Download GDP The Human Side of the Story

GDP
Measuring the Human Side of the Canadian Economic Crisis
A bilingual “web documentary” project by
the Canadian National Film Board to show
how the economic crises in 2008 has been
affecting people.
Website - http://gdp.nfb.ca/intro
Media platforms used
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Website
Video stories (17 stories with multiple episodes each – total episodes 135)
Photo essays (53)
Map
Blog
Facebook, twitter
In French and English
Interesting Features
 The opening page mimicks a heart monitor with the peaks being profiles of the
different stories.
 The webisodes Broken into short episodes with the idea to keep people interested
in these human stories.
 The map. It shows dots on where the stories come from, and you can click on the
dot to see what the story is and how many people commented. If more interactive
with dots showing who’s commenting, those dots could blink when the main dot is
clicked on (this would show it’s popularity visually).
 The beyond info attached to the stories. This additional information provides larger
context to the personal situation.
Features not working so well
 The photo essays are okay, but not visually or aurally stimulating. The photos are
mediocre and most of the stories not so interesting. A few work well, but most are
just blah.
 Maneuverability. Lots of ways to link to the videos, similar videos, the map, and
all areas of the site, but it takes awhile to figure out the functionality, and seems too
link happy. Could be organized to be more straightforward and purposeful. The
maneuverability is good, but doesn’t seem to have a structured point.
 The layout is good, but doesn’t add to telling the story. Each shares a theme with
one or more other stories. The themes could have their own unique design. For
example, artists, manufacturing, etc. Also, if it was more streamlined as such, one
of the themes could easily spin off into a new website carrying that graphic with it.
How could it be more interactive/engaging?
 Have the subjects create a dialogue with the viewer. Subjects and viewers could post
their own media to further expand the point of the story (to show how far wide spread
it is by others contributing their stories). It could become a way for people to help each
other, with moral support, or maybe material support. If one story is getting a lot of
activity it could spin off into it’s own webpage with mini-stories springing from that.
 On the map viewers engaging in a story can add dots in a different color or design to
designate where they are from. This could make the map more interesting as well.
 They note in the FAQ that they want people to post, as suggested here, but it’s buried in
the FAQ. That should be highlighted on the home page.
 Also they note that they screen and approve posts. Laborious and a turn off. I would
expect them, but putting it out there like that makes the site seem old fashioned and too
controlled, not participatory.
Conclusion
In the end, I found the site to be a bit boring, not engaging and not interactive. It’s a bit too
polished, and didn’t seem to connect with people. The project took a year to complete.
There are only 163 comments, and 134 blog posts. That doesn’t seem very exciting or
active. They have 584 likes on Facebook, but no activity.
There are a lot of good elements in the project, I think not making it more open to people
to participate is it’s major failing. The structure could be slightly different (not so much
inter-linking options and graphics to distringuish the themes) to help encourage and
facilitate participation.
It might serve as a good historical document one day, similar to Security Administration
project in the U.S. during the depression.
Ironically, it was nominated for a Webby award and won the Canadian New Media Award. It
seems audience interest isn’t important, because looking at the participation rates, I
would deem this project a disappointment at least, if not an all out failure.