Week 12 Class 2 FINAL

Presentation day, Georgia and I were third up and I was pretty nervous, I ended up reading from the paper pretty much the whole time even though I knew it off the top of my head. I tried to look up as much as possible but I SUCK AT PRESENTING. I am planning to attend toastmasters over the summer to hopefully become a master of toasts by fourth year. 

Despite my mumbling and shyness, I thought our presentation went well, it conveyed everything we needed it to, however next time I might make it a bit more exciting and perhaps a bit more professional looking. And maybe less writing on the cue cards.

It was so good to get together with the class afterwards for a shared lunch, it was my favourite group of people to work with, everyone was so enthusiastic the whole time , which made the paper so much more enjoyable than it could have been without them.

Concluding questions:

+ What was your biggest learning that you took from this paper.

I learnt a lot about experience design, I learnt so many valuable thing about empathy, it has been hinted in previous papers but I never thought of it as something that needed to be taken so seriously, I learnt how much of a difference it can really make to your work and how that perfect insight can get you the perfect design outcome. I enjoyed being able to think outside VCD and I learned that VCD is such a diverse area of design because any project can benefit from the mind of a visual communicator being on board. Interviewing people - I still have a long way to go with this, but I made a start in this project. 

+ What aspect of your project are you most happy with.

I really like the fact that it's Wellingtonian, I am super proud of our city. I also like the fact that it's not an app or a typical campaign, it's something more subtle with really subtle design, which made it a more difficult project to carry out. I like that I can actually visualise my project being implemented in Wellington and that it's an actual viable thing that could actually be a thing.

+ What would you do differently.

Perhaps do prototyping more, later on in the process, we kind of forgot about that aspect of it towards the end and ran out of time to prototype our new designs. 

Week 12 Class 1

We had finished designing the dossier and were working on out presentation, we laid out everything we wanted to cover, split it between us, and wrote our own sections, then came back together and practiced it a few times. At this time we were perfecting our dossier and making sure that it contained all the information we needed it to in a clear and precise way.

Week 11 Class 2

Today we were looking at inspiration for our new style and came across an image of some coloured dots that were all out of focus. That inspired us to play with blurring, so we both went of and quickly made some images using blurring, that inspired our new logo and our stickers that gradually become less blurry and more focussed. We also began designing the dossier and gathering the information we needed for it

We also began thinking about the presentation, we wanted a video to convey some parts of composure, because it would be better than explaining it with images and words. We story boarded what would need to be included

Week 11 Class 1

We presented our visual style to the tutors today, we got good feedback on the content, but out visual style was a bit clinical, and didn't say much about what composure aims to do. It was a bit literal with the symbols of the senses, they could still be useful as part of our design, but perhaps not in such a prominent place.
We are spending the next day re-working our visual style and trying to add our journey into it, taking the user from cluttered to clear, from unfocussed to focussed.

EXCHANGE 4

I was unfortunately sick for this exchange session

Week 10 Class 2

Today our mission was to carry on designing and developing out style, we picked a colour palette and carried on designing the snapchat. We worked on applying the style consistently throughout the touchpoints.
Our main problem was the design of the poster. Because we wanted the poster to be subtle and not give too much of an explanation, we found it difficult to design something that was actually useful to composure. What would the poster actually bring to the whole idea and the journey map process? are we just designing it because it's expected of us to design a poster to go along with our idea?

Week 10 Class 1

Interim presentation went really well for us, we got lots of feedback and it was all positive. One of the main suggestions that really helped was to create a two way dialogue with our snapchat, instead of just broadcasting to our audience. People found our idea was clear and easy to understand, and our Big Idea and POV statements were really good.

By this time, we had roughly started designing, we were designing with the 5 senses in mind, using symbols to represent each one. We had mocked up a snapchat example, an installation, some posters and some stickers.
One thing that I think we were struggling with was the journey map, it was hard to place everything in the right order as our design isn't a completely straight forward process. Also, telling the story through a journey map, i found, was quite challenging.

Another thing we are debating at this stage is whether we should include posters in our final output. We want Composure to be something that people come across without knowing too much about it, so posters might be irrelevant before the installations happen, however there might be a place for them after the installations or a more subtle approach to a poster, more like the stickers.

We were also thinking about what other collateral we might need. Artist info would inform the user of the person who created this installation, and also connect the installation to Wellington and make it a local thing. Maybe a facebook page is necessary for people who don't use snapchat to still receive the daily prompts. We could also create a two-way dialogue on there somehow, maybe getting involved with the creation of the new installations, or who the next artist should be.

