Twitter’s  decision to double its character count from 140 to 280 characters last year hasn’t dramatically changed the length of Twitter posts. According to new data released by the company this morning, Twitter is still a place for briefer thoughts, with only 1% of tweets hitting the 280-character limit, and only 12% of tweets longer than 140 characters.

Critical making implies self-awareness during the process of creating, but what about the how of arriving at appropriate responses to communications challenges (message, voice, aesthetic, etc.)? Modeling may represent a way out of the quagmire, but how to manage the process?

Reflectivity vs. reflexivity.

Situational awareness & muscle memory. Tactical forces are trained to rely on series of rote procedures in life threatening situations.

Twitter’s  decision to double its character count from 140 to 280 characters last year hasn’t dramatically changed the length of Twitter posts. According to new data released by the company this morning, Twitter is still a place for briefer thoughts, with only 1% of tweets hitting the 280-character limit, and only 12% of tweets longer than 140 characters.

One of the chief benefits of play is behavior modeling (provided the model is on their best behavior).

Why contrive to re-create labyrinths and instead simply acknowledge that the information torrent within which we find ourselves is one already? All that need be done is to foreground the reality of this familiar context. 

Rather, how about acknowledging and leveraging the labyrinth within which we already find ourselves? Course shells and other human interaction are labyrinthine enough. The task is to ascribe meaning to their myriad manifestations.

In Letter to a Future Lover, Ander Monson creates a labyrinth in miniature, composed from the human amendments (errata, underlines, tears, hairs) and any bundle of pages he encounters. This includes library books from shelves as far-flung as Biosphere 2, to the tossed manuscripts of a well-loved professor, to a card catalogue repurposed as scrap. These are biblio-rejects—books that smell of loneliness, books that flop open like happy pups at the touch of Monson’s hand.

via http://brooklynquarterly.org/review-letter-to-a-future-lover/

Life affirming insight doesn’t come without effort.

Serendipity is always welcome, but directed work is far more likely to yield results— especially if repeatability is your goal (as it should be).

If we accept that human communication is closely related to the uniquely human habit of and, perhaps, need for storytelling, it is particularly useful as a lens (and measuring stick) through which to consider many contexts and scenarios human beings encounter in day-to-day life interactions. Given that education and the practice of teaching is inherently reliant on transferring information from one party to another, it would also appear to be applicable to the profession as well.

The Valdosta School method v1 [alpha]

1. Framing: articulate the challenge and identify the driving question then draft a “big ideal” that defines how you plan to approach it (and inspires others to search for creative solutions).
2. Discovery: search (keywords + operators + iterations), collect (take photos, sketch, etc.), and document (create domain taxonomies, etc.).
3. Interpretation: contextualize, curate and map what you’ve learned, converting it into tangible form (shot selection, image systems, etc.).
4. Ideation: identify opportunities and generate ideas, pushing past obvious solutions to get to breakthrough ideas about what to create.
5. Experimentation: apply concepts, tools and techniques (assembly edits, etc)
6. Evolution: iterate, revise and refine

meta methodology. Assuming uncertainty, confusion, disillusionment is a built in facet of professional media practice, what can be done when it happens? To “get unstuck” consider asking questions, trying something (relevant), etc.— by engaging, NEVER going underground, flying under the radar, etc.

Research methodologies facilitate structured, rational thinking tailored for their intended context of application, but regardless of flavor all methodologies are predicated on active looking and listening to identify and analyze the relationships discovered. Those not looking for connections are certain not to find them. Distinct from looking for something already known or selecting pre-defined things from a field, a research mindset is sensitized to emerging patterns and relationships wherever and whenever they happen to occur.

Despite the fact that voyeurism, spying, and staring are generally considered bad things, introduce the lens between the looker and subject and it’s acceptable and often even preferred by both parties. Cameras essentially sanction looking, which is interesting. This is interesting in terms of its connection with media and also media research looking and digging for details.

