Algorithmic Personalization

For this project, my partner Liz and I decided to focus on the topic of algorithmic personalization. I enjoyed working with a partner for this project. Liz and I worked together very well and were both very focused on getting the work done in time and doing it well. We decided to use Adobe Spark for our presentation because it was an easy way to collaborate with each other while still making a fun and entertaining video.

We made a shared google doc in order to sort out which responsibilities each of us wanted to take on. We ended up splitting the research portion pretty evenly. I focused on information from the book while Liz searched for information online. Also, Liz put all of the information into the presentation and added some pictures and I added pictures as I edited and wrote the script. We figured out the best way to add both of our voices to the presentation was to record each of us saying different parts of our script and put it together with a screen recording of our presentation. I was able to edit the video and audio together and then uploaded the video to Youtube.

For me personally, I was a little nervous about working with a partner on a fully online project because I’m usually pretty independent when it comes to projects and such. However, I feel like Liz and I were a good match and were able to work together very well and get this project done. We both had super stressful work-filled weeks which made the pressure of the deadline a lot stronger, but we were able to complete the project in time.

In terms of highlights and lowlights, I definitely think that the highlights outweighed the lowlights. Researching and writing the script was a pretty easy and simple task, just a little time-consuming. Liz was just as involved in all of the parts of this project as I was, which really strengthened the “power of two” concept. I also really enjoyed using Adobe Spark. I had never heard of/used it before this project but it was very easy to get the hang of and was a fun change from google slides. There were only a few lows during this project. Like I mentioned earlier, we were both pretty crammed with work for this week so working on this project was slightly stressful. Also, since we were working as a pair but only online, figuring out how and when we could work on our video with both of our schedules this week was a little difficult but we definitely made it work.

Overall, this was a pretty enjoyable project to work on and complete. As I said, I’m usually pretty independent in terms of completing projects and assignments because a lot of the time the work in partner/group projects is never really equally distributed. However, this project was sort of a breath of fresh air from that. I think it definitely made it easier that I was working with a partner who was equally as involved in the work as I was because we were able to easily figure out a way to complete our video before the deadline. The “power of two” is something that I will definitely be paying more attention to in the future because I can now see the positives that working with a partner can bring.