Point of View

What we have done
On the mid-crit session we presented the idea with the focus on making it easier to aggregate information from several sources into a seamless interface.This will make the process of reading information from different sources easier and more nuanced. Basically our idea was that the user could change point of view in the middle of the story that he is reading and then the text analysis algorithm will fetch the same story from another source and seamlessly change the story into the new point of view. Then the user can continue reading the story at the same place as before the change. Our aim was not to solve the entire problem since we think that people will always have a point of view on stories. What we want to do is to create an awareness of that a story can be seen from different points of view. On the mid-crit session we got a lot of good feedback:

• Do we really need another/this platform? 
• Why focus on text, isn’t video the future? 
• Maybe try to incorporate the emotions
• Copyright Issues 
• Try to visualize that the filter bubble is a real and very complex problem 
• First picture in the slide explains the problem very well and in a easy way

First picture on our slideshow

Since last Friday we have discussed a lot and talked about the feedback we got. Basically we have gone back to the drawing board a bit. Point of View-filters is a really complex subject and it could be a difficult subject to understand. Hence, we talk a lot on trying to make a product that is as easy to understand as the first picture on the slide-show we had. Daniel Pargman sent us a video that showed 6 photographers that shoot the same man but had got a different story on who he was. In this case the PoV was based on the person’s story and the results where 6 very different images.

6 different photographers portraying the same man but with a different story
From upper left: Fisherman, Alcoholic, Millionaire, Convict, Life Saver and Psychic

Based on this we had discussions that revolved around question such as “What is PoV-filters”, “How do we make people understand what it is in a short period of time”, “How do we solve it in an easy and understandable way”.

Challenges we have encountered

One of the biggest challenges we had with our initial idea is that it is very complex and it is hard to visualize it for the audience. All of us really like the idea of working with PoV in text-format. But all of our discussions didn’t really seem to result in a good solution. Our ideas around PoV in text often resulted in very “heavy” discussions and sometimes it felt like we tried to come up with a solution that would have solved the Israel-Palestine conflict. Our ideas were everything from visualizing PoV in a vector space (similar to how search engines base their search result) and about making a service that provided debate articles with counter debate articles in a seamless interface. But none of these ideas felt right for us and we also had the issue with that technology we would use is not “future” enough, since its already exists today. We also had a discussion with Anna Careborg, who really liked our initial idea. But this as well resulted in the conclusion that our idea and technology is not “future” enough for this project.

Changes we have done

Based on the problems described above we ended up talking about how to make people aware of PoV filters. We came up with that if we could present the concept to children in an easy and fun way, they would be aware of the concept and hopefully this knowledge would follow them as they got older as well. So, how do we present this complex subject to children? Based on the ideas of the google cube and the video of the 6 photographers, we came up with the thought that children always watch Disney (or other animated) movies over and over again. But the story is always told in the same way, i.e. from the protagonist PoV. Ariel vs. Ursula, Snowwhite vs. Step-mom, Simba vs Scar and so on. What if you could see the same movie but told from a different perspective? E.g. maybe Ariel is an annoying teenager that runs away all the time and Ursula only wants the best for here and therefore acts the way she does. Same story, completely different PoV. Our thought was that this might be a very fun way to introducing the concept of PoV to children. Since most children movies today are animated with vectors we could use that data and transform it with automated animation to make new movies and then apply voice synthesis. Hence, we would use the same material that Disney already produced but only rewrite the story. We also talked about that this might be a trend. E.g. Disney produced the movie Maleficent, which is the story of Sleeping Beauty told from the antagonist PoV. Since we would work with already existing material, Disney would not need to produce yet another costly movie, our product will do that for them more or less for free.

What we will do

Our next step is to talk to Gabriel Skantze and Jonas Beskow at TMH about voice synthesis and Maria Romero and Björn Thuresson about the movie animation. We also need to do research about how to make the new storyline for these movies. Would AI be able to do it or do we need a human writer? Another issue is copyright and who we will sell this service to.

Resources

None at this time.

Other

Because we changed our idea completely we would very like much to have a meeting with Daniel and Malin next week.