Thinkering

Mapping out how to go about telling your story

Design Thinking. A newer permutation of this approach is described as: Empathise, Define (the problem), Ideate, Prototype, and Test. 

1. Discovery (gather inspiration): Inspire new thinking by discovering what people really need.
2. Interpretation : *contextualize discovered info perhaps?
3. Ideation (generate ideas): Push past obvious solutions to get to breakthrough ideas.
4. Experimentation (make ideas tangible): Test and learn in real contexts of use including building rough prototypes to learn how to make ideas better.
5. Evolution: Iterate and revise to improve solutions for the intended audience/users.

Introductory comments

General

https://www.onlineuniversities.com/articles/students/how-to-begin-basic-academic-research/

Three ways research helps communication

UX

https://www.interaction-design.org/literature/article/15-guiding-principles-for-ux-researchers

Writing

How I Did Research For 3 New York Times Bestselling Authors (in My Spare Time)

I’m going to talk about research. No, research is not very fun, and it’s never glamorous, but it matters. A lot.

Why research?

via https://www.copyblogger.com/content-marketing-research/

Maybe you’re not a writer or a blogger. But, we’ve all found ourselves in a position where we need to convince people to do things they are not inclined to do.

When force is not an option, what do we do? We use the next best thing: persuasion. And when it comes to persuasion stories are important.

Anecdotes are persuasive.

Data dominates.

These things do not appear from thin air, or fall in our lap. We must search for them like a professional.

But as I’ve shown, this doesn’t need to consume your life. It can be done efficiently and expertly by focusing our efforts on the right levers. With preparation, we lengthen our runway. By eliminating noise, we drastically reduce the size of the search. With serendipity, we set ourselves up to be lucky and by relying on the classics, we give our arguments more weight. And by organizing and collecting this information properly, it is there wherever (and whenever) we need it.

Even if our research isn’t used today — or even tomorrow — it can still have immense value for us throughout our lives. I’ll leave you with Seneca’s persuasive case for noting, repeating and memorizing material …

My advice is really this: what we hear the philosophers saying and what we find in their writings should be applied in our pursuit of the happy life. We should hunt out the helpful pieces of teaching and the spirited and noble-minded sayings which are capable of immediate practical application — not far-fetched or archaic expressions or extravagant metaphors and figures of speech — and learn them so well that words become works.

Twitter’s  decision to double its character count from 140 to 280 characters last year hasn’t dramatically changed the length of Twitter posts. According to new data released by the company this morning, Twitter is still a place for briefer thoughts, with only 1% of tweets hitting the 280-character limit, and only 12% of tweets longer than 140 characters.

Brevity, it seems, is baked into Twitter – even when given expanded space, people aren’t using it.

Only 5% of tweets are longer than 190 characters, indicating that Twitter users have been for so long trained to keep their tweets short, they haven’t adapted to take advantage of the extra room to write.

“If we knew what it was we were doing, it would not be called research, would it?”

— Albert Einstein

Enter the labyrinth and embrace serendipity.

Montaigne kept what he called a “common place book” — a book of quotes, sentences, metaphors and  miscellany that he could use at a moment’s notice.

Through the years, a man peoples a space with images of provinces, kingdoms, mountains, bays, ships, islands, fishes, rooms, tools, stars, horses, and people. Shortly before its death, he discovers that the patient labyrinth of lines traces the image of his own face.

— Jorge Luis Borges

The whole idea of a labyrinth of hidden knowledge, of messages in a bottle, and so on and connected with the research this is maybe an idea that could help us attract students to this concept it’s so fundamental to academia.
The question becomes how do we get students excited about research? Not in the stodgy old way that the term tends to imply.

A knock-on effect of this additional question is what is research’s relevance for today’s students whom are overwhelmed with the relentless torrent of information for which they primary challenge is to filter stuff out rather than dig like an archaeologist.

The labyrinth is now the torrent of information that the valuable stuff is immersed within thanks to digital and mobile to a large extent.