Inspiration I'm not a code or IT pro, but that's the point. I believe reading comprehension and writing differ greatly between what I define as mechanical, or direct physically obtained or produced such as a written letter, versus digital, which essentially relates to reading or writing using preset, electrical/digital interfaces. I seek to measure emotional, cognitive response, engagement and retention of information and effect between mechanical and digital communication methods. To quantity and qualify short term and long term values and impact endurance to information gained, retained, and whether accuracy or impact differs between the two. Lastly, this would determine what, if any, influence digital forms have on independent personal decisionmaking, thinking, behavioral, emotional, memory, empathy and value.
What it does Measures the psychological response to digital texts, images, and compares these measurements to psychological response to mechanical, handwritten or hand generated text and creations.
How I built it This would require test measurements, surveys, and digital spontaneous indicators (scrolling, copy/paste, forwarding, bookmarking or downloading, etc.) and periodic yes, no or other responses to quizzes and surveys that include recollection/memory. Collection and assessement of actions taken by the participant during a regular computer or mobile use function, which may include email reading and email deletion, reading, folder-creation, archival, flagging, etc.; article reading, searches related to subject reading, saving, bookmarking, etc. It also measures the frequency of popups, enticements and other tracking or subject relevant images, links or options and tracks the response by the reader, deletion, blocking, reading, bookmarking, etc., then measures the response, focus and interest of the reader on the page or subject initially selected for reading.
Challenges I ran into I am basing much of this on my own experience. I am not a tech or geek, but I do know these skills are elementary for most coders, digital developers, ecommerce and web graphic designers and marketing/advertising techs. I seek those with these skills, and participants willing to be monitored for a period of time. Otherwise, I'd need someone to develop these tools and technical measurements and monitors for me, as the participant.
Accomplishments that I'm proud of I haven't done anything, yet. If I'm able to accomplish something through this initiative, I'd be proud of helping others balance their reading and writing that includes mechanical methods as a way to re-center or balance, if perhaps through biofeedback whatever is lost or altered by focused reliance on digital forms.
What I learned I get nauseated reading for long hours on my PC monitor. I also focus better on my PC monitor than I do on my Chromebook or mobil devices that also creates for interference and distractions. My difficulties result from the lack of offline reading, offline computer functions that I once enjoyed. Having slow internet has made reading, archiving and retrieval of important or desired information difficult if not impossible. I've discovered cloud backups and discoverability for digital documents, images and texts are unreliable, and while it appears as though a 20 year chunk of my recorded life has disappeared, I believe that it exists somewhere in code. This is both unhelpful, disturbing and frightening, as well as exploitative based on the persistent demand to pay to store what once was stored for free on backups and personal devices.
What's next for Mechanical versus Digital Functions At least for educational purposes, to incorporate mechanical with digital learning and expression forms in the interest of long-term retention, learning, and cognition that I also believe often is indicated behaviorally. Next would be for a university or research psychology interest to help develop and facilitate this. This may involve permissions from Twitter, Facebook and other Social Media forms where I believe their use in this study would service valuable.
Log in or sign up for Devpost to join the conversation.