For one of the Web assignments this week, I created a Buzzfeed personality quiz about some of the weirdest rulers from Early Modern Europe. This assignment definitely warranted its star rating. I’ve taken a ton of Buzzfeed personality quizzes, and despite how much crap they get, this gave me a new appreciation for how hard these quizzes are to make. First, I had to read about how to make one. The first step, according to their guide, is to think of the answers to the quiz first. Makes sense, but it’s still a bit of work. I’m a huge history geek, of course, so that was my go-to. But I had to think of an area of history where I had a lot of knowledge. Unfortunately, even though I specialize in a few periods, I’m not an expert on the biographies of some historical figures, so I went with some of the more eccentric figures from the Early Modern era: King Henry VIII, Vlad the Impaler, Peter the Great, and Elizabeth Bathory. The real ground work was in finding some (mostly) accurate biographical info about them and finding images to accompany the questions. I had a lot of fun coming up with the answers. Check it out here!

I had always wondered where those infamous buzzfeed quizzes would always come from. It always seems like there is a new one popping up that could tell anything from what’s your shoe size all the way to where you grew up. So I decided to make one.

Quiz found here

The Quiz

The quiz I made is titled “Can We Guess Which Type of Car You Drive?”.  It is actually pretty hard to find a topic for a the quiz. Even harder is trying to simplify the types of car people can drive.  The car market is so saturated there are quite a lot of choices to choose from. There are small hatchbacks, basic sedans, sports sedans, luxury sedans, coupes, convertibles and the list keeps going. For trucks its the same way as there are mini trucks, diesel trucks, full-size trucks, half tons, quarter tons, 4x4s, 4x2s, SUVs and on and on.  There needs to be some simple way to bring this list down.  I final outcomes for the quiz I have chosen are basic econobox, lifted brodozer, public transportation, and luxury sedan.  I feel that those cover a large percentage of the population and even those that do not own cars.

Process

The process was quite simple, mostly filling out text boxes and adding images. Finding images that were royalty free however were a pain. There are several basic layouts to choose from but what best fit my needs was the “Personality Quiz” layout.  This layout is simple and easy to follow.  The hardest part is trying to figure out questions and their correlating “personality”.  There is no true science to this so everything is made up.

The Idea

IRL I’m really into cars and this is just a way for me to express that interest. I don’t really have an interest in small econoboxes like Honda Civics or Ford Fiestas, but it helps me stay more engaged in the activity and makes it more interesting.

https://www.buzzfeed.com/kateym4d9e3ea56/which-fictional-spy-are-you-120mn?utm_term=.lf4lpaJzl

For my last assignments, I decided to do a BuzzFeed Personality Quiz on What Movie Spy Are you to try and connect it to our class theme.

I have never made a BuzzFeed quiz before so this was a challenge for me trying out a new software. Going into it, I thought it wasn’t going to be hard since I assumed Buzzfeed would make it easy for users to create their own content.

I was wrong.

I didn’t have trouble actually making the quiz, but I had a lot of trouble publishing it and logging into BuzzFeed.  I think Buzzfeed hates me.

The first time I tried publishing the quiz, it deleted all my work.

The second time, It kept loading, and nothing happened, and then deleted my work. The third time it happened, I emailed BuzzFeed but got no reply.

I decided to leave it and just try again another day, and finally 3 days later, here we are. With an actually published quiz.

In the end, I give this assignment 4 stars in difficulty because Buzzfeed hates me so much.

I also hate Buzzfeed.

Never again.

????½

(Elder Scrolls spoilers below, I guess)

Last web assignment this week! I decided to make a Buzzfeed personality quiz inspired by my favourite series of all time, the Elder Scrolls (more specifically the third entry, Morrowind). I made a “which member of the Tribunal are you?” quiz. The Tribunal were the living gods of the Dunmer until either two or all three of them died around the end of the 3rd Era and the beginning of the 4th Era. Some of the questions I asked are a bit tongue-in-cheek, but I hope you like the result! If you haven’t played the games, the quiz probably won’t make sense to you, but whatever. Oh, and here’s the link!

For my first web assignment I created a buzzfeed quiz to see what Parks and Recreation character you are. I always thought these quizzes were fun and Park and Rec is one of my favorite shows.  I tried to come up with random answers so people wouldn’t be able to answer them to get the character they want. I liked doing this show because the characters all have their own different and distinct personality. I didn’t get all of the characters, since there’s so many, but I got the main ones. Overall, I thought it was a fun assignment and finally got to make one of those quizzes I always take when i’m busy procrastinating.

https://www.buzzfeed.com/mattfroelich/which-parks-and-rec-character-are-you-2ne0m

For my last DS106 assignment bank creation, I wanted to do something I had not done before from a “new to me” category. I had also determined in last week’s course reflection that I wanted to involve my family in this week’s project. So, I worked with my husband to choose the “Buzzfeed Personality Quiz” assignment.

The assignment itself is pretty straightforward: create a personality quiz using the Buzzfeed site. There are some additional parameters for minimum number of outcomes and questions, as well as a requirement that photos be included.

My husband helped me choose a quiz storyline that fit into my course theme of “the future.” After bouncing a few ideas around, I landed on “What’s Your Post-Apocalyptic Community?” I wanted to bring my theme back to current trends in popular culture wherein people discuss possible disaster scenarios in semi-serious, semi-joking ways. I worked with my husband to create four future communities and six questions to help determine community membership.

Now would be the perfect time to try it out and see where you land.

I spent way more time on this quiz than I would have imagined. It was also the assignment which developed the most as a story behind the scenes – lots of thought and discussion went into exploring potential storylines. I worked with my husband on the initial bits, ran several ideas by co-workers and friends, and found myself contemplating my various future communities at random times of the day. It was a lot of fun feeling that invested!

In addition to writing up the quiz sections as outlined by the Buzzfeed layout, I created a number of pictures and tracked down different images through the Flickr search for images licensed for reuse. I made sure to give each image proper credit (I appreciate that Buzzfeed includes a spot to do this), as well as the url for each photo.

I feel accomplished having created this quiz and trying something completely new-to-me. I also have some ideas for Buzzfeed’s community suggestion box based on features that I would have liked to include in my quiz, like tie-breaker questions, multi-path options and secondary responses.