Spencer Ozbun is the Vice President of The Remnant Trust and a 2023 graduate of the EMDD Master’s Degree Program at Ball State University.
Written by Spencer Ozbun
My second year EMDD story began at Pitch Night 2022, when my classmate Alec Piggott and I pitched our project idea to our classmates in hopes of forming a Year 2 project team for the EMDD 670 Creative Projects Lab. Our idea was to continue ideating with The Remnant Trust, a nonprofit organization that shares a collection of rare antiquarian documents with the public, to enhance the unique hands-on experience with emerging media technology and storytelling. To our delight, the project was chosen by a number of our peers and the EMDD faculty to move forward.
When the project began in the Fall, our group attended an in-person workshop at the Ball State Fishers Center where we began to define our individual interests/roles within the team. We swapped ideas about outcomes each member hoped to gain experience in via the project. This set the groundwork for a positive team dynamic as each person had an individual stake in the project’s end state. The semester proceeded alongside the EMDD 660 Applied Research Lab, which also focused on the Trust’s problem space. I worked with a classmate on a research subteam focused on the effects of awe, and the other subteam researched the digital preferences of our target audience (18 to 25 year-olds).
To develop our project past ideation, we narrowed our ideas by conducting empathy research with our client stakeholders to determine which of our ideas was of greatest interest. From there we defined a possible design solution as a group and began creating low-fi prototypes. During the course of the semester we had the opportunity to attend the Trust’s 25th anniversary and had our picture taken with former Vice President Mike Pence, who spoke at the event. Later in the semester, we shared our proposed design solution with our client and gained additional feedback, allowing us to further refine our approach. In addition to testing with stakeholders, we tested our three-tiered transmedia storytelling strategy with our target audience and began developing mid-fidelity prototypes using Figma. At the end of the semester, we delivered our final client presentation and presented our finalized plan for what we would build.
In my final semester I enrolled in three classes: EMDD 680 capstone class where I am designing an AR pop-up book for kids using Blippar; my elective ICS 600, a self-reflective technology leadership class; and the second half of EMDD 670 creative lab. This semester, my group has engaged in a collaborative effort with The Digital Corps to develop our storyworld website and a brand style for the project. We have continued testing our designs, developing puzzle sheets to gauge the reactions of our target audience at a tabling event with The Remnant Trust at the Indiana Statehouse. It was exciting to see real users interact with our creations! Recently, we completed a content gathering trip where we took photos and videos and began generating AI images using starryai that we will use to populate the tiers of our transmedia storyworld. We are busy creating content, planning an exhibit for the EMDD Symposium, and looking forward to seeing our work come to fruition by launching our project!
Upon the project’s completion, I accepted an offer for the role of Vice President of The Remnant Trust. It was a pleasure to earn my graduate degree while working on a passion project I care about, and the results have been beyond my expectations. I am excited to see our work come to fruition as we plan to launch our newly EMDD-created storytelling website in the Summer of 2023. Great ideas belong to everyone!
Find Spencer on LinkedIn.