Hudson's Bay Company grant program is suspended

I recently came across an old call for historic preservation/interpretation grant proposals for the Hudson's Bay Company, which operated Fort Vancouver more than 150 years ago. So I wrote the company a note about the FVM project, and the response was not promising. A nameless employee at The HBC wrote back that the grant program had been suspended, and that it only funded projects within Canada, when it was operating. But the person did ask for the project web site. So maybe the door is not completely closed.

Added to the list: The Old Apple Tree story

With two modules nearly completed (Kanaka and Kane), one module about 3/4th of the way done (Village Opening), and a fourth module well underway (women and domestic life), we have been thinking about what will be next for the Fort Vancouver Mobile project.
Brady Berkenmeier and Allen Anderson, the creative drivers of the Kane module, are ready to begin work on another phase. The Old Apple Tree story has been put through significant preproduction work. So it made sense for us to return to The Old Apple Tree story for the fifth FVM module, with Berkenmeier and Anderson leading the effort.
This piece originally was developed as part of a (DTC 354) Digital Storytelling class at Washington State University Vancouver in the fall of 2010, also the origins of the Kane module. Berkenmeier was a member of that class, and he worked with the students who developed The Old Apple Tree story to the point it is now. He therefore was the logical choice to help bring that core of an idea (har har) to fruition. He has many ideas already for the module and said he will begin soon on the framework.

Kane module is nearly ready for beta testing

Brady Berkenmeier and Allen Anderson and I spent a few hours testing the Kane module on Tuesday, and it is expected to be ready for beta testing by Sept. 17, when Fort Vancouver has its largest event of the year, Campfires and Candlelight.

Welcome, bienvenue, bienvenido, National Park Service Digital Media Webinar participants!

Greg Shine of the Fort Vancouver National Historic Site said you might be stopping by today. ... So let me add just a bit more to what I wrote below for this group. Digital media, especially through mobile devices, creates many new opportunities. It is not magic, though, and digital media does not get created through wizardry. Digital media is the result of a process, often a complicated and creative process, and to help you visualize this activity, here are two illustrations taken from the Elements of User Experience work by Jesse James Garrett. Both of these graphics helped me in the beginning of the Fort Vancouver Mobile project, as launching points, and I suspect they also might help you in whatever you want to accomplish. More details on each of the labels are available through Garrett's sites and books.

If I can be of any further help to you or your project, please feel free to contact me anytime via the email on the upper right-hand side of this page.

- Brett

10 tips for making great mobile place-based media

Greg Shine, Chief Ranger at the Fort Vancouver National Historic Site, and I have been working on this FVM project for a couple of years now. He asked me recently what were my top tips for people considering starting such a project in other places. He wanted to share those, along with his tips, as part of the National Park Service's first Digital Media Webinar at the Washington D.C.-area training center, which is being attended right now, as I type, by Shine as well as by more than 90 employees from throughout national parks in the U.S. & territories (such as Virgin Islands, American Samoa, and Guam).

Here is what I wrote:

1. Make friends. No one person can create a high-quality mobile app alone, no matter how talented. The process just requires too many things to be done, in too many different fields, with too much expertise needed. Sweat equity builds these mobile apps, and the payoff for friends is the fun of collaborating together on a cool project.

2. Focus on something small and achievable. Ambitions will grow, no doubt, in the process, but the original idea should be something that a small team can build and celebrate as a success. Mobile devices can do it all – text, images, audio, video, animation, plus interactivity with contextual awareness – but an app creator will do best by starting with a series of small goals, and gradually chipping away at the bigger dream.

3. Stay focused on that original goal. It will be tempting to follow the siren call of mobile app possibilities. Just remember, something inspired you to build the mobile app for your site. Whatever that was, keep your eyes on it. Build it. When you are done, there always can be a Phase 2.

