Author Archive: Matthew Lowe

Black History Month + Emerging Media Design & Development

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The Center for Emerging Media Design and Development includes a diverse group of designers and storytellers from around the world. We embrace the differences and similarities in our individual experiences to develop more inclusive ideas and create solutions that are representative of the culture we have created within our program. During Black History Month, EMDD recognizes diverse storytellers and designers and their contributions to various forms of communication.

Mariam Braimah

“Since I joined to date, the black community at Netflix has grown. I’ve seen so many new designers join our team that are black or of African descent which is awesome to see. They’re learning how to become a more inclusive company.”

– Mariam Braimah

Photo from LinkedIn

Mariam Braimah is a Product Designer at Netflix and founder of the Kimoyo Fellowship, a design education program teaching the skills necessary to become a UI/UX designer at Nigeria’s leading tech companies. She serves as CEO of Kimoyo Insights, a user-testing platform that allows companies to receive meaningful feedback across the African continent.

Ta-Nehisi Coates

“I’ve been wondering who might fill the intellectual void that plagued me after James Baldwin died…clearly it is Ta-Nehisi Coates.” 

– Toni Morrison

Ta-Nehisi Coates is an award-winning author and journalist. His books include The Beautiful Struggle, We Were Eight Years in Power, and The Water Dancer. Named one of the most influential books of the decade by CNN, his Between The World And Me won the National Book Award in 2015. He has also written several series for Marvel Comics, including Black Panther and Captain America.

Jocelyn Bioh

“My goal is always, first, to entertain,” Bioh said. “I think second is to have people walking away, feeling like they now have a different understanding of either a culture, a person, a country—they now have a more unique perspective on that thing than they had walking in.”

– Jocelyn Bioh

Photo by Joshua Bright for the New York Times

Ghanaian-American actress and playwright Jocelyn Bioh is known for her thought-provoking works that delve into themes of identity and culture. A Broadway performer and writer, she was in the original cast of The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time. She received the Lucille Lortel Award for Outstanding Play, The Outer Critics Circle John Gassner Award for New American Playwright, and the Dramatists Guild Hull-Warriner Award for her work School Girls; Or, The African Mean Girls Play.

Tosh Juma

“Design thinking is a human-centered approach to innovation that draws from the designer’s toolkit to integrate the needs of people, the possibilities of technology, and the requirements for business success.”

– Tim Brown

Photo from Ideo.org

Tosh Juma is the Managing Director for IDEO.org Nairobi. He oversees the company’s Kenyan design team and focuses on designing products, services, and brands that address emerging global development and humanitarian challenges. He is the Founder of the Nairobi Design Institute. NDI’s mission is to drive the future of innovation and impact in Africa through the power of design education—his vision and mission impact design worldwide.

The Center for EMDD Presents: The Great Escape

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“When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.”

– Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

Last week, the Center for Emerging Media Design and Development launched its spring low-residency workshop at the Ball State Fishers Center. This immersive four-day event provided team building, networking, educational components for EMDD 630: Nonlinear & Interactive Storytelling and EMMD 640: Transmedia Storytelling & Publishing, and fun!

The week began with a pit stop at EscapeUSA Fishers’ The Race escape room, which is best described in the style of Arthur Conan Doyle via ChatGPT:

“In the dimly lit Vintage Race League garage, motor oil and adrenaline thick in the air, a mysterious veil cloaked the season’s final race. High stakes, higher tension – you and your rival teetered on victory’s edge. A clandestine caller, night-shrouded, delivered an ominous message – both race cars sabotaged, carburetors damaged. Fate’s gears took a sinister turn.

“Race rules demanded inspection two hours before engines roared. Within 60 minutes, navigate the labyrinth, find a spare carburetor, or face a penalty. The Parts Department key was left at the track; a security code guarded the crucial bastion. Unravel the mystery, find the code, secure the carburetor – destiny’s race against time: triumph or bitter defeat, the final race hung in the balance, a spectacle of cunning deduction. The game was afoot!“

At the workshop, Dr.’s Kevin Moloney and Joshua Fisher created a novel experience for their classes. Competing against one another in two identical escape rooms, the students created narratives that will inform the stories they tell via their coursework in the upcoming semester. Dr. Fisher said, “the escape room allowed students to gather story data to put theory into practice in the emerging discipline of interactive and digital storytelling.”

