Entry 10
Jack Griffiths
November 26th, 2024
As we wrap up our journey with The Flow Within, it’s hard to believe how far we’ve come since those first few brainstorming sessions. What started as a collection of ideas and roles has transformed into a cohesive, creative project that we’re incredibly proud to showcase at the Lights on Stratford Festival on December 13th.
Reflecting on our progress, I’m amazed by the growth of both the project and our team. Each step along the way—whether it was building our first prototype, refining our message through presentations, or integrating community feedback—was a milestone that brought us closer to realizing our vision. The hard work, late nights, and countless meetings were all worth it to see how much we’ve accomplished.
One of the things I’ve been most inspired by is the consistency of the team’s efforts. From keeping our social media presence alive with regular posts and interviews to writing blog updates like this one, we’ve stayed committed to keeping the project visible and engaging. The media creation team’s work on our commercial has been a highlight, showcasing the heart of The Flow Within in a way that’s creative, professional, and deeply tied to our vision.
The marketing team’s deep dive into the Avon River’s history has been another essential part of our journey. Their research uncovered stories and cultural connections that have added incredible depth to the project. By incorporating elements of the river’s significance, including its Indigenous history, we’ve been able to create an installation that resonates not just visually, but emotionally as well.
The technical team’s breakthrough moment—connecting interaction on a phone through a website to the computer coding for our projection—was a game-changer. It was the moment our concept truly came to life, showcasing the kind of interactivity we envisioned from the start. It’s been incredible to see the dedication and creativity they’ve brought to this technically complex part of the project.
And finally, seeing how all these pieces came together under the guidance of Avery and myself as project managers has been deeply rewarding. It wasn’t always easy balancing deadlines, facilitating communication, and ensuring everyone had what they needed to succeed, but the outcome speaks for itself. The collaboration and shared vision of our team have truly made The Flow Within what it is.
As we approach December 13th, I’m filled with excitement to see our hard work shine at the Lights on Stratford Festival. This project has been an incredible journey of learning, creativity, and teamwork, and I couldn’t be prouder of what we’ve achieved together. Thank you for following along with us, and I can’t wait to see how people experience *The Flow Within* in all its final glory. Stay tuned for the big reveal!
Entry 9
Avery Slote
November 21, 2024
As this project comes to a close and all that remains is putting the finishing touches on everything, our team is working hard to ensure all elements look their best!
This week Jack and I, as project leads, are facilitating the work amongst the sub-teams. Routinely, we check-in on the members to aid them where possible as we hope to avoid any member being stressed or overworked through this final stretch. In our own role, we are also developing the final presentation that communicates the complete summary of the past month working on The Flow Within.
Members from the media and marketing team, Ryan and Eleanor, are in the process of developing the commercial for The Flow Within. We hope this commercial is able to highlight the best parts of our installation in a way that gets people excited about it! I’m excited to see how it comes together, but knowing their editing and writing abilities, I know it will be amazing.
Ehrinne, another media creation team member, is helping bring an idea for a novel QR code to life! We are planning to have a physical display with the QR code to interact with our installation as we believe this will elevate our project one step further. Ehrinne is communicating with media services and providing all the necessary details to have a laser cut board with our QR code reading for our project demo.
In line with the project interaction, Manal and Joshua, members from our marketing and technical team are working on developing the text and visuals to our main website and sister screen site with its new addition. Manal is adding a section on our website that prompts visitors to visit the interactive screen and provides a historical account of the river and its ecology. Joshua is focusing on the sister screen site to communicate to the users how to interact with the screen.
Behind the scenes, Taryn on the technical team is creating the final touches to make the installation’s code beautiful! She is refining the colours, fish populations to the data, the speed of gradient change, and particle effects. An additional feature is being added as well to gamify the experience and encourage interactions: a counter that tracks the number of ripples created by participants. Finally, Rachel, in our marketing team, is continuing with our social media to help generate buzz around the final product. She is working on fun reels, interviews, and posts that encouragement engagement.
With each member playing a crucial role in this project, I’d like to use this as an opportunity to say how proud I am of everyone for their contributions, ideas, and effort into this project. I am excited to see how everything will come together in the end as what I have seen working with my team so far has been amazing. We are looking forward to the final showcase!
Entry 8
Avery Slote
November 19, 2024
With the amazing developments our technical team has been making, this week I wanted to highlight their contributions by taking a deep dive into their perspective throughout the progression of this project.
As team lead, I sat with the technical team members, Taryn Young and Joshua Lien, to get a glimpse into their work process. As The Flow Within’s main component is a code-based visualizer made from real data on Stratford’s Avon River, their work has been crucial to our team. They outlined the creation of this installation into 4 different stages.
Stage 1: Planning
For approximately the first two weeks, Taryn and Joshua spent majority of their time in the planning stage of the code development. Separately, each member worked and tested on different components of the code such as the particle effects and the gradient background. This stage consisted of testing numerous effects to find out which methods translated properly on screen to match the vision of The Flow Within. Beginning from the ground-up, this stage included placeholder values for the future dataset that would be incorporated into the installation, including both numerical values and colour combinations. Although this stage was overwhelming, as the remainder of the project was still to come, Joshua and Taryn had lots of fun experimenting with many different effects.
Stage 2: Decision Making
After the individual portion of the work, Taryn and Joshua had to make difficult decisions on which tested effects would make it into the prototype code combination. The team noted the difficulty of combining the two codes together as each effect reacted differently to the order and naming conventions of the other member’s code. Through hard work and dedication they were able to overcome this barrier to create a combination for our prototype our team was very pleased to see! In this stage, the technical team also developed the click functionality hit test for the prototype that would act as a placeholder prior to creating the sister screen interaction and they added the real values from the data set for an accurate visualization.
Stage 3: Refining
Taryn describes this stage as “making it pretty”. Considering a large portion of why The Flow Within will be effective is based in aesthetics, this perspective is a nice one to have! During this stage, Taryn focused on refining the details of the prototype to align with the style of our brand, such as making the fish more recognizable and separated from the sediment effects as intended and upgrading the placeholder circle into a ripple for interaction. Meanwhile, Joshua focused on upgrading the placeholder interaction of a mouse click to a server that is functional with the participants mobile device. This was a big feat, and Joshua spent countless hours ensuring it’s success.
Stage 4: Compiling
The final stage is the stage that Taryn and Joshua are on currently! Right now, their tasks are to ensure everything is working properly and the interaction from installation to sister screen is seamless, the effects are accurate to the data, and the installation includes details that provide more context to the participant about what period of time they are viewing. This is the stage in which everything comes together.
Overall, it was interesting to see the full scope of the technical team’s workflow and the work that went into creating this installation!