4. Don’t skimp on the backend. While the least interesting part of the mobile app is the invisible coding that makes it work, think of that component like the engine of a car. If your Ferrari of an idea can’t make it out of the driveway, then it’s just as valuable as your garden Gnome. Such backend work on a mobile app is much more complicated than even your programmer probably understands, because of the interactions it creates with non-coded physical space. Whatever your most conservative estimate is for programming costs and time, triple it. Then, triple that.

5. Avoid old patterns. A mobile app offers radically new opportunities. Explore them. Porting a wayside sign onto a mobile screen, for example, is no different in ambition than the companies in the mid-1990s who thought it was innovative to transfer their tri-fold brochures, as is, onto a web site.

6. Get to know your visitors. Take the time, do the research, and get to know your users in as much depth as possible. It is not just sufficient to know what users do at your site, because they very well may be following the rat maze you have created. Instead, try starting with a blank slate, and asking visitors what they would like to be doing at the site, and how, and let your imagination and your mobile app try to respond to those ideas.

7. Challenge all of your assumptions. The world of mediated spaces has changed so significantly during the past decade, with the mass adoption of mobile devices, and the growing abilities of them, that almost any habitual interpretive process you have could be outdated. Systematically test what you are doing. Don’t just assume it is working. Find out what actually is making connections with visitors, what isn’t, and what your visitors want right now and in the future. Move resources away from the past and toward the future. Serve your users, not your habits.

8. Quality is more important than quantity. It might be easy and seemingly helpful to dump all of your desktop-oriented web pages into the mobile device. But if those pages do not look good or work well on the device, then your users will develop a negative perception of your app and site. It might be difficult to create a small, yet high-quality object, on the mobile device, such as a high-res image, aligned with the physical space, and pushed to the user at a specific geolocated place, ripe for intellectual engagement. But which do you think would have a greater positive impact?

9. A professional app requires professional contributors, with professional equipment. It might be tempting to bring along cousin Billy, and niece Billyette, with the camcorder and a box of tapes, and try to reenact a scene from history in your backyard. And it certainly would be cheaper and less hassle. But the difference between that approach and a partnership with professional actors, videographers, costumers, editors, script writers, etc., is the difference between a Ken Burns’-like documentary aesthetic and a hack’s YouTube channel.

10. Do something fun. Don’t create a mobile app because you think you have to, or it should be done. Don’t assign it to somebody, or create an elaborate bureaucracy to handle the “mobile” issue. Find some aspect of your interpretation that you really think would be exciting as a mobile app. Work in that inspired space, of wanting this new piece of digital media to exist, because you want it to exist. If this project becomes just another chore, or task, to check off, everyone loses. If this project expresses something you passionately want to share with your visitors, because you know they want it, too, then you should start today. There is a lot of work, a lot of agony, and a lot of glory ahead of you.

Updates about the growing FVM audience

Just a quick note to document that this Fort Vancouver Mobile blog surpassed 5,000 overall page views last month (July 2011), the biggest month yet (more than 700 page views in July alone). The beta version of the location-based app has been downloaded now by hundreds of people, according to market statistics, and anecdotally, we are getting all sorts of interesting feedback. A 13-year-old girl approached fort staff last week with suggestions for expansion of the app. A visitor to the site yesterday suggested to a friend in Spanish to "descargand" ("download") the app on Twitter, and even included the #fvmobile hashtag. Very cool!

The Columbian "cheers" the FVM project

The local newspaper's weekly list of good and bad in the community featured the Fort Vancouver Mobile project, saying:

"Cheers: To a new smartphone app that shows smartphone users images, maps, audio and video about a portion of Fort Vancouver. The application was developed by students in Washington State University Vancouver’s creative media & digital culture program. So far the app covers only the area outside the stockade known as the village, but assistant professor Brett Oppegaard, who oversaw its development, hopes it will be expanded."

Kanaka module videos have been re-encoded

Forrest Burger of RiverBend Productions recently re-encoded the Kanaka module videos through a Matrox video encoder, which kept the file sizes roughly the same (to avoid buffering) but significantly increased the quality level of the imagery. The results look good, and that encoding process will be our new standard. ... Thanks, Forrest!

