GR1: Analysis

Observations & Interviews

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)

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.

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 Classes

• Roles
  • Arts professors
  • Arts students
  • Professional artists
  • Non-artists
• Types
  • Host
    • wants feedback
    • roles: arts professors, arts students, pro artists
  • Commenters
    • givers of feedback
    • all roles

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)