Ryan T.
Yamauchi
Psy 409
Week 12
11/14/95
Dr. Leon James
EXPLORING THE GENERATION 2 TEAM REPORTS
Self-Assessment Ratings:
How difficult was thi
s week's tasks (lumping all the sub-tasks together)?
Very easy 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 Very Hard
This week's rating 6
How much negative emotions did it cost you all in all?
Very little 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 Very Much
This
week's rating 7
How valuable for later use is this knowledge or skill going to be for you?
Not Useful 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 Very Useful
This week's rating 8
How likely is it that you'll be getting good at this week's
tasks?
Not Likely 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 Quite likely
This
week's rating 7
How satisfied are you with the computer and
the Internet systems?
Not Satisfied 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 Very
Satisfied
This week's rating 4
How hard did you try to
get through this week's tasks?
Gave up easily 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
Refused to give
up
This week's rating 8
Ok, basically the assignment this week was to take a look at the
team reports of the
other members of the Generational Cybercommunity to
see what the progressions/acquisitions
are that we have made and to point out areas that could use improvement. My subjects this week included: Noel Nedli
Lori
Morita, and Ina Miller.
But first on to my own
team reports. In the beginning, we (my teammates
Curtis,
and Cynthia and I) were very naive as to what to
do and
how to go about doing it. We all used the existing lists on the Netscape Home or
used the Infoseek search engine (that now has become painfully inaccurate to use)
and didn't add any links or explain how we got to where we did. I suppose we all
were putting
more emphasis on our individual reports and just trying to keep our heads above water.
Another thing that I notice is that
we didn't incorporate any principles of social psychology, but in my browsing through the rest of the class files I noticed that
not too many others were doing this either.
As a positive, I think we were able to get more useful information as
time went on
and hopefully from my side, I found things that weren't your normal, standard, boring,
cut and dried help documents. I think as another positive is that our team reports
started to get some personality through the use of icons and backgr
ound colors. I tried
to keep this kind of stuff to a minimum, to cut down on the loading time and I just
like pages that are rather stark anyway. Simplicity is the best route I think, I
mean, for my personality, I like simple, direct documents.
Well, the first persons team report that I looked at was Noel Nedli. Noel started out with real
cut and dried,
straight to the point reports. Normally, I would really enjoy this kind of reports,
but
I think they lacked personality. Another thing is that the documents only contained a couple of links. Noel didn't mention how social psychology related but his
reports were rather useful. The thing I noticed was that at about Week 5, Noel seemed
to
start looking at things he found personally interesting, and while the
personality
aspect of his reports improved, the topics he searched for
didn't seem related.
The next reports I looked at belonged to Lori Morita. Lori's reports started out
very
sheepish and very clipped without too much personality peeking
through. After a
couple of weeks, a drastic change is enacted and we
see the birth of Cyber Lori and
her snappy, quick moving, game show host
style of narration. As the weeks went on the reports
got longer and fancier (more intricate design wise). Overall, I do find Lori's reports
very entertaining and informative.
The third person, whose reports I looked at was,Ina Miller. Ina, writes short reports but somehow
they are a little clipped. The other thing I notice is the lack of links in her
documents. She also doesn't integrate her feelings into the reports, but as a
positive,
she does relate concepts of social psychology. I did like some of the things she reported
on, like the internet picture bride thing, and overall, I don't think she is doing
a bad job.
What principles should govern the team reports,
well, that's a tough one. So tough
in fact, I cheated, I went back to Dr. James' ideas on the syllabus (to which I will
add my own unsolicited and unadulterated opinions). Well, first of all talking about
how you found the information discussed helps
, for example what search engine, homepage,
listing, etc. The next thing would be what the link was called and adding said link
to your report. Other things include, the tone or style of the information presented and the content and it's usefulness.
Ok, now that I talked about that (and reminded
myself of all these wonderful criteria) onto my opinions.
As a warning, the things outlined and what I'm about to add don't necessarily mean
that I have been following my own advice (man, I'm tired
, I'm starting to see stars
on my screen, but I'm almost done now [you can all start rejoicing now]). I think,
a nice clean, direct layout is probably the best bet with each paragraph addressing a specific,
idea or question. If something is too hard
to read or is over the reader's head,
they will simply move on and only a few people will glean any kind of help. Another thing is to incorporate a little of yourself into your work. If something is very
simple, yet boring, about as many people will r
ead said document as they will an
esoteric one about some obscure piece
of computer hardware. Most importantly, is
to have fun doing what you
do and to try and find documents or information that is timely
and is
something that facilitates you getting excited, after all life is too
short and dull enough as it is isn't it?