. 

The secondary research is that I am going to find suitable references to support my thesis statement. The target audience are still mostly university students because we as a young generation have abilities to analyze information correctly, whereas the old generation may  not have these abilities because their minds are a bit out-dated and conservative. Especially when talking about politics. Therefore I believe these types of questions will help me find what I need. 

Another area that I would like to discover is the use of social media, as we know social media such as Facebook and Instagram we use every day to share, gather information and express our opinions to the public. In this case I will talk about it in general first, then afterwards I will expand the topic to politics. Such as by talking about how many young people use social media to comment about political and social issues. Furthermore, I will investigate freedom of speech. Because when we talk about politics, we definitely imagine democracy, freedom of speech. Countries such as China or North Korean banned using social media to talk about politics, otherwise the citizens will have serious penalties. In my research proposal I definitely want to discover more in this issue, how the government limits the freedom of speech on social media. These types of questions are serious and important nowadays as it relates to the future of Hong Kong. 

DA Format

In my final digital artefact, I will present it as a video series. Each video will present one research topic. The reason I am doing a video series is because it gives me creativity to create something interesting, and it is easy to understand. Whereas doing an essay is lengthy, my target audience will not have the patience to look at the research essay fully, it will become very wordy and boring. Therefore the video series can avoid these types of issues. It brings lots of advantages. 

Conclusion

All in all, how the media affects politics. This topic is very huge and broad, so in my research proposal I split my topics into a few parts, the first part is talking about the general use of social media. The second part is talking about freedom of speech. After that I will make a conclusion. My digital artefect video series won’t be so long, the maximum video in each part is around 5 to 6 mins. I hope my target audience will know better about the truth of media, political and social issues happening in Hong Kong nowadays. 

BCM300 Blog Post 3: Single or Double (Individual)

Single or Double (Individual)

Introduction

Single or Double is an original game that was createdated by me and teammates Miki, Hassan and Clement. This game is about love relationships. It is a game where players try to date their partners to see whether they are fit or not and then continue their journey like marriage. The reason we want to create this game is because we seldom see there is a market for love and relationship board games. And all other game stylers are more suitable for families, young children and teenagers. There is seldom a game that the target audience is for adults specifically. And love and relationship is a very huge topic, and we want to utilise this game to express the message to adults that this is the correct concept. In our lifetime we will all experience love, find ideal partners and try to create a unique journey with our ideal partner. It is a true nature and it is our lifetime experience that we as humans will fall in love with our ideal partner. Therefore we want to create a game that is related to love and relationships. Letting our target audience know that love is romantic 

and it is definitely a good journey to spend with our ideal partner together. The reference of the game is similar to Gossip Girls, which is a love and relationship TV show which happens in college. 

The game 

As I mentioned before, Single or Double is a game about love and relationships. About the background, the game description is will you successfully get married in the end? Or a tragic divorce? The game starts off with players being single, trying to find love in a competitive dating world. Players have to make decisions that could lead to a happy marriage or being alone again. In the game we separate into three stages, first is dating, second is relationship and third is marriage. This is all that we experience in our lifetime. As I mentioned before, the theme of this game is love and relationship and the target audience is adults, which is 18+. The amount of players we set for this game is 4 to 6 players and the game features a deck of cards. In other words, this is a card game featured the theme love and relationship. Since this game is becoming from group to individual. I want to enhance some exciting elements into it to try to fit situations that may happen in real life. 

For the game itself, players needs to choose a character and start as single. Each character will have their own specialty. Players might find love with one of the NPC. During the process there will be action cards which are obstacles and temptation, these will be in the way to the player’s goal. There will be situations that players have to deal with, the decision that players make will lead them to close or further away from winning the game.   

The fun factor of the game is the game is perfect for groups of friends, the amount or suitable players we set are 4 to 6 players. The reason why we set 4 to 6 players is because there are many situations that players might experience in real life. And it involves lots of decision making and randomness. This game won’t cost players much time to think. This game could also use as a party game and drinking game as well as it similar to true or dare. 

Rules 

There are rules in this game. Firstly, players need to pick characters and traits randomly. Secondly, each round players need to pick one obstacle and temptation. Players have two choices of action to overcome obstacles and temptation, and players cannot exchange the card. The choice that players pick the card will affect how far they go. Thirdly, the winning condition here is whoever makes the longest in the marriage stage wins. However, the losing condition is if players draw 2 break-up cards. 

