Reflections on '59

This presents an interesting issue for ‘Team Boron’, as we create the 'Boron Mon Amour' interactive documentary for the 94elements.com site - who is our audience?

On the one hand, we have the majority of the population who disengaged with formal science education at the age of 16. Why would they be interested in a polemic that on the face of it at least is about Boron, the world’s most boring element, and data visualisation (come on, how geeky is that?) Snow’s argument would suggest that even the website name ‘94elements’ would be a turn off.

And on the other hand, as Snow says:

“As one would expect, some of the very best scientists had and have plenty of energy and interest to spare, and we came across several who had read everything that literary people talk about. But that's very rare. Most of the rest, when one tried to probe for what books they had read, would modestly confess, "Well, I've tried a bit of Dickens", rather as though Dickens were an extraordinarily esoteric, tangled and dubiously rewarding writer, something like Rainer Maria Rilke.”

Ah, this rather suggests that we may have trouble engaging scientists with the finer points of John’s essay (though they might rather enjoy playing with the data visualisation in a geeky sort of way).

The film is not yet ready and neither is the data visualisation, but Marcin, John and Mike did manage to get me a VERY alpha prototype last week. I let a couple of guinea pigs (oops, sorry, that should have been ‘potential audience members’) have a play with it in exchange for their thoughts and a chocolate.

Take home message? Alpha testing asks a lot of your viewers/users because you are asking them to envisage what the project might end up being. Even so, there were spontaneous suggestions to use the film to direct the viewer to the interactives (essentially breaking the fourth wall and speaking to the audience, something John’s been thinking about doing anyway). I was also reminded how quickly culture moves on when no one recognised former president of the US, Ronald Reagan, in his days as a B list actor making Borax commercials. I might not quite remember ’59 but I do remember him!

Despite the challenge, alpha test was definitely useful, suggesting we think carefully about the relationship between the linear film and the interactive data visualisation. I'm also really excited at the prospect of finding out even more about chemical inspiration for modern music. Believe me... it's not just Tom Lehrer who's been inspired by chemistry.