Trove/What is it?/Concept Generation

As Ann and I missed the week one workshop session we figured that three brains would be better than one when figuring out what to do! Over a lengthly lunch, Akanksha, Ann and I heavily discussed what Trove is, who would potentially use it and how we could make it interesting. Quite frankly I was unaware of Trove before this the design computing studio course.

As described on the Trove homepage, Trove is a website that "helps you find and use resources relating to Australia. It's more than a search engine. Trove brings together content from libraries, museums, archives and other research organisations and gives you tools to explore and build".

After surfing through Trove and discovering what it was all about I deemed that it would have been extremely useful in my under-graduate degree. But that is water under the bridge! The types of other users that would find Trove handy are: students, photographers, historians, hobbyists, international students, academics, journalists, researchers...and the list goes on.

When we worked out what was on trove and who would use it, the ideas started to flow. We came up with plenty of concepts (however most needed to be fleshed out further). My top three concepts were:

1. Designing tote bags: Though a novelty and a gimmick, it would be fun to have a website where users can 'collage' their favourite pieces of Trove onto a tote bag. For example, you could mash up a lost letter, with a photograph from where the letter was written and a favourite quotation etc. This concept is already successful on a website I use to sell my own textile designs Print All Over Me. This would be a novelty way to spark interest in Trove and a simple marketing ploy.

2. Personalised Trove Spotlight: This idea came from the thought to personalise Trove Spotlight. A simple mash up of pinterest and spotlight to enable users to collate their own findings in one place. For example, say you were writing a piece on Frida Kahlo and you wanted to make a Trove 'board' where you could put all of that information. You could write a short description for other users that would then be able to benefit from your board! I know that when I write an essay or research paper it is easy to forget exactly what you found and so this tool would be ideal for organisation.

3. Teachers Landing Page: Similar to a personalised Trove spotlight this idea would be useful for teachers. A friend of mine says it is hard to come up with fresh material for teaching and that some teachers get protective of their resources. As such a teachers landing page would have the tools available for young teachers to use a Trove template and click and drag, information, photos, articles and add their own questions. Teachers could then upload the worksheet onto the teachers landing page and could 'like' other templates or worksheets that they found useful.

There were so many other ideas that grabbed my attention but these are the ones I'm going to focus on for now. Ann is going to cover the Trove DIY page that I simply love and so I hope that idea fleshes out!

I'm going to present the Personalised Trove Spotlight in the workshop!

**Note to self: Use codebeautify.org/view/jsonviewer shown in lecture. Easier to read than the one mentioned in the prac**