Rebekah Monson

Rebekah Monson

I just finished my last project of the semester, The Game a simulation game about becoming a successful rapper. Creating it has been an incredibly important experience for me as a designer.

See, I set out to make a game about student loan debt. And I quickly realized no one wants to play a game about student loan debt. It a hugely important issue, but it makes for a hugely dull context for a game.

I wanted to take on a serious issue! I wanted people to learn from all the freaking research I did on default rates and average loan burden.

I settled on rap, because I love it, sure, but also because success in the field is so deeply tied to brands and material wealth. I scoured rapgenius for allusions to expensive items. I designed a system of record advances and career impacts that make it very hard to reach Jay Z moguldom. And, it not perfect yet, but it is fun, and it definitely makes people think hard about debt.

Designing The Game has made me wrestle with my brain in the best possible way. I am both a journalist and a designer. One half of me abhors obfuscation and the other thinks abstraction is a perfectly lovely tool to get one point across. I interested in making news games, and the mental olympics in this design challenge were an important test for my assumptions on both sides.

I think journalism can and should leverage play and the deep engagement games produce for more meaningful understanding of complex issues. I think this fits our primary goal of informing, and it an exciting evolution toward informing through choice and experimentation rather than through the act of repeating. But, if news games are going to work, we have to be willing to find the right frame and bend toward fun.

The good news is that it already being done. (After I do a lot more polishing.)

ability to forgive oneself. Stop here for a few breaths and think about this, because it is the key to making art and very possibly the key to finding any semblance of happiness in life. Every time I have set out to translate the book (or story, or hopelessly long essay) that exists in such brilliant detail on the big screen of my limbic system onto a piece of paper (which, let's face it, was once a towering tree crowned with leaves and a home to birds), I grieve for my own lack of talent and intelligence. Every. Single. Time. Were I smarter, more gifted, I could pin down a closer facsimile of the wonders I see. Forgiveness, therefore, is key. I can't write the book I want to write, but I can and will write the book I am capable of writing. Again and again throughout the course of my life I will forgive myself.

In her beautiful meditation on the writing life, Ann Patchett adds to our ongoing archive of wisdom on writing. Pair with Patchett's advice to graduates on writing and life. (via explore blog)

I told my friendMirandathatI working on a final project for my game design class that takes place in a rap universe. Sheresponded, like Flappy Bird. And I was all, buuuuuuutttttt I checked out a very excellent tutorial from Thomas Palef on making a Flappy Bird clone in HTML5and I made this grossRappyBirdclone in about an hourish. It was good fun, and it made me want to mess around more with the Phaser framework, since IJavascript despite that it all dirty dirty.

Anyway, jokes often prove good teachers for me. Cranking out silly doodads to amuse my friends and myself has taught me a lot about making useful things for the web, so it a time waster that doesn make me feel like a total waste.

Jokes are also the impetus behind some other projects that I have really enjoyed recently, especially the work of Pippin Barr, whom I would love to meet some day:

Since June,Chicas Poderosashas helped more than 1,000 Latin American journalists learn digital skills and use them in their communities. Attendees at the immersive, hands on digital storytelling workshops have researched and prototyped digital projects on water issues, agriculture, crime, elections and demographics in Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica and Mexico. The event is organized by the International Center for Journalists (ICFJ) with the support of Knight Foundation. Chicas Poderosas was created by ICFJ Knight International Journalism FellowMariana Santosduring her fellowship year.

I spent the weekend working with some awesome journalists, designers and technologists at SNDMakesDesignathonon story forms in Indianapolis. It was a whirlwind of great ideas, cool people and interesting prototypes. As we create more complex stories online, it often becomes difficult for users to understand the particular topics within a story that interest their friends. We want to help surface those ideas to better integrate conversation within storytelling and to further engage users within editorial products.

If developed into an actual product, Sluice could also help editorial teams get granular social data on their work and improve taxonomy by dynamically generating tags and topics based on how the story is discussed in social media. Understanding what points truly matter to users can help editorial teams improve future coverage decisions.

Building out Sluice would require some serious work with natural language processing and robust integration with social APIs (aka stuff that we didn have time to do in a weekend hack). Our prototype used only a small dataset and hand selected, rather than programmatic data analysis. (Also, full disclosure, I need to go back and make it responsive.) I think there great potential for a tool that could improve storytelling and the social news environment by closing the feedback loop around ideas within stories.

I had an absolute blast this weekend, and I left smarter and more invigorated about the untapped possibilities of online news design. All of the prototypes that came out of the event were terrific. Check them out:

Backstory: Gives users context on a story.(Blog post from Mike Swartz explaining the project.)

Skim: Helps users skim longform stories on mobile.

VideoSlider: Allows users to scan long form video content. (Works best on desktop.)

PS: My teammateCory wrote a great recap of the weekend and the importance of building community over at the Vox Product blog.

Chicas Poderosas is coming to Miami!

Woo! Chicas Poderosas an organization dedicated to empowering Latin American journalists to excel in visual storytelling, data visualization and interactive media with hands on skills training will hold its first workshop in the United States from April 17 to 20 in Miami.

I been working with Chicas founder Mariana Santos and Miranda Mulligan(two of the most amazing chicas I know) on getting the workshop here since the fall, and I cannot wait for all the awesomeness this will bring to Miami journalists. Hope you join us!