Project - form.val

Project - form.val
intro: This project is part of ongoing research into the finesse and technicalities of formfield validation rules on contemporary online social networks and large-scale internet sites.

Beyond interface design and information architecture, form.val aims to investigate how users navigate daily between countless input forms, radio buttons and dialog boxes, and by serving as a testing platform or sandbox the project facilitates analyzing the languages, protocols and algorithms that govern these types of digital interaction.

Besides functioning as a research platform the project will also be used for Teaching&Learning purposes by providing the sandbox functionalities and analytical tools to students, in order for them to gain understanding of the inner workings of websites, content management systems and networks. This will first and foremost be demonstrated in Internet Design and related courses at VUW School of Design, department of Media Design.

tech: The project proposes to build on top of a common Debian webserver, on which various generic platforms like blogging softwares and CMS' can be tested, but also a variety of custom code and algorithms taken from larger sites and research projects. Ideally the testing platform can serve to investigate so-called dark patterns or anti-patterns, working with a small to medium sized group of test-users.

form.val will also host a research blog in which I'll document progress and post other relevant content.

context: form.val builds on earlier work and participation in the Evil Media Distribution Centre by YoHa, which has been installed at Transmediale 2013 in Berlin and The New Institute in Rotterdam.

For specific parts of this project I'm still looking to collaborate with people from other VUW schools and faculties with similar areas of research, so if you're interested please leave a comment in the discussion forum or email me directly via [mailto:walter.langelaar@vuw.ac.nz here].