Name your case study Live feeds Name of Contributor(s)‏ Project Date Dear participant, Please use this template to record a case were your project used, or attempted to use, participatory web technologies to resolve a problem / issue emerging from your work. These incident will be collated by the Planet project, and used to identify common patterns. Note: failure is often a better teacher than success. The key to a good case is in illustrating a common problem.

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Situation A tagline for your project or work  The Spots project is expanding the boundaries of leopard apparel (see: Describe the user group and the work context  Spots has a team of 20 researchers in 4 sites in the UK and 2 in Alaska. Some are also working with the Stripes project. Describe your technological setup  We use gps devices to track leopards and mobile displays to present our new designs to them. The designs are stored on a wiki and downloaded to the displays by sat phone.

Task Describe what you are trying to achieve, e.g. a problem you have encountered in your work, which you hoped to resolve using participatory web technologies. Describe the forces in play.  We wanted to collate real time data on the leopards' reactions to the designs. Data needed to be indexed chronologically and geographically, and linked to discussions on the wiki. Researchers found it hard to take detailed notes in cases of negative reaction.

Actions How did you try to address the issue?  We equipped researchers with video cams, which were rigged with a live sat broadcast link. Researchers would enter the time, location and link to the design on the wiki before starting a presentation. They would then record and broadcast the reaction live.

Results What were the outcomes of the actions you took?  When the sat link was good, researchers found this a very productive method. However, a few researchers has technical difficulties operating the gear. Unfortunately, they could not be interviewed.

Observations Lessons you've learnt and conclusions you’ve drawn  Organise training and mentoring on using the equipment. We’re also trying recording off-line if the sat link is down. Researchers may need electronic tagging – we still can’t locate some of them.