Digital Badges - Dec 1-15, 2012

9. We are designing a badge for software competence certification. We imagine a variation of our mascot image as this evokes the software, as per established branding.

10. We will use our graphics guy, who knows the brand. Strong org brand is arguably important, for corporate survivial. At least, the brand builders tell us this.

Exciting. Because my daughter is crazy about horses, I volunteer on the local Pony Club exectutive. Tonight our meeting agenda included a talk about their physical badge program....during the meeting, I was connecting the dots:

9 & 10. Visual elements would be determined by Canadian Pony Club. If they agree to a digitial issue in parallel to the physical awarding of a badge to investigate) then the design is, I think, likely to be identical to the physical badge. Badges may include the annual membership - poss. general logo with 2012-13 on it for instance, and then individual attainment badges. (Legal may delay this initiative, but I expect it would help boost interest in the badge collection process, and possibly the pony club itself... to follow up)

I am feeling really good about this activity because it is what we were working on all week at work. I ahd no idea this would be a task, so I feel like a kid in a candy store!!!

We were working on developing a badge for #BEFA12

Theses are the competencies and framework for this badge:

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1RUH1M1Pj2__IhH_6vtRNbmFikgh8C8WcFn7qw0WhQ24/edit#heading=h.fy76nkpvn8h

How we came up with image:

We thought about the major "activity" - Blogs and themes "digital citizenship and digital identity" . We thought about "digital communication" and how to represent that in an image for a badge.

The "design team" included:  a digital designer from my school, the head of course development and myself.

We decided that it had to be the same colours as the OC logo (Green and navy) and to try and create a badges that represented the OC visually (so the frame is made up of O and C).

Our OC logo:

The debate was about the inside part - should it just be an image, or should it include a hashtag?

We then went to the Mozilla Badge site and checked out how the badges worked and the features and well as expectations if we joined up with them (pdf, jpeg dimentions, images, colours whatever).

The designer sent me a variety of versions....and I have attached the two finalists. It would be great if you could tell me which one you would choose and why.

Future badges will have the same border - but different images and or hashtag.

Thanks,

Verena :)

Although not created yet....  my choice would be to have a badge that has a  'look' and is related to the learner cohort.  Anyone could be handing out a gold star, which would (likely) convey little meaning to others. 

The examples that Verena has are great.  They relate to the logo and then specifics are easily identifiable. 

Have also snuck a peak at Task 5.2, and there are nice examples there, too.

If I use a badge recognition program in my area, I'd like to have the institution look for a variety of reasons which certainly include organizational brand.  Am lucky to have a communications department to work with, so if/when the time comes for graphic creation, it won't be too onerous!

In designing my badges I used  clip art pictures available in PowerPoint of a sparrow and a pair of binoculars and adapted them using Paint and saved as png files.
The sparrow which I used on the attendance badges was the image which represented the Bird watching with Biblical Binoculars program http://jofrei.edublogs.org/ and the image of the binoculars which was included on the Bible reference badges was part of the Biblical binoculars chart.

I don't think that anyone thinking of creating badges should think of a badge in isolation. I think of it like designing a basic label that I may want to tweak and edit to represent additional aspects. I went through this when I helped my husband design his canned fish labels--we needed something to show that each type (we have 14) came from the same business, but also had to include a way to differentiate species of salmon, whether it was smoked or plain--and then we added tuna and had scallops and oysters to integrate.If your design is too narrow at the outside--your badges may be radically different and not "sit" together as a suite or group.

That said, I think if you try to convey too much information, the image gets too visually complex and will not scale down well.

In any case, I do think that the badge is symbolic and must convey a message tied to what is being represented. The question is, what is the most important message to convey--for an institution granting a badge, the iconography of the institution might be of paramount importance and the skills/knowledge represented by the badge secondary. I think this is especially true where promotion of the institution is a key motivator. If a teacher/instructor is generating the badge--free of institutional guidelines and restrictions--s/he might focus solely on the content/skill learned.

Here's a curve ball--could there be audio badges? Where's the accessibilty in a strictly visual design?

Re. skills--I think some basic graphic design skills are necessary to find elements to represent the message of a badge. It's the equivalent of a visual tweet--but I think we've got less than 140 characters to do it in. There are plenty of free higher end graphics programs like www.pixlr.com to work with--or download GIMP or whatever turns your crank.

I'm almost eager to be on the opening forays into badging before my institution begins defining representational guidelines & requirements...think I have a bit more creative freedom. (Though I understand the importance of brand identity...sigh.) While our smaller educational institution has a department for this type of thing in Media & Public Relations--I think if everyone started using badges they'd be overwhelmed. I have to admit, too, that in desiging it myself I feel a sense of ownership and accomplishment.

It would give our Media & Art students something to do though....

I believe that promoting a university "brand" is important to educational institutions--it is a way to get the name out into the public. It's not just a badge, it's a badge from XXXX University. The popularity of a badge could generate interest--look at all the folks with a VIU badge!!! But if they are readily found, it might devalue the badge as well. Should there be a certain exclusivity of a badge??? Not sure. Think I would need to see what happens in some trials & do some focus groups re. response.