A “Remarkable” Collection of Stories

Sajjad Ali Khan – Peer Mentor, College of Engineering; Meera Kumar, A. Alfred Taubman College of Architecture + Urban Planning; Brandon Mack, School of Music, Theatre & Dance/LSA; Sean Thursby, College of Engineering

Our project is a website that showcases a compilation of parts of a story submitted by survey participants. Participants were asked to write one of five parts of the generic story structure without context of the other parts. They could pick any names for characters, objects, setting, any genre, etc. The names were then extracted, and it was all placed into code to allow the website users to pick whichever names they would like, and it would be updated throughout the entire story. For parts with multiple submissions, users are then also able to choose different submissions to see how it impacts the entire story. This offers a way for participants and users to “remark” on eachother’s submissions and the collective story as a whole.

First we brainstormed what “remark” meant to really explore its definition, synonyms, antonyms, different connotations, etc. Afterwards we developed project concepts by just listing as many cool and interesting ideas regardless of practicality. We then narrowed that list down, selected our favorite idea, and started developing a prototype to develop our process of getting the submissions and making the website.