Students used a series of user personas to select their escape room type and sorted into two teams of five: The Perfect Mix and The Wrecking Balls. These teams raced against the clock and each other to see who could escape first. The Wrecking Balls crushed The Perfect Mix’s hopes of winning with a well-timed, if accidental, bit of sabotage, but in the end, both teams escaped with the spare carburetor!

After receiving the checkered flags, students took a pace lap and met with faculty and alums of the EMDD program at a dinner mixer at the Fishers Test Kitchen before heading to their respective homes and hotels.

The rest of the week featured morning sessions of storytelling theory and afternoons of story creation. Dr. Moloney’s course focused on how to build stories, “we used the escape room experience to seed discussions of how to structure a story. The students chatted with me as they developed nonlinear stories about how the points on a variety of story arcs could work in nonlinear form.” Dr. Fisher worked on fleshing these stories into an interactive form via Unity and Twine.

Would you like EMDD to be part of your story? Follow us on Instagram, Facebook, and LinkedIn. Visit our Ball State University webpage for more information or to join our program.

End of Semester Update: DLLE

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This semester, the David Letterman Learning Experience (DLLE) project team has embarked on a captivating journey to explore the art of storytelling through the innovative medium of projection mapping technology. With a focus on harnessing the power of personal narratives, they have collected a diverse array of stories from current Ball State students, each offering a unique glimpse into the experiences and perspectives that shape the university community.

Now, the DLLE team is working to transform a physical exhibition space into an immersive storytelling hub, where art, interviewing, and community converge. Inspired by David Letterman’s iconic interviewing style, the exhibition will delve into the transformative power of conversations, showcasing the ability of storytelling to connect individuals, foster empathy, and illuminate the rich tapestry of human experiences.

Stay tuned as the DLLE team continues to bring this exciting project to life next semester. 

AMA

End of Semester Update: AMA

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The Academy of Model Aeronautics (AMA) team has been working diligently to immerse themselves into the world of flight. Our team has visited the National AMA Headquarters here in Muncie several times this semester—taking in the rich history of aviation and the hobby. We met with the historians, educators, and many other staff throughout the fall to generate a project to benefit the local and national community. 

As a collegiate group, our team took advantage of the thousands of students around them at Ball State University to dive into the reasons we chose hobbies. In their research, they found just how important hobbies are with educational and degree paths. This information has helped the group understand who the members of AMA are, and who their future members could be. 

Before they head off to their winter breaks, they are excited to launch their project developments in the spring. Our team has split into three main projects: social media management, local event planning, and gamification. With only a semester left, it’s a massive undertaking to pursue all three, but that won’t stop these incredible students. We look forward to showing you all the hard work that has gone into these projects in May—until then, sit back, relax, and enjoy our flight!   

End of Semester Update: DWNTWN AR

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The Downtown AR stories team will be using augmented reality to tell the stories of historical buildings in Downtown Muncie that no longer exist. There are now parking lots in the places where these buildings once stood. The team narrowed in on four key locations, each with its own story to tell. After meeting with a representative from DWNTWN Muncie, and developing a user journey, the team took a trip Downtown. Seeing the locations in person helped them identify possible usability and even safety issues they needed to consider. They also explored the possibility of using projection mapping. 

The team decided to focus on one story which would serve as the foundation for how the other stories would be developed. They started with the story on the Indiana Union Traction and developed a low-fidelity prototype for how the story would work on Figma. After a series of tests among their team, a mid-fidelity prototype of the story was developed. The team brought in external people this time to test the story flow on Figma using the Wizard of Oz method. 