Kane's Wanderings animations

The voice talents of Ben Coder, a Fort Vancouver National Historic Site park ranger, have been added to the Paul Kane animations, produced by Brady Berkenmeier and Allen Anderson. Here is the context of the module and previous versions, and here are the latest drafts:

Animation 1-Good Audio from Brady Berkenmeier on Vimeo.

Animation 2-Good Audio from Brady Berkenmeier on Vimeo.

Animation 3-Good Audio from Brady Berkenmeier on Vimeo.

Animation 4-Good Audio from Brady Berkenmeier on Vimeo.

Feedback?

Another beta testing opportunity ... Thursday morning, July 28

After a very busy beta testing session yesterday, July 25, that lasted almost the entire day (with the sunburn to prove it), I will be offering one more guided Fort Vancouver Mobile best testing session for the Kanaka module on Thursday morning, July 28, from 9 a.m. to noon. No RSVP needed. Just come by The Village (west of the stockade, between the bastion and the Land Bridge) during that time and find me in the area.

The next round of beta testing, probably starting in late August or early September, will be on the Kane's Wanderings module, which is nearly complete. More details to be announced on that soon.

The Columbian makes notice of the FVM project

As part of a July 19 story about Fort Vancouver's annual archaeology field school, writer Tom Vogt also added this helpful sidebar about the Fort Vancouver Mobile project. Thanks, Tom!

FVM on the local Fox News channel

Just found out that a short piece about the project ran on Fox News at 4:37 p.m. Monday, July 18:

Here's a link to the clip

Women & Domestic Life at the Village of Fort Vancouver

Dr. Dene Grigar has been working diligently on a new module for the Fort Vancouver Mobile project based on the women and domestic life at Fort Vancouver, funded by a National Endowment for the Humanities Digital Start-Up grant. She is keeping a separate blog on her process and product here. It is an impressive bit of documentation, including a bibliography, project updates and project details.

WSU News creates a video story about the FVM project

Matt Haugen from WSU News was given a demo of the FVM app a few weeks ago, and here is the story he produced from that experience:

From: "UREL.WSU.News"
Date: Mon, 18 Jul 2011 10:42:10 -0700
Subject: WSU VANCOUVER NEWS: WSU mobile app offers interactive experience for Fort Vancouver visitors

7/18/2011

WSU mobile app offers interactive experience for Fort Vancouver visitors

Source:
Brett Oppegaard, assistant professor, 360-546-9788, brett.oppegaard@gmail.com

Media contact:
Matt Haugen, WSU News, 509-335-0487, mhaugen@wsu.edu

Editor’s note: A video version of this story can be found HERE:



VANCOUVER, Wash. – The future is to immerse yourself in the past. A smart phone application (app) is providing visitors to the Fort Vancouver National Historic Site with a new way to experience history.

Designed by The Creative Media & Digital Culture Program at Washington State University Vancouver, the mobile app shows users images, maps, audio and video related to where they are at the site. Still in its infancy, the app covers a small area called “The Village,” which recreates living conditions from when the fort was active.

WSU Vancouver assistant professor Brett Oppegaard said the app is joining an ever-converging world of history and technology.

“Any of the media that we can present digitally can be packaged into this app and then put onto a phone… The user can access it when they need it, when they want to learn about something in particular,” he said.

Research assistant Brady Berkenmeier said the technology opens the fort to visitors in entirely new ways.

“It’s different than an audio tour; it’s different than a wayside sign," he said. "It’s an interactive way to learn about history… I think it’s the future of this historic site.”

Working with the National Park Service, Oppegaard said he hopes the mobile app can be expanded to more areas of the fort and used as a model for apps at parks across the nation.

To learn more about the mobile app, click here

See an earlier article here.

WSU News article about the FVM project from 2010

Apparently I missed this one when it came out, but I found it recently. So here it is. It was triggered by the 2010 Clark County Historical Promotion Grant awarded to the project.

