I found this week’s readings extremely interesting! But even after I read them, I still had questions (as well as a long list of things I did not quite understand). So I went to the best resource I had – my younger brother (he’s a freshman). Since he was home from college for Spring Break, I decided to interview him about all the topics from the readings. The first thing I asked about was theorycrafting and before I said anything else, he said…”you mean like LOL?”

So here I place a small podcast of my brother speaking about his experience (apparently last year he was ranked in the top 0.5% and a female Computer Science friend of his from school is currently ranked in the top 0.2% – how do they find the time?!)

Oh and MOBA stands for Massive Online Battle Arena (similar, but not quite like MMORPG or “massive multiplayer online role-playing games”)

So I hope you find this entertaining, at least I did. And excuse my brother, he is very excited about this topic!

If you are aware of the Myers-Briggs self-assessment (commonly known as the MBTI), my brother is an INTP – so I find this meme hilarious:

I also enjoyed reading about Mozilla. I feel Mozilla’s work and mission falls in line with what Sano-Franchini wrote about with feminist rhetorics and IxD. Mozilla’s Webmaker is a socially responsible product with an ambitious mission of open experiential learning and accessibility. I think what is most important besides the mission of Mozilla is the fact they are trying to create a product that will not only last, but create “lifelong learners” (271).

Additionally, Guff.com claims that they are able to keep people “hyper-engaged” because of their curated relatable content (there’s that concept again…“relatable”). I bring this site up because of its relation to “viral nostalgia:” See this link (http://guff.com/tag/nostalgia) for tons of content categorized under “nostalgia.” Oh and Instagram now allows users to create a private archive (http://fortune.com/2017/06/13/instagram-archive/), what do you think about that?

Citations:

• Reimer, Cody. “Dialogic, Data-Driven Designs: UX and League of Legends.” Rhetoric and Experience Architecture. Eds. Michael Salvo and Liza J. Potts. Chapter 14. Parlor Press, 2016. 241-257.
• McDaniel, Rudy, and Cassie McDaniel. “Making as Learning: Mozilla and Curriculum Design. Rhetoric and Experience Architecture. Eds. Michael Salvo and Liza J. Potts. Chapter 15. Parlor Press, 2016. 258-273.
• Kurlinkus, William C. “Memorial Interactivity: Scaffolding Nostalgic User Experiences.” Rhetoric and Experience Architecture. Eds. Michael Salvo and Liza J. Potts. Chapter 16. Parlor Press, 2016. 274-290.

Questions:

1. I found the concept of countersignification very interesting. Are there any other examples of countersignification that you are aware of, besides the example of Star Wars provided by Kurlinkus?
2. Do you think there are ways that companies in other industries can utilize “user-driven” feedback to improve their product such as the way that Riot Games does with League of Legends?