The team is working on the project in three distinct phases; content, development, and marketing. The content team has developed a script for the first story and has tested it. They worked with other departments like the Department of Theatre and Dance and have recruited actors for all the stories they will be developing. The actor who will be playing George Rolland (the main character in the first story) has been taken through a script reading and will be filmed on Friday, December 2nd. The team will also be working with a costume shop director to provide costumes for our actors to make the story look more authentic since they all take place in the early 19th and 20th centuries. The development team is working to move the story into an augmented reality software called 8th wall. The marketing team is working on designing signages that users can read and scan to experience the stories. 

After recording the actor, the team plans to create a 2D video to be placed on the 8th wall. They will continue to work on the script and storyline for the other stories. They have already started drafting the script for the next story. They will also meet with a project partner, Cheryl, who is a representative from DWNTWN Muncie to update her on the progress of the project. 

A Year in the Life of a Second Year Emerging Media Design and Development Student 

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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. 

Spencer Ozbun (left) & Alec Piggot present at the EMDD Symposium, Tuesday, May 2, 2023. Image: Kevin Moloney

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.

Go West! – Kevin Moloney reflects on his family history as he travels the Santa Fe Trail

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The Journey

Recently, Dr. Kevin Moloney traveled into his past as he traversed the Santa Fe Trail. Moloney has familial ties to the trail. His great-great-grandfather, Dario Gallegos, bought and sold goods in the mid-1800s. An avid cyclist, Moloney moved along the trail via car and bike. He took the time to discuss his trip with Colorado Public Radio’s interview show, Colorado Matters.

Biking the trail allowed Moloney to reflect on his surroundings and the trail’s history. He cycled a portion of the trail in each state he traveled through, “I made a point of hopping on my bike, I’d pull over the car and find a nice stretch of the trail.” Researching his history and connecting to the ecology of the trail created a special experience for Moloney. “As a native westerner it was really particular exciting to sort of roll into the country where what you hear are red-winged black birds and meadowlarks and other bird songs that really inhabit my memories of the west.”

While many think of historic trails such as the Santa Fe and Oregon Trails as highways for travelers looking to settle the west, their place in providing resources and trade for residents should not be overlooked. A part of Moloney’s family history is the story of providing supplies and goods to the people of San Luis.

Dario Gallegos

Dario Gallegos was born near Taos, New Mexico in 1830. Moving into northern Colorado in 1851, he lead the establishment of the San Luis de Culebra settlement and started the first store in the San Luis Valley.

Dario Gallegos circa 1870, photo provided by the Latino History Project, and the R & R Market, now the San Luis People’s Market, built in 1857 photo from Google Maps..

Bringing items into San Luis from Missouri via covered wagon, Gallegos opened the R & R Market in San Luis, Colorado, in 1857. With items such as coffee, matches, chocolate, salt, and textiles, the store was one of the only sources of goods in the area.

Nineteen years before Colorado statehood, Gallegos looked to answer a question still faced today: How do we solve a food desert problem in a remote little town? His answer was the R & R Market which has recently been turned into a co-op and renamed the San Luis People’s Market.

The Santa Fe Trail

The Santa Fe Trail was a route developed by William Becknell, a Missouri trader, in 1821. For nearly 60 years, the trail served as a commercial highway for both American and Mexican traders, connecting Santa Fe, New Mexico, to Franklin, Missouri.

Images by Kevin Moloney.

The trail has served as a trade route, a path for settlers heading west, and a road for military conquest. Although the need for the Santa Fe Trail diminished by the 1880s due to the advent of commercial railroads, its lasting legacy is the mixing of diverse cultures and ideas represented by its native children.

Kinsey’s Emerging Media Design and Development Journey

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Kinsey Reese is now a second-year, low-residency, Emerging Media Design and Development Graduate Student who will be working with the David Letterman Learning Experience this fall. She currently serves as the Admissions Social Media Strategist at Ball State University.