More Paul Kane animation drafts

Brady Berkenmeier, the PI for the Kane's Wanderings module, has sent a few more draft animations (with scratch audio; we will be recording the new audio sometime in the next few weeks). This extends the earlier work he and graphic designer Allen Anderson have done.

The segments are shorter and more location-oriented, per the app design. They also are part of a clever locative game Berkenmeier designer, in which users try to piece back together Kane's journal pages by walking around The Village area. One aspect of the animation that I am really enjoying is picturing these historical characters once again moving around the setting the way it looked in their time period, without the highway, the railroad, the airport, etc., in the background. Instead, they can see, as the people of that period did, Mount Hood and the Columbia River right at their doorsteps. We also have been in regular contact with the Chinook tribe, of which Casanov was chief, in order to fill out the story more, and get more of a broader perspective into the piece (not just Kane's words). That's still a work in progress.

These are drafts, and we are open to suggestions, so please comment at will:

Animation1RoughDraft from Brady Berkenmeier on Vimeo.

Animation2RoughDraft from Brady Berkenmeier on Vimeo.

Animation3RoughDraft from Brady Berkenmeier on Vimeo.

Animation4RoughDraft from Brady Berkenmeier on Vimeo.

The wayside signs in The Village

Two wayside signs are in The Village. These are well done and provide a good comparison of what the wayside sign format (similar to a wall text) offers in terms of density of content, versus what a mobile device at the same place can offer visitors. It also is interesting to compare what information is on the sign, versus what information is in the app, in the same place.

When an outdoor app is tested in a rainstorm ...

The first open beta test for the Fort Vancouver Mobile project, as part of the historic site's annual Brigade Encampment on June 18, was yet another reminder to us of how weather dependent use of an outdoor mobile app can be.
Friday, June 17, was an unseasonably hot day. I spent a few hours at the site, making sure the app was primed and ready for testing, and came home with a sunburn. The glare from the intense sun, particularly around noon, made seeing the mobile screen tough at times, but that was a minor usability issue in comparison to what testers dealt with the next day.
Typically, in the Northwest, the skies are gray, and there is sporadic rain. But there usually are clearings, too. On Saturday, the weather was pretty much drizzle to downpour throughout the testing period, which I finally pulled the plug on about 1:30 p.m., after the lunch crowd left the site.
Special thanks are due, by the way, to: Brady Berkenmeier (PI of the Kane's Wanderings module), who helped throughout the day; to Dene Grigar and John Barber of the Creative Media and Digital Culture program at WSU Vancouver for their direct support as well; and to the fort staff, including Chief Ranger Greg Shine and volunteer coordinator Kimm Fox-Middleton, for making our test as comfortable as possible, considering the conditions, including providing a historic tent for us to work under.
The marketing of the beta test seemed to work well this time, with many reTweets and several pieces of direct correspondence generated by the various announcements. Greg even remarked that the mobile app launch was the most talked about part of the Brigade Encampment on the historic site's Facebook page.
A 5K run weaved through the historic site about 10 a.m., and many people (of the hundreds that jogged by) slowed down to look at what we were doing before continuing the run. That was more great exposure for the project.
Those who did test the app during the Brigade Encampment were exceedingly positive about the experience. Yet the rain sleeting sideways, the misting of the screens, the cold fingers trying to manipulate the app, and the difficulty in taking notes as well as conducting paper surveys in such an environment, overall seemed to me to be out of context with what would be typical use. So when the sun returns, or at least the rain stops, we'll be back out there. ...

Open public beta test (10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Saturday, June 18)

We are conducting our first round of open public beta testing on the Fort Vancouver Mobile app this weekend, from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Saturday in The Village at the Fort Vancouver National Historic Site. All other beta tests to this point have been by invitation only. If you are interested and available, just show up and give the app a try (with Android or Apple devices). The test likely will take about 30 minutes, and there is a concurrent special event called the Brigade Encampment, that is a lot of fun, too. 

