Feedback

To evaluate our digital stories and proposal, we need a feedback form that is comprehensively designed to reflect the strengths and weaknesses of our project, meanwhile explicitly organised, making it easy for our audiences to understand. At the formative team presentation in week 10, we sent out a total of 24 feedback forms (19 students, 5 staffs), and got 23 copies back (19 students, 4 staffs).

The feedback form was separated into three sections. The first part is about the content and production of the story, the second part is for evaluation of our digital strategies, For questions in these two parts, most answers offer five ratings to choose, ranging from poor, average to good, as the example shown below.

The narration and production of the digital story are the most important compositions of our group work, and we have spent most of our time on it. In the first part of the feedback form, each question corresponds with our concerns in our production process.

Primarily, we wanted to test our big idea from three perspectives —the creativity of our idea (writing to each other via different media technologies to invoke a reminiscence of our Warwick memories and get a reunion at Dana’s 50th birthday), whether the story was informative (we recognised the differences in the amount of information conveyed in each story) and if we told our stories in a clear manner that both the content and the linkage of stories were comprehensible for the audiences.

Then, we wanted to make sure the quality and appropriateness of out selected photos, and the emotion and clearness of our voices. We had additional concern of the speed of our voices. We already found we have a lot scripts to finish in each 90 seconds and might be a little fast with our narration. However, considering we are doing letters, it seemed to be OK. We were not sure about this and expect to find out from the feedback.

In the second part of the form, we mostly wanted to find out whether our production would be reachable and spreadable among our audiences through our digital strategy. The third part is consisted by open questions with the expectation to collect further thoughts and advices from the audiences.

From the feedback we received after the presentation, we made following conclusions.

Things to improve:

• The biggest problem of our proposal came from the voices, the volume of the voice was not equal, some parts of the narration were not quite clear due to intonation and quite voice. The voices could be more engaging and consistent.
• The design of the slides should be considered that some slides carried too much text to follow.

The good parts:

• The selection of photos was good.
• Our research and analysis of Warwick essence and competitors were thought to be thorough and impressive.
• The idea of imagining our future selves was creative, the connection of stories was good, and the story itself was engaging.
• The choice of target audience — the Millennials.

Other comments relate to our concerns:

• One-third of the respondents thought the pace of the story was fast.
• The story as a whole is informative, though some stories are obviously more informative than others, the mixed worked well.
• Digital strategy was considered effective, some found the alumni focus quite interesting and effective.

Developing our creative idea

In this blog, I’d like to the explain the process of how we choose our story idea, and provide a capture of the structure and flow of our story.

After positioning our target audience as the Millennial group, our group came up with two initial ideas and brought them to discussions at the week 7 tutor session. The first one is to take the form of writing a letter from our imagined future selves to our younger selves, in which we express our concerns and thoughts over taking a new, life-changing path, and offer reassurances that doing a master at Warwick is a fantastic step to take. The second one is to explain why we come to Warwick from six different perspectives through six detail-focused stories.

The ‘letter’ turned out to be a more favourable scenario in the tutor session, Jo and Sara reminded us that maybe we can write to each other instead of writing to ourselves. The session also helped us to understand the brief more precisely. Our final idea turned out to be a mix of our two initial ideas, that we adopted the form of ‘letter’, however, we decided to have six individual letters instead of one. And our challenge turned out to be how to link the six letters together, logically and emotionally.

We had a brainstorm in the following meeting, which turned out to be quite effective with many sparkling ideas flowing. Always having the number 50 in our mind, we found it better to write from our 50th birthday rather than the us after 50 years, which would be too old. Then we decided to use Dana’s 50th birthday as our clue. Her 50th birthday reminds her of celebrating the 50th birthday of Warwick with her classmates during her study abroad days in UK, and she decides to contact her friends to invite them to her birthday party. The story will start from Dana sending an email to Wu. Then each of us will pass on the story by contacting the next person with one kind of social media. We will use a photo of the whole class, and zoom in to each people when we remembering her in the letters.

