Mission 2(Culture) - Production

With the idea we set up, we needed something to display the information. We wanted to tell the story on a map so people could see the distance from where it is now to where it first started. We found a site called StorymapJS which we were able to do just that. We tried to find other sites to show our research but this one worked the best. So we all the things we needed to get the project started.

Fineas and I met up first to first dissect the phone. Fineas was able to dissect it using a kit and looking at YouTube videos for help. I helped with the process. From here, we took pictures of a few main components found in the phone which we would later use to figure out where the materials came from. We put the phone back together after we got everything we needed.

After this, we put all the information that we needed into the story map. We met up again but this time it was to discuss our ideas and talk about finalizing the story map. We figured out how we wanted to put the information together because the story map would act as our presentation slide.

In the story map, we decided to add the location of each step it takes to get back to the materials and put a bit of information on the slides. We didn't want to overload the slides with information as it would be hard to read and wouldn't look pleasing. We added pictures that represented the places as it was pretty difficult to get actual pictures of the locations.

We started the story map off in Ireland which was the end location and moved our way to Poland as this is where OnePlus' warehouses are for Europe. Next was India, which is where Oneplus assemble their phones and ship them to the other OnePlus warehouses. China is where OnePlus are located, more specifically, Shenzhen Guangdong. They manufacture the products here and this is where the materials are stored.

We would then go onto the materials which we had search and wrote about in the last article. We also added some information on the life of a factory worker and how work is in the mines. What we found out was pretty shocking. The life of an average factory and miner is a difficult life as they work many hours and they don't get payed fairly. Foe example, workers are sometimes made to fill out a false time sheet stating that they worked less hours than they did.

Keep in mind that this may not be the case for every factory worker and miner and there is no evidence that OnePlus' don't treat their workers unfairly. It was still very shocked as this is still happening

Overall, I was impressed of how the project turned out and I was surprised on how much of the materials came from China itself. I'm glad I did the project as I learnt more information on phones and how they are built.

The story map is available here.

Mission 2(Culture) - Working for the Web

For this mission, I decided to choose the topic "Working for the Web". The reason I choose this topic was because I thought it looked interesting and I knew not many people would choose it so it would be unique. I had some sort of idea was the topic was about.

Essentially, there are people that work to create the technology we use to access the web. On the other side, the consumers are also working for the web in a sense that we spend our hours on the web giving the companies our data, which they can use to advertise to us.

I was able to then find a partner interested in the topic as well. Fineas was the partner I chose to team up with and we both signed up on the Slack channel. We also used different ways to communicate instead of using Slack such as WhatsApp.

From this, we decided to figure out what topic we wanted to touch on. We brainstormed and did some research but ultimately we decided that we would dissect a broken phone Fineas had and we would find out where the phone and materials came from. The phone was from a brand named OnePlus and we wanted to find out about the phone. The phone itself would be pretty easy to disassemble as well.

First off, I wanted to do some of my own research on my own. I wanted to find out how to product is made and go through all the steps from where it's sourced up until it gets to the consumers hands. I found out quickly that this would be pretty hard as there is not a lot of information online to find out this topic. I guess many companies don't want this information out for a reason so I had to work with what I was given.

From the research, I had more of an idea of what I wanted to achieve. I wanted to show the process starting from the consumers hands and then the delivery, assembly and manufacturing. We found what components we wanted to go more in depth with which were the battery, the camera lens, the screen and the case.

The battery was a lithium-ion battery and it's made mostly from nickel, cobalt and manganese. The camera lens was made from sapphire crystal and it's also used to create the fingerprint scanner. The case itself is mostly made of metal and manganese. The screen is made from tin and indium. From all this research, I figured out that all the materials that are used in OnePlus phones mostly come from China because they can all be found there. It's also more cost efficient for OnePlus as they don't need to get any materials shipped to them.