GR1: Analysis

Observations & Interviews

1. The Architect

• An architecture student doing graduate-level training for professional architecture work

• She feels that one of her biggest challenges as an arts student is the subjective nature of feedback
  • Hard to determine which feedback to listen to
  • Some art is meant to invoke a negative response -- how do you consider such feedback?

• Most of the feedback she gets comes from gallery critiques, shows or critique sessions
  • Galleries are short and often more social than feedback-oriented
  • Critique sessions involve getting a number of people into a room where they may make comments, or take a pen and leave annotations/sketches on copies of the art in question
  • All of these sessions have time limits, so it's hard to get sufficient feedback
  • Success/feedback in such sessions often depends on how well you sell/present the work
  • [ArtBark group] This is very interesting, since it indicates that traditional feedback methods are frequently inefficient, and feedback from these sessions is typically hard to organize/interpret.

• She normally receives a wide variety of feedback
  • Type of feedback depends on reviewer
  • Emotional reactions are common
  • It's often very useful to hear simply whether people like/dislike your work
  • Structure/technique
    • Sometimes people like to sketch to illustrate a point
    • Such feedback often results in professors arguing/discussing with each other
  • A lot of people like giving references (e.g. "your work reminds me of...", "your work should be more like...")

• Not a lot of students may utilize feedback since they're often on a tight schedule and don't have time for many iterations. 
  • More frequent feedback would be helpful
  • Online feedback would be helpful

• Undergrad students may want to be able to keep variations/previous versions of their work for use in portfolios

• Wants review audiences to have limited visibility of each other (e.g. professors shouldn't be able to see what her friends think of her art)

2. The Filmmaker 

• A technical artist at an Academy Award-winning special effects studio. Attended art school for film technique and film theory.

• He received the majority of his feedback/critique from an assigned mentor.
  • Sometimes had peer reviews, but they were brief.
  • Would seek out friends and teaching assistants opinions as they were closer in age / understood his perspective
  • Felt that intermediate feedback was easy to come by, but lacked breadth

• Worked more towards universal appeal than personal expression
  • It's hard to know what people are going to like. 
  • Often wanted to gauge a more general response from his intended audience, and not just people within his artistic community

• He found that getting critique from within your art school can have a negative effect sometimes
  • A lot of internal competition that clouds people's judgement. 
  • A lot of pressure to do good work by a set of known standards, and there is less room to experiment. 

• Process is non-linear: involves many drafts and versions. Sometimes wished he had shown more intermediate stages in case something was lost along the way

• Really enjoyed contextual feedback (i.e. "oh this is a lot like <some other film maker>"). 
  • Especially helpful when such comparisons inspired collaboration.
  • Would have liked a forum in which people could post videos of related work.

3. The Digital Artist

• Background in painting. Studied Digital + Media Arts at the Rhode Island School of Design. Currently a Masters student at the Media Lab

•  At RISD, she was also assigned a mentor, and she had studio session that met regularly
  • Most of her critiques came from peer reviews 
  • Gallery showing were an opportunity to get a more public reception

• One issue students faced at RISD was that students had varying levels of notoriety before starting the program
  • Because feedback came in person from your peers, it wasn't always easy to be forthcoming
  • Specifically, there was a famous actor in her program who students were afraid to critique with anything less than praise
  • The process could have benefited from some anonymity 

• She also found that her work that was considered significant within the RISD community was often decoupled from the work that received praise from non-artists, which was difficult to reconcile. 

• Since graduating, she feels disconnected from her community of artistic critique, and it is difficult when making new work
  • Uses social media such as Facebook to post intermediate work, concepts, and finished products
  • Also maintains a separate, polished, online portfolio 
  • Interested in richer, more visually-directed feedback from these media

• Some work is generated programmatically -- could be interesting ways for people to experiment and contribute 

User Analysis

User Classes

• Hosts
  • Hosts are people who want feedback on a given piece of art.
    • The art may have been created by the host. In this case, the host is the primary beneficiary of the feedback. The host may choose to incorporate elements of the feedback into future work.
    • If the art was created by someone other than the host, then the host is likely using the piece to bestow some knowledge about art criticism or teach others about the process of giving feedback for the benefit of the commenters.
  • They are: 
    • art students or professional artists who want feedback on their own work
    • art instructors who are teaching the process of giving feedback.

• Commenters
  • Commenters are people who provide feedback on pieces of art.
  • They are:
    • Art students (peers) who are learning or have learned how to critique and give feedback,
    • Art instructors (professors, teachers) who are using their experience to guide art students,
    • Professional artists (colleagues) who provide feedback to colleagues as part of their jobs, and
    • Non-artists whose feedback is sought for additional, potentially critical perspective. They may be part of the group the artist is intending to reach with their art.

Needs & Goals

• Efficient feedback
  • Artists want to get feedback without spending their time (e.g. unlike at gallery critiques)
  • Artists would like to get feedback online
  • Artists would like to get feedback frequently

• Constructive feedback
  • Commenters should be able to include references (e.g. "this work reminds me of...", "try to make this work more like...")
  • Commenters should be able to provide graphical examples (e.g. sketches) and annotations (similar to pen/paper or sticky notes in traditional critique sessions)

• Variety of feedback
  • Artists would like to reach a wide variety of commenters (e.g. friends, professors, professionals)
  • Artists may be interested in collaborating with others

• Organized feedback
  • Artists would like to organize feedback by type (e.g. emotional, like/dislike, technical)
  • Artists would like to understand the context of the feedback
  • Artists would like to set privacy/viewing settings between groups (e.g. professors should not be able to see comments from artist's friends)