Although this project was one of the most difficult projects I had faced so far, it was the most eye-opening and educational projects given in this program. Before this project, I had an embarrassing amount of knowledge about first nations (basically nothing), and it is amazing to learn so much in the past few weeks.
Getting to meet the students in the Indigenous Film Program was the most vital and important step during the process of developing our concepts. I was educated by the students on the wide variety of the dialects spoken in a language, and the importance of not using an umbrella term to group all the languages together. The students also mentioned how it would be nice to accompany a wide variety of languages, instead of just focusing on one language, which I had done.
A big topic that came up in most of the feedback with my classmate and I’s project was permission; whether we had asked the writers, the poets, the models, the photographers, if we were communicating the right message with their work, that was not offensive in any way. Although this is a school project and we may not be able to do so in the time frame we were given, this was the biggest takeaway I had during the conversation. If I were to ever work on a project involving the First Nation community, I now know the importance of asking, instead of assuming.
After getting the feedback from the students, I went off and revamped what I had before, starting with the name of the app. The app was initially named “Acimona” which meant storytelling in Cree according to the online resource. The Indigenous Film student I met said that it had meant “city/lifestyle” in his dialect of Cree, which was entirely off from the online translation. I decided to stay safe with a more straightforward app name.
I will give myself 8/10 on this project. I believe I incorporated the imagery of the book/door which symbolized the USP, well into the interface. I decided not to make a menu bar to keep the user experience simple enough to be used by children, but there is perhaps areas that could be changed to create a smoother process. One example would be to select the grade and language on one screen instead of two. The overall look is friendly looking, and would appeal to older elementary students, but I could have done a better job to appeal to the younger students as well. I also sketched out ideas around filtering through the library selection, to find books specifically about history or culture, but I had run out of time to do so. This could have been accomplished if I had managed my time better.
Live Invision Link: https://invis.io/D3QXAFYG7E2
App Walkthrough Video: https://drive.google.com/open?id=1tJ0Os7UShMbqID4RJbQSyyXTxVNYkcdH