We will demonstrate ‘why Warwick’ from six angles in our letters. Being married and having a stable job in China, Wu represents our target audience, who reject the notion that life is a ‘track’ to be followed from milestone to milestone, but rather an experience to be enjoyed. Therefore, she will talk about the drivers and motivations for her to make the difficult decision to be in Warwick. Then in the main body, I will focus on describing the international experiences I got here from academic studies to cultural experiences. Wen will show the inspiration she got here, such as Sarah’s workshop. Katie will exhibit the activities and societies in Warwick. And Sharon will write from a more futuristic perspective, elaborating how the study in Warwick helps her to find an ideal job.

The story will finally come back to Dana, and she will present her stories about friendship in Warwick. In the end, there will be a picture showing the six old ladies with wrinkles and grey hair get a reunion at Dana’s birthday party, corresponding to the first photo of the whole class taken in 2015.

By such means, we are building our collective memories of Warwick through a coherent story. The next step for us is to make surgeries to our individual scripts with these clear ideas in mind, Choose photos that fit to our emotions, and think about what social media to use in the transition between letters, taking a futuristic view to some extent. We will further develop our idea through discussing these aspects in our next meeting.

As the public relation director, my following work will focus on integrating media resources and developing our PR strategies, with the core target of enhancing the spreadability and stickiness of our story and motivating our audiences to make more engagement and contributions to the project.

Video Example

This is the short film i was planning to show you, i found the 2mins version.

[sharing] 5 Ideas to tell our stories

For our video references, I tried to find some examples of storytelling, though it seems impossible to make a storytelling presentation as the same standard as those videos,  we can still produce one by combining pictures, short clips and some voice over with the formats.

Through the examples I found online, they all have a same essence which is ‘ the story must be common but not cheesy.’ In other words, their scripts describe the stories we can easily relate with, attracting people’s attention and raising our emotion.

A. 6 stories, 1 concept

Using 6 stories through the same element (ex. map) to tell the concept(ex. finding the new way).

Example, we can talk about the story  #courage @beijing, and then #freedom@Taipei,etc..  All the stories lead to the core concept, which is connection, sharing and collaboration.

In this format, we need to prepare: photos, voice over recording, some clips, and music

• Advantage: Audiences can understand each of our Warwick stories clearly, and the core concept can be presented fluently.
• Challenge: The element to connect each stories has to be strong, or the video would be flat.

B. Focus on the concept

Without  tell everyone’s story specifically, the video focus on the concept by  inserting our photos to connect each one’s story.

Example, “In our whole life, we all look for something, we have goals, we chase for a better life. someone dreams about change, someone dreams about happiness. but what exactly did you do to win it?…..” using the opening to link with each other’s clips.

In this format, we need to prepare:  Touching or fun scripts, one voice over, photos, and music

• Advantage: Simple, and clean point of view, the temple could be controlled so the video would not be slow and boring.
• Challenge:  An interesting script and we would probably need  more time on preparing materials and after effect.

C. A letter to someone

Make the film like a massage to someone.

Example, “Dear mom and dad, this is my 123 days in Warwick…..”  Writing a letter to express our personal experience and emotions.

In this format, we need to prepare: a script, voice over, photos and music

• Advantage: Easy to tell stories, and the audiences also play the roles of recipients.
• Challenge: 10 mins would be a too long for reading a letter.

D. A day in Warwick

By presenting a day in Warwick, we can make Warwick CCPS the best study environment without using words to sell this concept.

Example, Using pictures/ clips from morning to night on campus and combining with the sound effects and music.

In this format, we need to prepare: photos, our daily schedule, music and sound effects

• Advantage: Distinguished from others video, and much  closer to the facts.
• Challenge: We have to select the events and spend a lot of time on preparing materials.

E. Interview style

Real interview would make the video more solid and trustable.

Example, We have to record the dialogues when discussing about the first day in Warwick, how we got our offers, what we’ve learned so far, what happened last weekend, and who did funny things, etc..

In this format, we need to prepare: interview preparation, clips, photos ,sound effects, and music

• Advantage: This video can be the answers of a lot of questions from the international students.
• Challenge: The scripts must be fun and inspiring, or it would loss the audiences very soon.