My interactive Book Project
For this project I was assigned to work with a group and come up with ideas for a class project. That was until a real disease broke out all over the world. However, I will say that it was interesting to at least work with one other person during a challenging pandemic time. I had recently gone on a Disney trip with my wife, and this Disney trip prompted me to give the idea for a topic. Right away, the ideas for a topic turned into a great conversation which turned the ideas into a white board discussion for our project.
Getting Started
The topic my group chose was about Disneyland, California. We planned out our ideas on a white board in class and had a great discussion of all the rides and attractions that are there. Then, the world started to close things down on all of us, even schools all over the nation. Meeting up into groups became a difficult circumstance for us as we saw that people from anywhere were becoming sick with a deadly virus. However, the work still had to be continued in our homes. I was able to find a way to have a good discussion with the other person in my group. We talked with one another about two times a week, or more when needed. I coordinated with the other person to make sure that things were planned out and that everything about each part of the project was talked about along the way. We hashed out ideas of what to do with all that we wanted to talk about in this Disney interactive book project.
Doing the Research
After writing down our plan and making a rough draft idea of an outline for the Disney project, it was time to dig into what Disneyland has. The best way we did that was by doing our research on their website. This also meant to find out what people put on YouTube through people’s recordings talking about the different facts they found for themselves about the theme park. The best website that had just about everything for and from Disneyland is known as “disneyland.disney.go.com.” You can find just about everything there on that website. However, when it came to YouTube, there were a ton of other people that have given out more than enough information Disneyland itself. Some had a lot of information of its past and others talked about the changes that we see now. Some recorded themselves doing a walk-through tour of the theme park. While others, talked about how you could spend your day in the park and why. There were even some who talked about their time working at the Disneyland park and there were those even judged the rides according to the thrills and the waiting times. Doing this really inspired me to put down as much information that I can in the project. I even learned a lot of things that I never realized before about Disneyland. This part was fun and very factual for me because I have been to Disneyland five times. I still learned something that I have not heard of before or perhaps did not realize was there, due to how packed it usually is when I am there. These pictures below was a hashed out plan on a white board to get the ideas started on the book. This is how we thought it could look like.
Getting our Assets
We both used Google Drive to put everything into one place and shared it with each other. This process was to help put what we found all together into one place. However, we had a little trouble getting the pictures that we wanted from off the internet. Some of them had to be edited through Photoshop in order to use them. While other pictures where found from other websites. We also had the idea of putting together a map and using the map as our book and thought of a way in creating it to be as interactive as much as possible for the users. We wanted to make something in a way that is unlike any other. However, seeing that this was a book project, we found the need to turn that idea of the map around.
Working as a Team
I got some of the pictures together and some background images while the other person in my group gathered up and wrote out all the information needed for the project. Then we needed to find a map and use it. This was the first problem we encountered. This was because there really was not a particularly good map to use from the internet. Therefore, I took snapshots of the map that was provided in the attractions of the Disney website and I put them together through Photoshop after cutting the map part out of each picture I took with my laptop. This process took six hours to do as I carefully made sure that each cropped picture fit seamlessly with no flaws. One of the coolest things that we looked at for our assets was my partners Disneyland book that he got from his family trip to Disneyland. This helped us realize what we could do better to put our project together as far as the outline was concerned.
We both used Adobe XD, Illustrator and Photoshop to get what we wanted with all our pictures for the pop-ups and the background images, as well as the signs for the title of each chapter. We both also used Microsoft Word and Google Docs to put all the facts, the history of Disneyland and other information together. After getting all the items needed for the book together, I realized that this project needed to be on a Macintosh computer or perhaps some kind of Apple product that has the iBooks software or another program called iBooks Author. I was happy that the professors at UVU college let me borrow a device for me to use in order to put together this project and complete it. Otherwise, I probably would have failed at this assignment. I wish to give a shout out to them and thank them for your support and their kindness during this strange and crazy pandemic time. With everything together in one folder it was time to create the interactive book.
Working with iBooks Author program
It took me a day to get use to this program as I played around with its features and looked up how to use it through YouTube and, from videos the professor had put together. This was the part of which I found out that putting a map together would not be ideal for an interactive book. Therefore, we had to scale back on the number of attractions we wanted to put into it. This was not so much as to going back to the drawing board and starting over, but it was more of a process of eliminating to the amount of information we really wanted to share inside this project. The next part was coming up with how each page would look.
Following some of the ideas that the professor showed us in her class from past semesters, we felt impressed by the seamless pages as she talked about a few examples. We were also impressed, with some simple activities, pop-ups, video links, and music sounds that different people have put into their own projects. This gave us the idea of making our Disney project a guidebook filled with facts, sights and sounds of the park. The only question we had was how to make it look good as we put it all together.
The Challenges
The biggest problem was the screenshots. Due to the available views of the maps found from the internet. I had to crop the image followed by a lot of cutting, copying and pasting each image together to make a better view of the map and then chop it up into better looking pieces. This process really helped with getting a better understanding of what attractions should be included inside each chapter.
Working as a team was also a challenge. We did so much research together that it was a matter of who is going to cover what part of the information that we both can be able to put into the book. I personally took care of the map and some of the pictures while the other person, planned out and mapped out the book and what can fit into the pages. My partner for this project also put together the pop-ups and how it should look in the book. He also, supplied a lot of music to help the user have some sort of feel to be involved in the book. I put together the captured YouTube videos to bring to light even more interaction to the book. He also, was able to help with some last-minute things we needed or that were missing in the book, followed by the testing. The last thing that I did was put together a two-minute short clip paper like animation to illustrate what the book is all about. This is found in the opening intro clip of the book.
The Testing and conclusion
Playing around with the ideas of what to put where inside each chapter. We felt impressed by the way it was really starting to look. After everything was finished the testing stage began. I gave a copy of this project to my partner who then downloaded it and tested it out. My partner was in charge of the testing, however I too did a test to make sure it worked also on my phone. With the testing and reading it through, my partner helped me find all the errors from the copying and pasting paragraphs as well as editing it all the way through. The testing was a success, this process helped us learn what it will look like in the end. We had to change a few background images because of how pixelated it became. We also had to look for better fonts that would be more useful than what we previously had thought. This was a bit of a bummer because we truly had a few great Disney fonts that we wanted to use from the Internet. The downside, however, was that putting in the fonts and the sizes of each font type for the book that only apple would except. This created an annoying buzz of pop-up errors and made me feel sad. Therefore, I had to go through each pop-up information bubbles and redo all the font styles, so that the end results would best fit with the project. We did not like how in the testing stage it would have chosen a default font for all the sentences and paragraphs in content of the book.
Putting this interactive book together was very cool! It was truly a fun idea to know what kind of a book or novel author I could be, next to creating a podcast and being a pod-caster host. The hardest part was truly the planning and putting together all the information. It was hard for us to figure out the best solution to the process of elimination as I put the book together and talked it over with my partner about each attraction and what we could do towards what we wanted to put our book. It was especially important for me to make sure that I coordinated with my partner to see how many attractions and pop-ups we can put into each page. This was also true for who each page or chapter should look in the book and the clarity of it all. He also helped me with catching some spelling errors and other issues that the book had. In the end this interactive book has a great way for the readers to be involved with learning about Disneyland. I hope that you enjoy watching videos and listening to the sounds of the park as well as reading all the insightful information that we have put together. May this book help guide you to know more about the Disneyland park than you ever had before. Perhaps this book may also entice you to go and explore it for yourself and try to find the fun facts that we have talked about from the book. Here is the Link to my fun Disney Ibook Project you must have, however, and ibooks app or ibooks author to view the project.