Game mechanics

In this game we provide different types of cards. We have six main characters (3 boys 3 girls), traits, obstacles, temptation, and NPC (3 boys 3 girls). As I mentioned before, players need to . one character card and 2 traits, obstacles and temptation. Players can fall in love with another character or fall in love with an NPC. There are six main characters which are Olivia, Sammy, Emma, John, Harry and Jeff. Each character has their own unique characteristics. 

As I mentioned before, there are different traits, obstacles and temptations. For traits, it’s like positive and negative personalities. Positive traits such as independent, sporty and considerate. Negative traits such as arrogant, humble and shy. For obstacles and temptation, they are reasons to make players lose. If players can overcome these, they will win. But if players cannot overcome these, they will lose. For losing conditions we provide break-up cards. Players will have two chances, the first card is yellow which is like a warning card. The second card is red which players lose already. The break-up card conditions are very similar to football. In real life we won’t break-up easily just because of one single reason, we break-up because we make lots of serious mistakes. So the first card is like the forgiving chance card. 

Conclusion

To conclude, Single or Double is a love and relationship card game. I want to express the concept of love to players. Express the message to them, telling them that love and relationship is a long journey and we as humans all deserve what we love. Hopefully through this game players can learn the experience of everything they date, having relationships and get married finally. Hopefully through this game players can go through the progress in the future. This game is definitely a hit for my target audience. And I want to through this game to express the message that love is essential and everyone should not be afraid of all relationships happening. We should be blessed and enjoy the experience. 

Drafts of the card game

Reflection on the EPK

A week before, Isabelle, Tommy and I sent out an email and had a meeting with Benny Yik, who is the managing director of ROAR’s PR & Entertainment. We used whatsapp to communicate and it was a pleasure to get in touch with him. During the meeting, we gave out the questions that we prepared before and he guided us in a deeper way. As Benny clearly knew what he wanted, which was creating a brochure about his companies, and Benny worked in PR for over 10 years, he knew exactly what he wanted and how his companies wanted to be expanded and promoted. Therefore the whole meeting was very clear and he guided us to a better way to do what we wanted. 

ROAR’s PR & Entertainment is an all-rounded consultancy company, which focuses on media relations, event management and artist management / model agency. They had excellent and clear principles, missions and services and as a result the company was rewarded by Media Zone as “2015 Hong Kong Most Valuable Company”. The result of the reward is all based on the brillant communication and leadership of Benny and his team as he knew exactly what he wanted. Therefore in PR communication there was nothing more that we could help him to improve. 

After the meeting, I found that although his strength was in PR communication, the brand image and promotion was not what we expected. As you can see on the company’s website, Facebook and Instagram. There is so little information that we can find and this makes me and my teammate feel strange and weird. How come a good company but have less execution on social media. Because nowadays social media is a tool that promotes the brand image easily. We did suggest helping them redesign all the social media platforms such as the website design colour and format. However, he said it was fine and we didn’t ask further. 

For me, the difficulty here is how we execute things well. When we had our first meeting with Benny. He preferred to use Whatsapp chat rather than other tools, which for me was I didn’t quite understand what he wanted to say and I couldn’t respond to him quickly. In addition, sometimes I had difficulty presenting what he wanted because even though during the meeting he provided us some answers to questions of what we prepared, there was still a lack of diversity and information so it was quite hard to execute his companies in an easy, clear way. 

To conclude, I found this assignment quite challenging to me. Not only do I need to communicate with strangers, but I also need to consider the questions well so that we can  gain as much information as we can. Furthermore, the way that we present and execute is also a challenging part because there will be other teammates re-doing our work and we need to ensure we provide a way that makes other students easy to understand. All in all, this is a life experience that we need to face in the future and the earlier that we face, the better. 

Reference

ROAR’s PR & Entertainment website:https://bennyyik.wixsite.com/roarpr/about

BCM300 Blog Post 2

BCM300 Blog Post 2: Original Game Design- Single or Double

The original game that my teammates and I created are SIngle or Double. It is a love relationship board game in which players have to fall in love with their partners, and how far can the journey of them go. The reason we want to create this game is because in the board game market it is very hard to see other kinds of game style. All the game styles are more for teenagers or family use, the style is very entertaining which every single age group can play together. The goal of the game is to try to bring the community together, to enhance the relationship. But in the game design market, we don’t see quite a lot of games that are related to love topics, which is very strange. In our lifetime we will all experience love relationships, finding our suitable partners and having a memorable journey together. It is our true nature and it is our lifetime experience that we as humans will fall in love with the ideal. Therefore we truly want to design a game that is related to love. Letting our target audience know that love is very romantic and it is definitely a good journey to spend with the ideal partner together. 

