By Thursday of every week, you should have completed the activities associated with 1 project. You should blog about your experience as a comment to the blog posting of that particular project. Your blog comment can be largely experiential--tell us what it was like to do the project and what you learned. Products associated with the project and a more detailed analysis of the project will go in your portfolio (see the Portfolio blog post).
Project #1 - Create a Composite
Check out Faces software from me. This is the software used by law enforcement to make composite drawings of suspects. Install the software onto your computer. Review the guidelines for interviewing witnesses (Eyewitness Guide-available on the blog). Ask a friend to act as a witness. Ask them to formulate in their mind a picture of someone they know (it would be good if they had a photograph they could later show you). Interview this 'witness' and make a composite drawing of their 'suspect.'
I checked out this software and I thought it was extremely fun! I asked my roommate a series of questions about one of her friends that I have never meet, let alone seen a picture of. After asking her these questions I made a composite of her "suspect," who is her friend. The composite is very close to what her friend actually looks like. It looks like a black and white picture of him compared to the colored picture I printed out.
When asking my roommate, "the witness," about her friend, "the suspect," I first asked her what happened and if she saw the perp. She answered yes, so then I asked the sex of the perp and the height and weight. I then asked her to try to describe him to me. I followed up on some questions about what he was wearing at the time of the crime and where he was located when the crime happened.
This assignment really opened my eyes to what the professionals have to do in order to make a composite of a suspect or perpetrator of a crime.
It was a lot of fun and I would strongly suggest someone else doing this assignment. But first I would play with the software before making the composite because it is a little confusing at first.
This facial composite software was a lot of fun and very interesting!
I sat down with my boyfriend and I had him describe to me a person in his head as if he was trying to remember what they looked like. I let him do all the talking at first and I made sure not to interrupt him or influence his thinking with any of my suggestions. I kept a mental note the whole time of what I wanted to go back over and ask. I could tell it was a little difficult for him to give specific facial shapes, which reminded me of the article posted about people remember the face as a whole and not singled out parts.
When I was doing this project I could really see the frustrations that it could possible come with. My boyfriend had a hard time describing some features and he has known this person forever. I could only imagine a witness trying to explain a face they only got a glimpse of or see for a few short minutes.
This project was awesome though, definitely a lot of fun and worth trying out!
When looking through the face software you realize how much detail goes into making a composite. There are details required about a persons face that from a quick glance would be extremely hard to remember.
For my project I choose to interview my boyfriend. He recently moved to Texas with his job and is working with a lot of new people. I had him describe to me in as much detail as he could one of the new people he is working with. I decided to have him describe one of his new co-workers because its someone he knows but not a close friend. I figured this relationship was more realistic when comparing it to a witness who is describing a suspect that they only saw for a brief time.
The outcome of the composite was similar to my boyfriends co-worker and during an investigation would prob be accurate enough for police and investigators to make the arrest.
From this project I really learned all the details that go into creating a composite of someone. Prior to this project I did not realize how many different head shapes, chin, and forehead shapes a person can really have. If I am ever a witness to a crime after completing this project I think there are definitely things I would pay attention to now that I wouldn't before.
I have checked out the software from you but have not been able to sucessfully load it to my computer yet. I am going to fix this problem when I have more time to look at it tonight and build my compisitions later this evening. This is my blog post for this weeks project.
This project was very unique and fun! I never realized how hard it would be for someone to describe someone from memory and how hard it would be for the person drawing the composite to piece together the face of the "suspect."
For this project, I had my boyfriend describe his close friend and roommate to me. It was very difficult because he was not very specific in his descriptions! I could only imagine the frustrations the victim would have identifying their offender as descriptively as possible, and for the artist trying to get the most detailed information out of the victim. My boyfriend had a hard time remembering specific details and structures and he has spent a majority of his life going to class with this person, hanging out with him, and now even living with him! This definitely shows how our memories fail us and are not always as good as me hope sometimes.
Nonetheless, it was still fun to do and to see the finished product. My composite was a little off, but you could still make out some resemblance. However, I do not think it would be legitimate enough for police and investigators to use to catch a criminal or construct a lineup.
I enjoyed this project because it relates to the real life events that police, investigators, victims, etc have to go through after a crime. I never realized how many different facial features there are; they all look similar, yet very distinct. After doing this project, I can see how someone could easily pick the wrong person in a lineup as well.
