Frank Tremain

This project was inspired by Australian media outlets such as Off The Clef and AUD’$, and unofficial accounts such as rap.ranked. My previous digital artefact for BCM112 followed a similar music reviewing structure but with BCM114 I wanted to create something more professional and explore different forms of content creation and curation within music journalism. I developed my project by using Instagram as my primary platform to my professional writer account where I advertised my articles and used the story feature to host voting brackets, report on news and promote new music. Canva was used to format Instagram stories and posts and match the aesthetic of the Eject website while Wix was the home of the website and used to draft and publish articles. Other useful websites include Mojo for Instagram story design and Linktree to create my link in the bio.

With my previous knowledge from BCM112, I quickly began early ideation and rapid prototyping through continuing story highlights from my previous digital artefact and posting reviews on the Eject website as well as promotional posts for these on Instagram. Since then, I have continued to post regular content that created a constant feedback loop that allowed for frequent iteration. A large part of my digital artefact were the two voting brackets that I conducted on my Instagram story. I ideated and prototyped this content by reading the Institute of Design at Stanford’s ‘Process Guide’ where they discuss creating experiences for audiences. This content received high engagement although after testing and modelling it with paper prototypes I realised that the voting experience quickly becomes monotonous. I iterated this by including more sliders, audio and visuals to further encourage public interaction and create private discourse.

Since beginning my digital artefact, I have curated and created 121 pieces of content which accumulated 225 followers with each post/article averaging 30 Instagram and 17 website likes. Though these kind of analytics do not entirely indicate that my digital artefact was a success, it still clearly demonstrates the small and engaged audience that I have created. My original proposed social utility is supported by digital artefact as I have made Hip-Hop the most popular category on the Eject website and I have created a writer and reader relationship with my audience through my discussion driven Instagram account.

If I could start my project again, I would further utilise the posting feature of Instagram and more consistently curate and create smaller pieces of content to maintain a regular posting schedule. Additionally, I would expand my digital artefact to exist on more platforms such as Twitter as it is great for curation through retweeting and quicker production of content through relevant tweets and polls. My future plans for my digital artefact include continuing it outside of BCM114 and to begin prototyping a podcast that could coincide my digital artefact for future subjects such as BCM206.

Frank Tremain.