Week 9 Class 2

Today we got the amazing chance to get feedback from some 4th year students. We really benefitted from our meeting, she suggested that we move away from a specific event and have a pop-up in the places that office workers  go on their way home, even busses or the train station. She also suggested that we utilise apps that already exist for our advertising rather than creating our own app or website.

Our project really developed into something that I could see coming to life for real. I feel like we have finally found our direction and can possibly start designing some collateral soon.

Week 9 Class 1

LECTURE

Design thinking

...is more than just a process, it's a way of looking at the world.

...looks at complex things from the perspective of the people who will use of be affected by them

...urges explorative research to build understanding and empathy

...reframes challenges for new thinking, new approaches and new strategies

Solving a real human problem for a real human solution

Visualising complexities will create empathy and reframe the challenge

STUDIO EXERCISE

Community Garden so that Charlotte can source her own food
 - no judgement, because she will own her own plot and the rest of the community will use it too.
 - Self sufficiency will make her feel proud

Food Swap.
 - What do I have that you need?
 - Swap skills, meals, ingredients
 - Street event/garage sale
 - Local supermarkets and companies can get involved.

CLASS TIME

Talking to the tutor, out idea for a campaign will not be enough to make a sustained and impactful difference, our sanctuary idea could be incorporated to create impact, but will have to be carefully refined as to not make people feel like a spectacle.

We thought of having an event, bringing in artists to create sensory art installations that people can interact with. This event will act as a vehicle to roll out our booklets and posters, promoting little things that people can do during their day to clear and relax their minds. This will ensure a sustained influence and difference made to our target audience and others.
The event will also connect our audience with their families which is one of our main aims to achieve.

Week 8 Class 2

After reviewing our idea over night, we defined the key point as sense immersion and stimulation. So focussing on this we decided to make a campaign encouraging the stimulation of senses during the workday to clear people's minds.

I'm feeling much more comfortable with this idea as I feel it has a lot more potential in the real world and it is more visual communication based.

Week 8 Class 1

Today we set up a video with sound that could be chosen by the user to create their personalised ultimate working environment (i.e. a kitchen, a beach)

The feedback was
 - sounds are too distracting, needs to be a more quiet background noise.
 - Still feeling too relaxed in the space.
 - Still needs to be movable, customisable.
 - It made some users feel more boxed in, where as they would prefer their mind to feel free.
 - It wouldn't accurately replicate any of these environments and would be more of a poor sad version of them
 - would prefer the space to be inside the office rather that at the waterfront.


We took away from this prototyping that it may be time to re-think our idea for now, we think that the idea is good but it could be executed in a more feasible and practical way.

EX-CHANGE 3 - TEST

We soent a lot of this exchange talking about the problems of one of the people in my group, she had been having trouble with her major because she thinks her tutors are forcing her to do something she doesnt want to do.

I, unfortunately, didn't get very much of a chance to get feedback, but when I did, it was definitely positive. I presented my prototype to the people in my group and we generally discussed the tension between too relaxing and too constricting. They said that it is going to be difficult to get people to leave the work place and go down to work on the waterfront so it would be best to have the space inside the office.

I didn't really get anything too distinctive from people. I think next time I need to ask some specific questions to really make the most of the exchange sessions.

Week 7 Class 2

Prototyping

Our prototype was set up as an office and we tried to create the feeling of being on the waterfront with sound and images and views.
Our feedback was that people enjoyed the space, but it would be quite an effort to go to the waterfront from their office just to work more. Also the environment may have been too relaxed and not a productive environment.
Also we found a tension between different people's working styles and their need to be either isolated of surrounded by people while they are working.
The space will have to be customisable if it were to work.

Week 7 class 1

Sanctuary
Our insight : people feel like they can get more quality work done in quiet environments, so they end up staying late after work or work from home so that they can get work done

We want to create a quiet environment away from the office to allow people to get quality work done during the work day so that they don't feel that they have to stay late at work or take their work home.

Our insight: office workers often are working to provide their families with financial stability, which can overwhelm the importance of

Event for families to get together - alcohol?

App

Campaign - Family over work

Interview 1

Over the break I conducted 2 sets of interviews, one with a couple that I found really interesting and insightful. This interview and reviewing it later really helped me gain empathy and insight, especially from the wife's point of view.

My summary of our conversation -

Kevin

- Hired to work 40 hours per week, currently doesn’t differ from what he actually works.

