How To BCM
One of the most enjoyable digital artefacts I’ve completed during my degree has been How To BCM. This initiative was created from the perspective of a third-year university student, providing useful tips and tricks for first-year university students, with a focus on communication and media students. My first concept was to develop a platform where first-year students could get answers to their questions, no matter how big, tiny, silly-sounding, or serious they were. Throughout this journey, I’ve received a number of direct messages from people thanking me for the content I’ve generated and for assisting them with their problems. To achieve this i initially created an instagram page called “How To BCM” where i would post meme like content with educational information in the following slides.
Somewhere in the middle when I was struggling, I tried asking for support from individuals around me, but I didn’t feel like I was getting the answers or solutions I needed. I then went to university and am now a third-year student who has finally come up with my own solutions and feels compelled to pass on my all-powerful knowledge to people who are just getting started. I’ve also made some incredible pals in the first year. This meant I could be a “mentor”… or whatever you want to call it… and assist them in making their path much easier than mine was at initially. I have been so grateful to know that this project has helped students already overcome issues they have been struggling with. University can be a scary place so to know that my work is having a positive impact on others is honestly the main goal of this entire concept.
A very interesting concept i would link this project to is the concept of an ever-changing paradigm shift. There isn’t a day that goes by without a paradigm shift, whether it’s a minor contact or a huge upheaval in society. Thomas Kuhn, an American philosopher and physicist, coined this phrase in 1962. “An important change that happens when the usual way of thinking about or doing something is replaced by a new and different way” according to his book description. In this regard, the Coronavirus pandemic has had a significant impact on university life, as we have transitioned to online learning with few on-campus classes. This has altered our perceptions of overall study and has resulted in issues that students had no idea would arise, such as learning how to use Zoom and Discord, obtaining content online, and missing out on the social aspects of university life. I wanted to include content that flowed with this paradigm shift to show that, even if our world has changed, there are always methods to get things done in the most positive way possible and how we can adjust to the paradigm shift as humans.
Utility
During the project’s first research beta stage, I dug deeper into similar accounts and content that would have covered similar issues, which I found to be lacking. This is where I began to personalise content and communicate with my target audience, which consisted of first-year university students (Varagouli, 2020). I whittled it down to a narrower niche where I would develop content for first-year communication and media students like myself. The list below was my creative process as to how i developed my project (Conlin, 2019).
- Finding a need
- Reaching a specific demographic (target audience)
- Develop a solution
- Create a strategy
- Publish content
Every month, approximately 1 billion individuals use Instagram, making it the sixth most popular platform (Newberry, 2021). I knew from these numbers and my own personal experience with the site that it would be the greatest place to start because it allowed me to submit square, visually appealing content. My inspiration came from “Affirmations,” an Instagram account whose content was mostly a joke but looked amazing… especially to a meme degree student. The fact that photographs account for 71.9 percent of Instagram posts is ideal for this purpose (Smperth, 2021). Did you know that the like button is pressed roughly 4.2 BILLION times each day on average (Webber, 2016)?
I wanted my initial project launch to be a success, and i wanted to offer something I was proud of. It is, however, naive to expect my initial iteration of How To BCM to be flawless. Just like all previous projects, it takes time, extensive research and dedication to perfect the craft of digital artefacts. This one however i had the most FEFO stages compared to other years (Fail Early Fail Often).
Before I go into depth about my trajectory, i wanted to discuss a little thing called Entropy which goes with both the paradigm shift and breaking and reassembling the real (which will be discussed further down). Entropy is a mathematical term used to measure disorder. This is the main reason as to why things in our life get more complicated and are constantly changing. “as one goes forward in time, the net entropy (degree of disorder) of any isolated or closed system will always increase (or at least stay the same)” (Models, n.d). This is something that happens all around us every single day. Imagine a world where we left everything as it was? Nothing would every improve nor would we make it very far in our futures (Wu, 2020). This is the same with digital artefacts. If we create a concept and see it’s either failing or not going in the direction we want it to go, if we leave it, it will never improve. This is why with How To BCM, i wanted to change and improve my content as seems fit so it would take two steps forwards instead of two steps back. Although a slow process, it has its values.