Written by Kinsey Reese

Nine months into my first post-undergrad communications job, I started yearning for something more. With my background in public relations and art, and a deep affinity and curiosity for transmedia storytelling, EMDD jumped out in my search as an interdisciplinary program where many captivating worlds collide. I wanted in!  

As a young professional working in a communications role at Ball State, I longed for an engaging educational experience to bolster my portfolio and knowledge—one with an emphasis on hands-on learning. Before starting EMDD, I wondered about the challenge of balancing my full-time job as I entered the brand-new world of grad school. While it has not always been a walk in the park to manage everything, EMDD, and my job have worked perfectly, complementing one another.  

As a first-year student, I’m constantly challenged beyond my comfort zone to explore and master the latest technologies and disciplines. One of my favorite parts of the program is the talented and passionate team of grad students. I’m lucky enough to collaborate and learn beside. My teammates and I have put our interdisciplinary strengths together for projects with design thinking and transmedia storytelling, and I continually find myself in awe of my peers’ outstanding talents. Some of my favorite collaborative projects so far include a campaign to connect young people to volunteer opportunities and another promoting upcycling, and my favorite independent project was a deep dive look at Hamilton through a transmedia lens. The constant focus on real-world application is energizing, helps me create clear connections between classwork and my full-time work, and encourages me to embrace new ideas and perspectives.  

One of my favorite (and unexpected!) aspects of the program is my growth beyond the skillsets I was prepared to explore. For example, Dr. Josh Fisher has challenged me miles outside my comfort zone and pushed me to grow in ways I didn’t predict. We’ve explored AR, VR, Snapchat Lens Studio, photogrammetry, and more. While I’m still a newbie to these subjects, I’ve greatly expanded my tech toolbox. I used to seriously doubt my abilities in tech-focused areas, and while I’m not an expert yet, Dr. Fisher has helped me prove that I’m equipped to thrive and conquer new and scary things. At my full-time job on campus, I now find myself ideating and suggesting tech-centered projects that I can help tackle, serving my team in new, forward-thinking ways that help Ball State stand out in our recruitment efforts. Strategic communications and design have always been at the center of my wheelhouse. These additional skill sets have exponentially elevated what I bring to the table.  

My experience in EMDD has surpassed my expectations and then some. I can’t wait to dive into year two and get deeper in the trenches, collaborating with teammates, faculty and project partners, and utilizing our EMDD know-how more than ever. EMDD continues to challenge and inspire me, taking me to new heights academically, professionally, and personally.

Connect with Kinsey via LinkedIn.

Or view her portfolio.

Augmented Reality in Education: An Empowering Exploration at the Burris Lab School Workshop

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This article was written by Dr. Josh Fisher with assistance from ChatGPT-4.

Students from Burris Laboratory School participate in an AR Workshop with Dr. Fisher and Mr. Robert Jones.

As technology’s role in education steadfastly expands, it falls upon us educators to pioneer the path toward the use of emerging media in our classrooms. In my journey as a researcher, I concentrate on using Augmented Reality (AR) as a tool to facilitate, encourage, and inspire community involvement. Recently, I facilitated a workshop at Burris Lab School, focusing on utilizing Adobe Aero to create AR experiences, and it provided compelling evidence that once students learn how to use AR, they will be motivated to use it to better their communities.

Delving into the Burris Workshop

During the school’s May term, a two-week program that allows students to explore a topic of their choice, we ventured into the world of AR. I had the opportunity to co-teach with Mr. Robert Jones of Burris. We were thrilled to have 18 enthusiastic students sign up for the AR workshop. Over ten days, these students engaged with AR technology, learning how to design and develop their AR experiences. 

The students were exposed to the workflow of AR development, experienced the iterative nature of design, and received constructive feedback. The culmination of the workshop saw these students testing their AR experiences within the Burris community and beyond.