I definitely recommend trying out this software and trying to piece together a composite. GOOD LUCK! :)
I really enjoyed this project and it was fun and interesting! I realize now how hard it is to describe someone in so much detail to make the face look anything like them. I didn't a few composites just to get a feel for the program. I actually asked my roommate to describe someone and the amount of detail they had to give was difficult.
I actually then had one of my family members describe another family member and even after living with them for so long they had a hard time getting the face just right. The picture that I constructed of what they said really didn't look anything like them!
It really showed how hard and upset a witness can get because in order to describe someone on this program I feel you have to have to be able to really see what they looked like and in get detail to construct an accurate composite. It really does question really how much the witness remembers and their memory at the time of the crime.
I don't think that my picture would have helped in catching the "suspect" because it didn't really look like him. But it was better the second time around than the first. So with a little more practice you can get familiar with the software to really be able to construct a good picture of the suspect.
Overall, I recommend anyone who wasn't done this project to do it, and to do a couple of composites to get to know the software! It is really fun and will keep you entertained with the amount of material is available.
I loved this activity! It was a lot more difficult than I expected and at times frustrating.
I had my roommate pick out one of her friends on facebook that I don't know. At first, I tried to make a guy, but I found it difficult because he was smiling and the software doesn't have smiles. Smiling throws off face shapes so it was difficult. We ended up throwing that one out and starting over with a female.
The second time, my roommate chose a female. She used two pictures because in one of the pictures she was smiling and the only picture of her not smiling was sideways. I asked my roommate non leading questions like "What can you tell me about her eyes." After I constructed the complete composite, I showed it to my roommate and asked her if it looked like the person and what could be changed to look more accurate (this step follows the guidelines proposed in the manual). Not surprisingly, a lot of changes were needed, but I came up with a pretty close composite.
It was difficult to construct a composite because there are so many options to chose from. All of the options also made it frustrating because it seemed like once you changed something that didn't look right, it made another feature not look accurate.
I was also amazed at how much the face changed when you changed the features. Certain eye shapes, eyebrow shapes, etc. can make the person look more approachable or even mean.
Constructing composites becomes very addicting, so addicting that I made myself a criminal composite!
I would greatly suggest though that you have the person helping you choose a person who is not smiling, it will be a lot easier!
I chose to do the create a composite for this week’s activity. I found this activity to be super fun. It was kind of hard to get the face to look the way you want. I had my friend pick someone off of facebook that I didn’t know. My friend chose a female so that is who I did the face composite on. I tried to ask non leading questions, but it was hard and I know I threw some of those in. It was a lot harder than I expected to create a composite without seeing a picture and just going off someone’s words. It was also hard because there was so many options to choose from so sometimes I didn’t know what option to pick. Then I would pick an option and it looked awful so I had to figure out what option to choose again. My friend did a really good job of describing the person and I think I got a composite close to what the person looked like. This was my favorite activity so far.
I thought this project was a lot harder than it seemed. It was hard because there was so many different aspects and details of a persons face that can make a person look totally different. It really shows how important using a professional is in this case.
The person I interviewed used a man that he knew at church. Even though I'm sure my interviewee has seen this man several times, it was hard for him to tell me a lot of detail. When I finished the composite, the man I created looked nothing like the real man. I imagine that it would be very hard to create a composite of someone that the witness has probably only seen once and chances are it was for a very short amount of time and the lighting in the area would have definitely played a part in how much detail was gathered.
I did this project twice. It was equally hard, but i my second composite wasn't as good as my first. I did a white guy the first time and a girl and black guy the second time. I thought it was a lot harder to do a composite of a girl than a guy. I think the person telling you the description make a lot of difference. The first time i had my co-worker describe a person and the second time i had my roommate describe a person. My roommate didn't do a good job of describing. I ask her if the person had any facial hair and she said no, but when i looked at the picture he had a mustache and gotee. I had a hard time again not asking leading questions. With both of my composites the person had a picture in front of them and they stated that if they hadn't had a picture they would have had a hard time describing the person.
If i had more time with the software i would have liked to make more composite and have different people telling me about the "perp".