Hope to see you there, 

- Brett Oppegaard

Beta test today with the WSU Vancouver Mobile Tech Research Initiative

About 20 WSU Vancouver students and faculty members visited The Village today to beta test the FVM app (thanks again to Forrest Burger, Brady Berkenmeier, Nick Hill and Troy Wayrynen for helping with the test, and to Dene Grigar and John Barber for bringing this group to the site).
This was the first time we have tested the PhoneGap app as downloaded from the Android market and Apple App Store, and we had virtually no problems getting the app on the phones this time (Yeah!). We did, though, have GPS location issues that need to be quickly addressed (not so Yeah!). Many of the different handsets did not seem to pick up the first GPS location, and that acted as a gateway (since the later locations are linked in sequential order), keeping the other locations from being properly tested. We do have a debugging bar in the app at this point that allows users to skip obstacles like that, but the debugging skip also seemed to throw off the narrative flow for the users, and deteriorate the immersion in the story. The more one skipped an obstacle, it seemed, the less interested they became in overcoming the next obstacle. In fact, none of the users in this test ended up at the final video scene, completing the Kanaka module (while almost all of the users in previous beta tests completed the app). It's not clear yet to me what the dynamics were with this group that caused the dramatic swing, but I have written comments from the group to analyze and reflect upon. The geolocation ability, essential to the app, also needs a lot of serious attention at this point.

FVM app iterations are flowing

In the spirit of Clay Shirky's "Publish, then filter" chapter in "Here Comes Everybody," the Fort Vancouver Mobile app team already has produced several iterations that improve the original program. We primarily uploaded the first version of the app for easier testing on site (rather than having to email apk links to potential users, they now can just download the app from the markets). There is about an 18-hour lag in the Android market right now, and it takes about a week for the new Apple versions to appear. Using this "publish, then filter" strategy has allowed us to find several bugs on phone models that we don't personally own among the team members, and to see the ways in which different handsets handle the same coding. At this point, two updates of the original Android app have been posted, and one new Apple version, with additional updates in the pipeline for both as I type. So please make sure to update your app regularly to get the best quality version available.

Building a partnership with the Texas Tech Usability Research Laboratory

I am in Lubbock, Texas, meeting with the Texas Tech Usability Research Lab's director, Dr. Brian Still, about the mobile usability testing we will be doing on the Fort Vancouver Mobile project, as part of a partnership funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities Digital Start-Up Grant. The Texas Tech lab has a national reputation for its rigorous usability tests, usually for corporate clients. We are hoping to work on our testing project in the fall. I will post details on this later, but our goals are to create tests that not only inform this particular project but also have external value with other projects focusing on mobile place-based media, or net locality.

Paul Kane module in process

The lead designer of the Kane's Wanderings module, Brady Berkenmeier, and his animation partner, Allen Anderson, have sent some updates of the piece, including a storyboard, and a brief sample of what this animation might look like. Here is a progression of developments:

I'll start posting the top on the top, from here, with the gradual progression pieces below:

NewestKaneBadAudio from Brady Berkenmeier on Vimeo.

Here are the changes, from start to just before this last one:

...

The end of the first segment of drafts, from about a month ago:



The next generation, first draft:


Kane Prototype Animation from Brady Berkenmeier on Vimeo.

TNG second draft


Unfinished Kane Animation from Brady Berkenmeier on Vimeo.

Another segment completed:


KaneRoughDraftBadAudio from Brady Berkenmeier on Vimeo.


A preview of the module should be ready in time for the June 18 soft launch at the Brigade Encampment.

FVM app in the two big markets, Android and Apple

Thanks again Nick (and project manager, Joe, of course) for getting the FVM app through the Apple App Store process.

Here are the initial screen shots for both the Android and Apple versions of the app:

Android

Apple

To download these, just go to the market and search for "Fort Vancouver," or you also can use the links on this blog in the upper right. Still a lot of work to do before the soft launch at the fort's Brigade Encampment on June 18, but this has been a major step and should really make beta testing much more efficient. Congrats, again, Nick and Joe!

