Alcatraz Visit

Today I finally got to visit Alcatraz…I was so excited although it was raining and the weather looked dreary but I didn’t let that get to me.
I don’t think my brother was that excited about the whole thing, I’m sure he would’ve preferred to stay in bed all day than get all wet and cold, but he did it for me so, thanks Rami ☺
We barely got there on time, parked our car and rushed into the 12:10 boat. When we finally got to the Island 12 minutes later, we walked into the building and took our Audio tour headsets.

We walked through the cell corridor; cold and humid, one of them was even called “Broadway” which I thought was kind of ironic.
I got to enter one of the cells and tried to imagine what it would be like to live in such a small space with no personal privacy. To be honest, I kind of felt sorry for the prisoners, I don’t know if that’s right or not, but I guess, in the end they’re just humans who made some bad decisions in their lives, and this was how they paid for it.

I was especially impressed by the Audio tour, guiding us from one corridor to the other, with background sounds and recorded with real prisoner’s voices, making it real and alive.

At the end, I was cold, feet wet, and extremely uncomfortable, I could hardly wait for the next boat to drop us back to pier 33, I really enjoyed this tour and would definitely recommend it, I can’t wait for my family to come visit me in the summer so that I can take them there, I know they’ll love it.

It’s a pity that Alcatraz doesn’t get the publicity and advertising it truly deserves, and I’m hoping to give it justice with my website design.

Week 5: Class Comments

Last night’s class was cool, Christian; an Executive Creative Director at Goodby, Silverstein and Partners presented his work and talked about the latest technologies in the web design field. Personally I was fascinated by the General Electric (GE) website and amazed by how technology had advanced.
After that we presented our personas for our topics, and I realized that I still need to work more on mine!

Alcatraz project personas

Target audience for the Alcatraz island volunteer program are:

1. San Francisco Bay area locals.

2. International visitors.

Persona #1:

Name: Angie

Profession: Stay at home mom.
About Angie: Reads the local newspaper with some toast every morning, goes grocery shopping every Sunday night, Picks up her kids from the bus stop on 5th avenue on weekdays, Has a B.S. in History, volunteers regularly in the summer for different programs.
What makes her a potential volunteer for the program: She is a helpful by nature and the prison and its history would interest her.

Persona #2:


Name: Chin-Hwa
Age: 34
Profession: Travel agent
About Chin-Hwa: Can speak 3 languages, loves to travel, does his grocery shopping online and believes in Karma.
What makes him a potential volunteer for the program: Likes to experience different things in life and the Alcatraz prison fascinates him with its notorious history.

Class assignment #2

For our second class assignment, we were asked to design an illustration or diagram for google, amazon or facebook. I chose facebook.
Facebook is a free-access social networking website. Users can join networks organized by city, workplace, school, and region to connect and interact with other people. People can add friends and send them messages.

So I did this little illustration showing how facebook connects people from different colors and ethnicities together.

Class assignment #2

For our second class assignment, we were asked to design an illustration or diagram for google, amazon or facebook. I chose facebook.
Facebook is a free-access social networking website. Users can join networks organized by city, workplace, school, and region to connect and interact with other people. People can add friends and send them messages.

Oscars event: Persona #1

Name: Bob Brian

Age: 42

Profession: Plastic Surgeon

About Bob: Eats breakfast before brushing his teeth, does his grocery shopping online, has a pet dog called Seal.

What he likes about the Oscars: Likes to see the results of the plastic surgeries he’s done on celebrities and brag about them to whomever is watching it with him.

Oscars event: Persona #2

Name: Emily

Age: 16

Profession: High-school student

About Emily: Likes to be the center of attention, does the crazy chicken dance in the shower, thinks that one day she’ll grow up to be a rock-star, loves clothes and fashion.

What she likes about the Oscars: Likes to see the dresses celebrities are wearing, is obsessed with Robert Pattinson and likes to cry after her favorite actors win

Week 4: Class comments

Class went fast last Tuesday; we did our presentations for our project research. After that we were asked by Mauro to create personas for different events, I got the Oscars event. Later we had 10 minutes to draw an illustration representing google, facebook or amazon.

Inspirational websites...

www.allschwilposse.com

www.66.ufc.com

Alcatraz Island, commonly referred to as simply Alcatraz or locally as The Rock, is a small island located in the middle of San Francisco Bay in California, United States. It served as a lighthouse, then a military fortification, then a military prison followed by a federal prison until 1963. It became a national recreation area in 1972 and received landmarking designations in 1976 and 1986.

History
The first Spaniard to discover the island was Juan Manuel de Ayala in 1775, who charted San Francisco Bay and named the island "La Isla de los Alcatraces," which translates as "The Island of the Pelicans,”.

It is home to the now-abandoned prison, the site of the oldest operating lighthouse on the west coast of the United States, early military fortifications, and natural features such as rock pools, a seabird colony (mostly Western Gulls, cormorants, and egrets), and unique views of the coastline.

Military history
On March 21, 1907, Alcatraz was officially designated as the Western US Military Prison. In 1909 construction began on the huge concrete main cell block It was completed in 1912

Due to its isolation from the outside by the cold, strong, hazardous currents of the waters of San Francisco Bay, Alcatraz was used to house Civil War prisoners as early as 1861. In 1898, the Spanish-American war would increase the prison population from 26 to over 450.


Escape attempts
During its 29 years of operation, the penitentiary claimed no prisoners as having ever successfully escaped. 36 prisoners were involved in 14 attempts, two men trying twice; seven were shot and killed, and two drowned. The most violent occurred on 2 May 1946 when a failed escape attempt by six prisoners led to the so-called "Battle of Alcatraz".
On June 11, 1962 Frank Morris, John Anglin and Clarence Anglin successfully carried out one of the most intricate escapes ever devised. Behind the prisoners' cells in Cell Block B (where the escapees were interned) was an unguarded 3-foot (0.91 m) wide utility corridor. The prisoners chiseled away the moisture-damaged concrete from around an air vent leading to this corridor, using tools such as a metal spoon soldered with silver from a dime and an electric drill improvised from a stolen vacuum cleaner motor. The noise was disguised by accordions played during music hour, and their progress was concealed by false walls which, in the dark recesses of the cells, fooled the guards.

Due to rising operational costs, the Military decided to close the prison in 1934, and ownership shifted to the Department of Justice.