Getting Started

Keeping a blog of my progress seemed to be the best way to document the process of my thesis. There have been many changes to my project since I proposed the idea in the fall semester of 2010. I took my midpoint class last summer and came up with the idea to create a site about the history of the World Cup. It seemed pretty straight forward - I'd just create an interactive timeline about all the great things that have happened over the years of the world's most popular sporting event. Americans are a bit behind in the enthusiasm that surrounds soccer, but the rest of the world lives and breathes the sport. The World Cup is comparable to America's Super Bowl, World Series Championship, March Madness, and BCS Bowl combined. I wanted to create a project that could provide Americans with some context of why the World Cup is such a big deal in every country except the United States - it's because of the history. The first World Cup tournament was in 1930 and has been taking place every four years since. There's not many other sports that can claim they bring countries together with different cultures, languages, or politics to all play the exact same game. If you can't tell, I LOVE soccer, and I wish this country could figure out how to get us Americans excited about it. download midpoint proposal

After passing my midpoint, I enrolled in the User Experience Directed Study, with Kathleen Watson. So far, she has pushed me to really think about the purpose of my project and how it might appeal to my audience. We've gone back and forth about how I could create this visualization of the history of the tournaments, while telling an interesting story. Something I really didn't even think about was the women's World Cup (yes there is one). Because I played sports in high school, including soccer, I definitely know how under-appreciated women sports are. After doing a little research I could believe that the first World Cup was in 1991, 61 years after the men's first tournament. Not sure why it has taken this long for a tournament to be organized for women to play in. Also, only 16 teams get to play in the women's World Cup, as opposed to the men's 32 teams. I wonder why this is. Another fact: 90,185 people attended the 1999 women's final game, a world record for women's sporting events. What does this number look like compared to the most who attended the men's final game in 2010, or really, any other men's sport? Still searching for the numbers. More to come.