FVM app accepted by the App Store!

Nick Hill just let me know that the Apple version of the FVM app was accepted by the App Store last night, so the Apple submission process, despite the dire warnings of the length of delay, was six days. Not 16 hours, like the Android Market took, of course, but six days is not a terribly long time to wait. Our next test regarding the submission process is to see how long it takes to update the app. We'll try that in about a week, once we get another big batch of media coded. The FVM app should appear in the App Store, Nick was told, within 24 hours. We'll keep an eye out for it, and post the URL as soon as it is available.

Kanaka walk-through

I am publishing this as a separate page as well, to make it easier to find, and updates will be posted there. But I thought I might as well put it in the main stream, too:

The "Kanaka" module, focusing on the Hawaiian influence in the cultural development of the Pacific Northwest, has led us through the evolutionary stages of this FVM project from the proof of concept to the prototype to the start-up phase, which we are in now. It tells the story of a Hawaiian pastor, William Kaulehelehe, who was lured to the site to proselytize to fellow Hawaiians. His experience, though, becomes much more complex, as he gets involved in an international dispute between the Americans and the British over territorial boundaries, a tale that includes aspects of colonialism and imperialism as well as the harsh realities of life as a pioneer. The walk-through is here (spoiler alert: that document will show the media embedded at the site; I recommend that you go through the piece first at the fort, if possible, to experience the work as intended, with the physical relationships to the place, and then coming back to this for deeper examination; the videos from this walk-through also are posted below; those, too, were built to align with the physical space but are here for remote examination):

Shifting the perspective from expositional to narrative:

Shine intro from Brett Oppegaard on Vimeo.

Introducing the Hawaiian story:

Wilson in pit from Brett Oppegaard on Vimeo.

William Kaulehelehe arrives at Fort Vancouver

William arrives from Brett Oppegaard on Vimeo.

Missing his media connections, Kaulehelehe writes a 19th century letter to the editor

William writing from Brett Oppegaard on Vimeo.

Kaulehelehe's long and loyal service to the Brits in this area ends, when the Americans arrive

Final confrontation from Brett Oppegaard on Vimeo.

FVM Android is on the market!

The Fort Vancouver Mobile app now is on the Android market. Just open the Android market on your phone and search for "Fort Vancouver" to get to the download page. Even though this is just the bare bones beta version of the app, with a few bugs still to fix, we wanted to get it on the market for easier testing on site during the next few weeks before the soft launch (so we can have users directly download the app and use it on site). It's a very exciting moment for us, and I want to make sure Joe Oppegaard gets the credit he deserves for all of the behind-the-scenes work and coding labor on this. Thanks, Joe! ... He has toiled for many, many months now, and essentially created the app twice (once in Java, and now, in JavaScript, incorporating Phone Gap). He also is a co-owner of the rapidly growing Seattle-based web design firm Montana Banana, so he has been incredibly busy and gracious to include this in his schedule. Within a few moments of this FVM app being posted, it already had been downloaded 50 times. This step is going to make the app much more accessible, and it should help us start the summer on another positive note. ... Nick Hill, by the way, has submitted the app to the Apple App Store as well, which can be an extremely challenging process. I will post any updates on that part of the process as soon as I get them.

Village opening videos are pretty much wrapped up

Jon Nelson and Forrest Burger are doing the final edits of the Village Opening module, which documents the opening of the new area of the Fort Vancouver National Historic Site as well as gives users behind-the-scenes access to the fort's archaeological collection. Hope to post some samples soon.

FVM app submitted to the Apple App Store / Android Market

Nick Hill just wrote to say that he submitted the FVM app to the Apple App Store tonight. Joe Oppegaard is doing the same for the Android Market. It's a big day in FVM land. Thanks, guys!

VancouverArtsLive coverage of FVM at the WSU Vancouver Research Showcase 2011

Brady Berkenmeier and I are given some screen time in this VAL segment to talk about the FVM project:



We are at about the 20 minute mark, through the 23 minute mark.