Week 14: Future Artifacts
May 2nd — 8th
This week, our team began generating final artifacts. The previous weeks of this semester have been spent in deep critical inquiry into Portland Public Schools and the US education system generally. We’ve pulled at countless threads and gathered insights from dozens of educators, synthesizing concepts for intervention at every phase of our research. In this final phase, we used futuring frameworks to define our key points and to speculate on related developments that might aid in the unfolding of a future where ARC Services could be situated.
PROCESS
We received guidance from our professors and TA (Peter and Stef) for how we might capture key elements of our systems-level concept and represent them through various mediums. Our team has elected to produce a newscast from the year 2029, as this emphasizes a tipping point for Portland Public Schools toward a desirable future.
We began working on a basic prototype video this past weekend and will continue refining and iterating toward a final production. We are combining a variety of digital tools to accomplish this task:
- Figma
Useful for creating practical wireframes and vector graphics, has been instrumental to developing a logo and website mockup for ARC Services
- Miro
Useful for rapid ideation and remote collaboration, has been the main platform for capturing ideas for video content, storyboarding, and outline
- Google Docs
Useful for drafting and writing as a team, has been our primary source for writing a script
- Adobe After Effects
A powerful motion graphics and general purpose video editor, has been used to create rough drafts and work toward a final video artifact
Our team has envisioned a series of interventions that are in part a response to the looming crisis of a national teacher shortage. Several articles have been written about this topic, as COVID-19 has created an unsustainable level of stress for educators and other public sector workers. We see this as a signal, and anticipate a future where state and federal legislation reacts with sweeping reforms, granting PPS a unique opportunity to restructure and allocate additional resources to support and retain educators throughout their careers.
Bringing these concepts to life through video is an interesting challenge. We have only 10 minutes to present our final work, and this includes time for playing a video. Our current prototype is over 8 minutes long, and we’ll need to cut this down to less than half that time to allow for presenting process and research. This weekend our team is revising the script and cherry-picking the most salient points to produce a final clip.
Next steps:
- Coordinate final recordings for individual parts
- Refine use of green screen effects to produce high-fidelity video
- Update motion graphics and story elements
- Final slide deck for presentation on this project
- Review concept video with Peter and Stef
- Render final video and prepare for presentation
