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GR1: Analysis

Observations & Interviews

1. The Architect

  • An architecture student doing graduate-level training for professional architecture work
  • She feels that one of her biggest challenges as an arts student is the subjective nature of feedback
    • Hard to determine which feedback to listen to
    • Some art is MEANT to invoke a negative response -- how do you consider such feedback?
  • Most of the feedback she gets comes from gallery critiques, shows or critique sessions
    • Galleries are short and often more social than feedback-oriented
    • Critique sessions involve getting a number of people into a room where they may make comments, or take a pen and leave annotations/sketches on copies of the art in question
    • All of these sessions have time limits, so it's hard to get sufficient feedback
    • Success/feedback in such sessions often depends on how well you sell/present the work

    • [ArtBark group] This is very interesting, since it indicates that traditional feedback methods are frequently inefficient, and feedback from these sessions is typically hard to organize/interpret.

  • She normally receives a wide variety of feedback** Type of feedback depends on reviewer
    • Emotional reactions are common
    • It's often very useful to hear simply whether people like/dislike your work
    • Structure/technique
      • Sometimes people like to sketch to illustrate a point
      • Such feedback often results in professors arguing/discussing with each other
    • A lot of people like giving references e.g. your work reminds me of..., your work should be more like...
  • Not a lot of students may utilize feedback since they're often on a tight schedule and don't have time for many iterations** More frequent feedback would be helpful
    • Online feedback would be helpful
  • Undergrad students may want to be able to keep variations/previous versions of their work for use in portfolios
  • Wants review audiences to have limited visibility of each other (e.g professors shouldn't be able to see what her friends think of her art)

2. The Filmmaker 

  • A technical artist at an Academy Award-winning special effects studio.
  • Attended art school for film technique and film theory.
  • He received the majority of his feedback/critique from an assigned mentor.
    • Sometimes had peer reviews, but they were brief.
    • Would seek out friends and teaching assistants opinions as they were closer in age / understood his perspective
    • Felt that intermediate feedback was easy to come by, but lacked breadth
  • Worked more towards universal appeal than personal expression
    • It's hard to know what people are going to like. 
    • Often wanted to gauge a more general response from his intended audience, and not just people within his artistic community
  • He found that getting critique from within your art school can have a negative effect sometimes
    • A lot of internal competition that clouds people's judgement. 
    • A lot of pressure to do good work by a set of known standards, and there is less room to experiment. 
  • Process is non-linear: involves many drafts and versions** Sometimes wished he had shown more intermediate stages in case something was lost along the way
  • Really enjoyed contextual feedback (i.e. "oh this is a lot like <some other film maker>")** Especially helpful when such comparisons inspired collaboration.** Would have liked a forum in which people could post videos of related work.

3. The Digital Artist

  • Background in painting 
  • Studied Digital + Media Arts at the Rhode Island School of Design
  • Currently a Masters student at the Media Lab
  •  At RISD, she was also assigned a mentor, and she had studio session that met regularly
    • Most of her critiques came from peer reviews 
    • Gallery showing were an opportunity to get a more public reception
  • One issue students faced at RISD was that students had varying levels of notoriety before starting the program
    • Because feedback came in person from your peers, it wasn't always easy to be forthcoming
    • Specifically, there was a famous actor in her program who students were afraid to critique with anything less than praise
    • The process could have benefited from some anonymity 
  • She also found that her work that was considered significant within the RISD community was often decoupled from the work that received praise from non-artists, which was difficult to reconcile. 
  • Since graduating, she feels disconnected from her community of artistic critique, and it is difficult when making new work
    • Uses social media such as facebook to post intermediate work, concepts, and finished products
    • Also maintains a separate, polished, online portfolio 
    • Interested in richer, more visually-directed feedback from these media
  • Some work is generated programmatically -- could be interesting ways for people to experiment and contribute 

User Analysis

Target User Classes

  • Hosts
    • wants feedback, for themselves, or on behalf of their mentees
    • arts professors, arts students, or professional artists
  • Commenters
    • providers of feedback
    • art students (peers), professors, professional artists, non-artists

Needs & Goals

  • Efficient feedback
    • Artists don't want to spend a lot of time getting feedback (e.g. at gallery critiques)
    • Artists would like to get feedback online
    • Artists would like to get feedback frequently
  • Constructive feedback
    • Commenters should be able to include references (e.g. this work reminds me of..., try to make this work more like...)
    • Commenters should be able to provide graphical examples (e.g. sketches) and annotations (similar to pen/paper or sticky notes in traditional critique sessions)
  • Variety of feedback
    • Artists would like to reach a wide variety of commenters (e.g. friends, professors, professionals)
    • Artists may be interested in collaborating with others
  • Organized feedback
    • Artists would like to organize feedback by type (e.g. emotional, like/dislike, technical)
    • Artists would like to set privacy/viewing settings between groups (e.g. professors should not be able to see comments from artist's friends)

Task Analysis

Task 1: 

  • Why is the task being done?
  • Where is the task performed?
  • What is the environment like?
  • What are the time or resource constraints?
  • Who else is involved in the task?
  • What does the user need to know or have before doing the task?
  • How often is the task performed?
  • How is the task learned?
  • What can go wrong?

Task 2: 

  • Why is the task being done?
  • Where is the task performed?
  • What is the environment like?
  • What are the time or resource constraints?
  • Who else is involved in the task?
  • What does the user need to know or have before doing the task?
  • How often is the task performed?
  • How is the task learned?
  • What can go wrong?
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