This project was a lot more difficult than I had originally anticipated. There were so many choices for every aspect of the face!! I interviewed my friend about another friend of hers that I had not met. She did pretty well, but it was hard to get the exact face shape, especially without a picture as a reference point.
My composite looked somewhat like her friend, but not really and I doubt it would be of any help in an investigation. I have gained a lot of respect for professionals that have this duty!
Like the first time I did this project, I thought it was pretty difficult to get an accurate face. I used a different "witness" this time and asked more detailed questions that I didn't ask the first time to try and get a better picture in my head, but it didn't work too well.
My "witness" used his dad as his "suspect" which you think would be a easy person to describe but like the previous time I did this project, he didn't know a lot of the details like the shape of his chin or eyebrows. It takes a lot of detail in the faces software to get a good and accurate portrayal of someone. It's hard not to ask questions like "did this person have thin lips?". To be a professional in this area would require a lot of hard work and training to do the best they can to get an accurate composite.
I did this project twice. The first time was with my girlfriend picking anyone she wanted. After about 45 minutes, we constructed a facial profile of one of her female friends. Considering my girlfriend was viewing my monitor, she picked the items more than answering my questions even though I asked her to describe the features than selecting them. Even after the facial construction was completed, she stated that it looked vaguely close and showed me a picture of who she was thinking of. Without changing any of the selections, I used the drag bar to either move features around or resize them. Afterwards, she said it was very close.
For the second attempt, I called my friend and we constructed a profile over the phone. In this case, I asked him to think of someone we knew from work. Here, I was able to ask him all the questions without him being able to select anything. Doing it this way took considerably longer, but once it was finished, I took a screen shot of the facial construction and e-mailed it to him. Since I got a little practice with the slider on the first attempt, I made sure to ask questions regarding that after the initial profile was made. For the fun of it, I tried to guess the individual and got it on the second try.
In both cases, it was extremely hard not to ask leading questions. Instead, I always said something along the lines of, "Describe how they kept their hair." In some cases however, the "witness" on both attempts asked me how would one describe a certain feature, like lips. In these cases, I gave them examples. In all, it was a fun program to use. The "game" feature really allows you to test your memory. Although you can change the difficulty or the time you have to view the perpetrator, you have to reconstruct the perpetrator's face based on what you remember.
I chose to do this project twice but in reality i did it about 5 or 6 times just to get used to the system and found it very difficult to use at first and still struggle a bit with it. The first time i used it i just went through the works and put together a random face just to see how it works and that was easy enough. Next i tried to put together a picture of one of best friends just to see if it was actually possible to do so. After about an hour i got a picture that looks pretty similar to what he looks like but when i showed it to him he laughed and said i must be on drugs if i think that looks like him, so that attempt can be looked either way; success and failure. Then came the actual attempt for me to interview a witness and i asked one of my friends to describe to me her boyfriend that i havent met yet. This was a real pain and pretty frustrating on my part because of having to use non-leading questions which a times got me a too simple answer that i had to ask 10 other questions for the initial one to be answered but when i was done God knows how long later it turned out that it was a pretty good picture except for the hair i wasnt able to find a compatible look so we just used a buzzed hair style.
The other witness attempt was back to my friend that i did a sketch of him earlier and he described his cousin in Germany. This turned out to be a whole lot easier and i think the main reason being is that he was now familier with the program as well. This ofcourse led to him being able to answer the questions much much more clearly and my simple non-leading questions were enough with out further explainations. Once we were done and both satisfied with out work we then sent the pic to his cousin and told him that the FBI was looking for a suspect and it looked a lot like him. After we had out fun we told him that it was a joke and he laughed at it too and was amazed at how close we got with the sketch.
After playing with this program and doing the assignment for about a day i started to see the difficulty in doing these sketches and cant imagine how hard it must have been for hand sketches to be made of criminals, because with the program its easy to go through many examples until you get to a satisfying picture with out having to draw and erase a million times. BUT with the computer system just simple seeing all the examples could have a leading effect on the witness and confuse the picture in their heads all together unless they know the person very well. Another thing that i just thought of is that i didnt try to do any female sketches but i guess thats just because males a more disproportionaly likely to commit crimes that I unconsciously ruled out woman from my criminal profile.
I did this project twice. Once, I had the witness describe a woman. The second time, I worked with the victim to create a composite of a man.