- His perfect evening after work is watching TV, exercising and having family dinner

- Perfect Sunday mornings consist of lie in bed, going out to a cafe, going for a walk with family.

- After a stressful day, he misses out on exercising because he is too tired/stressed to think about exercise and he misses out on a lot of down time and instead will spend time on the computer, sorting work stuff out and will go to bed without much time spent with family in-between work and bed.

- He often stays at his desk through lunch time and eats a piece of fruit at his desk, this is the normal thing at his work. Many of his colleagues will only take a lunch break if it’s to have a meeting over some food.

- He often feels that skipping his break makes his day more productive, and his break being skipped means that he doesn’t have to stay late or do work when he gets home. He feels he has made the most of his day at work and can relax when he arrives home.

- After he arrives home from a stressful time at the office, although he attempts to leave his work behind, he feels that his mind is often occupied with his work life, although it doesn’t disrupt his nightly routine, his wife and family tend to notice that he is distant or on edge.

- When trying to stop his work life playing on his mind, he likes to have a few drinks, go outside and exercise—most of which he does in the company of his family.

- He would recommend others to take regular breaks, forcing themselves away from work and to breathe and relax.

- His employer puts no effort into enforcing regular breaks, this results in many people staying late—Kevin used to do this however has realised that he would rather put his home life before his work life at this point.

- Kevin appreciates his time at home and cherishes time with family—he used to be in the habit of working over time, but has since put work further in the background to focus more on the parts of life that he feels are most important. He put extra work in when he was younger and this has benefitted his family financially.

Claire

- Claire is Kevin’s wife and she is employed by the same company under a different section. She is employed to work 37.5 hours per week and she generally works that exact amount of hours.

- Her ideal afternoon is watching TV, exercising and having family dinner.

- Perfect Sunday mornings consist of lie in bed, going out to a cafe, going for a walk with family.

- After a more full on day at the office, she comes home feeling pissed off and is less productive in her evening routine. She doesn’t get to exercise, doesn’t feel like cooking dinner and doesn’t feel like doing housework.

- Claire, along with her colleagues, never work over their breaks or past their finish times.

- Her breaks allow her to meet up with friends and family for lunch in town or just spend some alone time outside or on the internet. She feels this helps her productivity because after a break she feels that she can get back into her work with a fresher mind.

- However when work gets really busy it does linger on her mind when she tries to switch off from it, during these times she feels stressed for an unknown reason and she finds it difficult to get a good nights sleep.

- To forget about office stresses, she typically talks about what has happened at work with her friends and family members to get it off her chest, and she will take some alone time to exercise or read a book. She also enjoyed going out for a quiet drink or two with her family.

- Her work enforces office rules about not working through breaks and not staying late. Most people are forced to go home at 5pm and the power of her office floor is shut down after a certain time to ensure no one is working there late.

- As for when her husband is stressed at work, she feels it can affect her and her routines, as well as the rest of the family.

- She can tell when he has been under pressure at work, and when he has had to stay late at work, she tends not to cook dinner and to just make something small for herself. When they do sit down and have dinner together, he is distracted in conversations and his mind is elsewhere. He is disconnected.

- She sometimes thinks she might enjoy him staying late as she gets control of the TV remote while he is gone, but she can’t enjoy that time because she is pissed off that he is working so late again.

- She recalls that him working overtime would affect her family when they were younger, their children would refer to their dad and ‘nocturnal Dad’ because he would have to sleep during the day and work late at night

Week 6 Class 2

Rapid prototyping, random input, pimp my idea.

Today we did lots of rapid brainstorming and came up with heaps of silly ideas, and a few usable ones. I really enjoyed this class because it got our minds set on the path to a solution. The pimp my idea exercise really helped to get someone else's brain onto an idea that we thought had potential, Annabel came up with a really cool idea for an app that's a bit more innovative than the one already existing.

Week 6 Class 1

Meena Kadri's lecture was really inspiring, it showed how going deep in to look for empathy can really help a project evolve into something actually useful and practical for the audience

POV statements-
Writing a POV statement didn't seem that hard until I started trying to do it myself- I then realised how hard it was so synthesise all the different point of views into a small statement. I think after we do some more empathy research, we will be able to come up with a better POV statement, as at the moment we only have a couple of interviews to go off.

Week 5 Class 2

Today's class was really beneficial for me personally, because before going into it, the whole concept of going to do interviews to gain empathy was pretty daunting and I was feeling pretty nervous about it.