The game

As I mentioned before, Single or Double is a game about love relationships. So the goal of the game is try to get through the journey with the ideal partner as long as we can. Love is the topic that we do not have the right answer, is what we as players need to discover. My  teammate and I both think the earlier we let our target audience know about love, the better they will learn about the lesson and can experience the love journey as early as they can. There are stages of the game, the first stage is dating, trying to find an ideal partner, the second stage is relationship, trying to date to see if the relationship will last long, and the third stage is getting married, trying to see whether the boy-girls relationship will become husband and wife. To make the game more exciting, we add game features that make the game experience more exciting, such as a board, a dice and decks of cards. We design varieties of card decks such as the quality cards, players will start by drawing 4 cards that decide on your qualities on looks, economic status, occupation and interests. Each card will feature two options, one will lead you to deduct marks and one will add marks. The action card will bring players to a specific venue or activity. There are rules to play. First we need to roll the dice, the first 3 numbers (123) means you can pick a card or go forward, and the second 3 numbers (456) means stay in the same place. The choices of the card will affect how far you will go through the journey and the action can move players to other places. The winning condition here is whoever makes the longest in the marriage stage wins and the losing condition is players draw the divorce cards, it divorces immediately. 

As I mentioned before, we hope our target audience learns about love relationships better. Therefore our target audience is 16 years old or above and it is suitable for 6-8 players. 

Conclusion

This is a true board game about love relationships, we want players to experience and feel love is a journey in our lifetime, love is an essence, love is like a magic cure. Although we might have chances to get a divorce in reality, love will bring us blessings and happiness. We hope players can get these messages and emotions.  

BCM300 Blog Post 1

BCM300 Blog Post 1: Catan Universe

In this course, we expect to play different games. And we particularly play Catan Universe. According to Alexandrine Allard.com, Catan Universe is a free-to-play multiplayer digital board game which was released in Germany in 1995. According to the official website of Catan, the original German designer Klaus Teuber built the game, by valuable experience he created the game that made the world famous. 

How to play

In the Catan Universe, it has two versions. One is the board game which is played on the PC, another version is the app version. Each version of games have similar playing but different characteristics. What I played with my teammates was the app version because it is free. The goal of the game is to harvest resources that will help you build roads, settlements and cities. By doing so, you get victory points to win the game. As I mentioned before, each player needs to build their own roads, houses and cities on the island. Whoever builds more of these properties they win the game and they will gain victory points. In my opinion, the game style is very similar to monopoly. To make the game more interesting, dramatic, exciting and fun, the game team adds so many elements that make players feel climax. 

Game-Play Experience

First of all, I have never heard of this game before. I seldom play board games, the only board game I will play with my friends is just monopoly because the game is so famous worldwide that everyone knows how to play. What I play often is digital games like LOL (League of Legends) and similar games either on PC or on phone. Second, I don’t really enjoy playing board games because I hate and don’t like some games that need to use my brain to think, I need to take time to think how to play and obviously I don’t really feel this feeling. It makes me feel like a waste of time. So initially before I started to play the Catan Universe, I already had bad feelings. When my teammates and I started playing the game together, I initially didn’t understand the rules at all. I had no idea what the rules were talking about and I was so confused how it worked. After we discussed the rules we finally understood it and I felt much better understanding the game. The game added so much elements that made the game feel exciting and dramatic such as the robber. 

Conclusion

This game-play experience with my teammates is really a good experience that makes me feel how interesting the board game is. Although I am still not a big fan of board games, the game Catan Universe made me feel excited after we played together. The game really impressed me and I think this is why the game is famous worldwide. To conclude, once you understand the rules of the game, it starts to become quite exciting and fun. It is a pleasure to play the game with my teammates. 

References

Alexandrine Allard, Coping with Redesign: Catan Universe – Alexandrine Allard Blog. 13 July 2020, viewed 1 June 2021, https://alexandrinealla.medium.com/coping-with-redesign-catan-universe-19fb2a1fe728

The Catan Universe Official Website:

https://www.catan.com/about-us/catan-gmbh