The characteristics of online making that we want to respond to mainly come from the class discussion in week two and the interactive projects we experienced in MIT database. Based on all the development posts, we finally created our Draw Something project.

Firstly, the central idea of us is going to bring audiences into the video we made, and lead them to think, so to convey the ‘interactive’ feeling. At the beginning, we cut together some of the funny reactions when the drawers first know the word they need to draw. At the same time, we put the caption at the bottom to explain this game. Then, we said ‘Let’s have a guess’, to cue the audiences to join this game when they watching the following drawing procedure. We simply thought that make audiences guess the answer would be a good way to interact because they could leave comments after watching. However, the problem occurred that we should post the answer at the end of the video to make sense. As a result, we found that the timing of posting the answer and the timing of commenting was kind of conflicting. To improve the bug, it will be better to have a text box in the video for audiences to write done the answer, so they can really interact with the system. Once they get the right answer, the video can automatically go to next question. By watching the video we made, audiences can still guess during the whole drawing part, have the answer in their mind, and at last we uses voice of one of the drawer to publish the answer. Compared to those mature pictionary apps, our work may be more entertaining, and can view different aspects of drawing.

Secondly, we wanted to respond to the nonlinear characteristic. In the ‘Draw Something’ game, every round, every question, and every drawing can be viewed separately. Before shooting, we prepared three words for drawers to choose. However, most drawers chose the same word, and created lots of funny doodles, so we finally decided to just use one question in the video. When watch the video, audiences can click pause to see every doodle, or view the whole video, which both make sense. If viewers find that one of the doodles is particularly funny, they can screenshot that one, send to their friends to guess. Moreover, if we have more time and skills, we may want to shoot few more episodes to emphasise the non-linear and modularity principle.

This time, we used video camera to shoot people in real life to draw out the words, because it needed more time for us to wait for response online. However, compared to The Sheep Market and  Quick, Draw!, the number of our participants were much smaller. We learn that Internet is better for big data work. When things can exist and share in a digital way, people can easily cooperate online, so more of them are able to participate the project, and this is also why we try to publish the video online for people to guess. Before, most people only play this kind of game with their friends on social media platform, but we wanted to build a website or community that drawers can share their works.

The question that we still remain is mainly about the usage of different levels of interactivity. In my opinion, almost every online media contains the interactive features like share or comment. However, when talk about ‘interactive’, people may expect digital games that they can make choice, or explore the project by themselves. Is ‘interactive’ necessary for online media making? I want to learn more about its usage and limitation.