Harnessing the Power of AR: Student-Crafted Experiences

The tangible outcomes of the students’ engagement with AR unfolded as a diverse portfolio of immersive experiences:

• Delving into mental health issues

• Envisioning the transformation of dilapidated buildings into parks

• Crafting scenarios to tackle social anxiety in school

• Celebrating their Dungeons & Dragons (DnD) and Call of Duty (CoD) communities

• Proposing the establishment of additional basketball courts around Muncie

• Carving out a serene space within the school

• Cultivating virtual friendships with other schools

• Designing a nap room at Burris

• Conceiving a new broadcasting education space and van

• Encouraging respect for sanitation and janitorial staff

• Honoring track and field athletes

• Uplifting their choral community through AR

The Potential of AR as a Research Tool: Looking to the Future

The teaching workshop provided an invaluable experiential journey for the students while also serving as an instrumental component of my research. The driving question behind my inquiry is whether students, having gained familiarity with AR, would be motivated to employ it within their communities and for their collective benefit.

As AR evolves from a primarily entertainment-oriented medium to a tool of practical application, it becomes crucial to gauge how future generations perceive its value and utility. With our world increasingly becoming a stage where digital and physical realms seamlessly intertwine to create new experiences, it is our mission to ensure that our students are prepared to become active and engaged creators in this novel landscape.

Continuing the Mission: A Bright Future with AR

This AR workshop at Burris Lab School seamlessly builds upon the initiatives I had previously orchestrated at the Muncie Public Library using Snapchat. The success and engagement of students in the Burris workshop affirm AR’s potential to foster unique opportunities for community engagement. It is my intention to continue leveraging AR’s potential to enrich the learning experience, preparing students to make the most of emerging media for community engagement and development.

The Burris Lab School workshop has shown that when students are empowered with AR tools, they rise to the challenge, creating imaginative solutions and experiences that not only enhance their personal development but also benefit their broader communities. As an educator, I believe we must continue to explore these emerging technologies, for they have the potential to redefine the dynamics of the learning process and shape the future of education.

Joshua A. Fisher, Ph.D. is an expert in interactive non-fiction storytelling through XR. He is an Assistant Professor of Emerging Media Design and Development at Ball State University. There he teaches classes on Immersive Media design and development at the Center for Emerging Media Design and Development.

Zainab visits Chicago to participate in the Three Minute Thesis regional competition

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EMDD student Zainab Aamir visited Chicago to participate in the regional Three Minute Thesis competition hosted by the Midwestern Association of Graduate Schools.

EMDD’s Zainab Aamir on her Three Minute Thesis experience in Chicago.  

Written by: Steven Donahoe

After placing first among Ball State students in the Three Minute Thesis Competition, EMDD’s Zainab Aamir traveled to Chicago to compete in the regional competition hosted by the Midwestern Association of Graduate Schools. In addition to the competition, the three-day event also featured talks on designing graduate school curricula as well as improving graduate student life. Zainab’s thesis, titled “Users’ Privacy Considerations in Virtual Reality”, explores how users’ opinions of virtual reality (VR) change when they fully understand how their data is collected by VR headsets.

Zainab arrived in Chicago with her husband on Thursday, March 30, 2023, the day before the competition. The two spent the day exploring the city, with their most notable stop being the Art Institute of Chicago, home to famous works such as Grant Wood’s American Gothic, Van Gogh’s The Bedroom, and several selections from Monet’s Water Lilies series. Afterward they enjoyed a meal with a stunning view of the Chicago River at River Roast.

“Just walking through the city was amazing. It’s a far cry from Muncie,” she said.

To Zainab’s surprise, the majority of the Chicago competition participants were Ph.D. candidates rather than master’s students. Still, despite the highly-qualified competition, Zainab says she was not intimidated – instead she felt inspired by her competitors.

“Everybody was so awesome there,” she said. “They were definitely well-prepared – one judge said, ‘I’m never volunteering to judge again.”

The competition was indeed stiff. Of 50 participants, only 10 would move on to the final round. Zainab was the first to present, delivering her talk confidently and within the three-minute time limit. Unfortunately, she did not advance to the final round.

“Not everyone could advance in a group of 50, but I’m really proud of my performance,” she said.

Read more about the three-minute thesis competition here.