Project’s Trajectory
To get the negatives out of the way, let’s start with the negatives. During the iteration rounds of this product, there was a lot of FEFO. Despite the fact that the Instagram profile had a lot of likes. It was discovered that the number of followers was not expanding as quickly as I had intended. Unfortunately, I was unable to access Instagram business data to further investigate this decline due to the 50 followers I had received. Instead, I combed through my likes, comments, and follows one by one to discover who was responding to my posts. On Instagram, I discovered that the majority of my supporters were friends, not my original target audience of first-year students. I brought this problem up in class and requested for help. This is where the idea for a Twitter account was thrown into the discussion.
Twitter has morphed into a collection of constant information streams that include links, brief status updates, and firsthand reports. “A small percentage of the millions of users are what are known as influencers or alpha users. They have a sizeable, engaged audience that consumes and spreads the influencer’s content. As a result, an influencer’s material” (Anger, 2011). It is also mandatory for BCM students to have a Twitter account as there are a multitude assignments based around the social media platform. This means… theres going to be a LOT of first year students to target my content towards.
This was where the trickiest and most frustrating part of iteration and feedback loop came into play. Although the Twitter account gained 127 followers in a few weeks, the engagement on posts were slim to none compared to Instagram where the followers were low but the engagement was significantly higher. Once again i took this information to my fellow classmates and sought help (ironic as this is a guide for helping students with university issues)
It was also suggested that I use Tik Tok, a popular social media app, to broadcast a series of short funny films with the same theme. This seemed like a brilliant idea to everyone, including myself, until I added the FIST notion (Fast, Inexpensive, Simple, Tiny). A Digital Artefact’s purpose is to be as quick, simple, inexpensive, and small as feasible. The design process was already trying to stay inside the lines with the material on Instagram and Twitter. To begin, I’d need to find issues to write about, come up with a solution, create material by drawing and editing in Procreate, and then post to social media on a regular basis. Including a third medium which would include a different type of content production would have interrupted with my work life outside of university as its added hours into production.
Important Learning Moments
“To comprehend and cope with our environment we develop mental patterns or concepts of
meaning” (Boyd, 1976). This journal paper, which was linked to our class on Analysis and Synthesis: Breaking and Reassembling the Real, piqued my interest because I was already immersed in the paradigm shift notion. It basically stated that we change our normal mental patterns and re-create them in order to adapt with the always changing environment in which we live. Because of the way the epidemic has impacted how we think and act about everything we do, this was an essential theoretical learning moment. The actions we perform in life are repeated over and over again, resulting in varied outcomes and future possibilities. It was a constant battle with this project to keep the content fresh.
This degree has taught me that nothing you create will be perfect and at its full potential right away. No matter what you do, using a feedback glance is essential for progress. The knowledge of using frameworks such as FEFO and FIST gained through numerous digital artefacts is extremely useful and may be used to any element of life, including life itself. This final digital artwork was created as a thank you to my former first-year self, who despite everyday hardships with university did not drop out. It’s a way of saying thank you for learning and persevering through difficult moments to reach the light at the end of the tunnel. It’s a present for future kids who might suffer like I did, letting them know they’re not alone and that there’s always a solution. It takes time and patience, but if you persevere, you will be rewarded with wonderful results. I’d also like to express my gratitude to everyone who has contributed to any of my projects over the years. I wouldn’t have anything to update about without you, which means low grades, which means failure, which is something I don’t want to do. With all that being said I am excited for my future and the future of everyone in this degree. No matter what, i will always be a BCMer and a professional meme maker no matter what field i go into and i say that is a pretty good flex to have. Good luck to everyone and i hope to see you again one day.
Alright, over and out.
CASEY'S CORNER 
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