Creative Media Practice: QR Codes

QR Codes

Thursday 10th October 2013

Our second task for this module is focused on QR Codes, after a small discussion about QR Codes our mini brief was set. In small groups we have conceive a plan and to build a narrative that is located around the Redmond's Building. For this brief we had to make sure we had a minimum of five QR Codes that could be placed in a location. Our QR Codes could be linked to; website URL, YouTube videos, Google Maps, Twitter, Blogs, plain texts, data etc. Our QR codes are for users to scan with their smart phones. We decided to stick to a simple narrative, but that would also have a meaningful story behind it and connect locations and objects together. 

So for our group narrative we decided to go down the historical narrative route, for this prototype we used real stores about the location but also made some stories to make the prototype more realistic, as we didn’t have much time to search for a lot of stories about our location. Our location for the QR codes prototype is Rodney Street which is down the road from the Redmond’s building. We researched a little bit about the history of the street e.g. buildings, photographs, videos but also ghost stories about the streets. As we found out there is a gambler buried on the street. 

Our narrative is simple but affective as you can imagine our idea being used with any street in the world, as people are able to find something new about an area but also be part of an experience. We designed our narrative so that users can either follow a route or start at an point in the narrative and they will still be able to figure out the idea straight away. 

This mini task was enjoyable, the part that did take up most time was coming up with our narrative as we had an idea and then changed our minds a couple of times. But once we finalised the main idea everything fell into place, collecting all the different types of media, downloading them was so fast and easy to do. Only problems we had was with Google Maps, as Google has changed the setup, as we where pushed for time we couldn’t spend a large amount of time learning how to use it, so we had a quick change of plan and decided that we would present our prototype on prezi to show a real idea of our narrative. 

I really enjoyed this mini brief, and I’m thinking this maybe the task I want to do for my final project. To do this for my final project then I would make sure I manage my time better, to make sure I have enough time on each area; researching, planning, creating, learning software/tools. But also to make sure everything works successful, so that viewers can get the whole experience of the QR codes and the narrative. 

Below is the link to our prezi showing our QR narrative check it out; 

Hauntings of Rodney Street/