Since me and Georgia have the same target audience as Sophie and Hayley, we decided that it would be helpful to collaborate in the first research and empathy part of the project. We began applying the ideo concepts to think how we can go about gaining empathy, and started thinking of questions for a survey or an interview, however I feel as though we need to make some of the questions a bit more specific, such as instead of ' how many hours a week do you work over time?' maybe something like ' 'in the last month, how often have you stayed at your desk during break time?' and 'how often have you stayed after the finishing hours of 5pm(or whatever it is)?'

However the exercise that we did to solve the problem of students putting bags on desks was really cool because we all came up with some actually good ideas, it gave me confidence that applying this to our briefs can actually create something that's genuinely useful

Over the break I am planning to start to find out where and who would be available for us to conduct an interview/s, gather secondary research and plan some times that we could do no tech nights or maybe even a 9-5 work day some how or conduct some of the observations. Maybe skipping a break at work or something but I'm not that keen to do that as it is against the law and my boss would get angry...

Week 5 Class 1

Morning Lecture:

I really enjoyed this lecture, particularly the parts from Tim and Tulia.
The things that I took away were mostly about putting yourself in the shoes of the user/viewer and really trying to see it from their perspective.

Presentation of Briefs

We looked around at everyone's finished briefs, it was cool to see everyone's finished work, however I still would like to stick with my original brief because having worked on it previously, I am still interested in how we can solve the problem

EX-CHANGE 2 - LOCATE

More people weren't able to turn up today which was understandable because of the looming deadline. We all had awesome conversations about our projects, it was really awesome to see the projects evolving.

I gained some valuable feedback from my group this week and seeing their projects going ahead gave some more perspective on the concept of wellbeing.

Industrial Design:

• He showed us his stop motion movie of the making of a pancake. 
• They are going to try and show the 'magic' of food with clever editing
• Showing the movement for the cook is important
• For his next project,  he is going to think about the food truck display and how it can be innovated for the optimum experience, taking influence from things like teppanyaki restaurants

VCD:

My Feedback

• Use depth of field and scale, along with an extra sentence, to make the dinner plate image clearer for the viewer
• Use the same dinner plate image for the Desired Action page but switch the focus to show the desired change
• More ideas for desired action page: pets, cat sitting on a laptop, food more appealing.

Nick

• Anxiety
• Name "false alarm"
• Creating a narrative throughout the pages - a person with anxiety realises that their anxiety is a 'false alarm'
• Concept is very graphic, he didn't have so much of a concept for us to critique, but he has heaps of good ideas to carry on with

Jessica

• First few pages have major impact with a striking first statistic
• Her brief was pretty much fully resolved in the front, but towards the back it still needed some work.
• She was also struggling with the desired action page, and how to show that change and resolution of the problem, we suggested to her that she take the issue page and show the resolution to that page in the desired action page

Fashion Design

• Fashion Design is always awesome to see
• She showed us her mood board and her initial sketches.
• She is focussing on the ocean and pollution in the ocean, creating a range of outfits around that theme.
• For her second project she is planning on making a ocean piece and a protest piece that represents the pollution
• She's currently wondering how to show the pollution within her outfit making capabilities

Week 4 Class 2

We had a class critique today, we had an almost full book to show, excluding the desired action page which we are sill not sure what do to with.

Some of the feedback received was:

• Hierarchy problems
• Alignment problems
• People enjoyed our visual style
• Issues with contrast in some images
• One person mentioned that the table top was a little repetitive.
• Some mentioned that they didn't understand the reasoning for the dinner plate being there.
• Some issues with the clarity of the copy.
• Still no Desired Action image

Our plan to address these issues

• Use tone and font to improve hierarchy
• Apply a more rigorous grid
• Play more with the images in Photoshop
• Try and take a picture for desired action that is away from the table top.
• Add in a sentence to ensure people get the dinner plate reference
• Edit the copy and make it more concise
• Ideate some ideas for Desired Action page

This feedback has really helped us to further our project and perfect it to a great standard

Week 4 Class 1

Chris Jackson Talk

The quote 'there has never been a more exciting time to be a designer' is totally inspiring and exciting for me, seeing all of the opportunities for up and coming designers.
The way that Chris delivered all of his information was quite intense and it was quite hard to take it all in.

• His show of the array of different design strategies and seeing the ones that we use at Uni. He seemed to think that offering one of them was problematic, but offering a wide range of design strategies was helpful

• He also showed a scale of 'design expertise', from amateur to expert and even beyond. Seeing where we are on the scale, still so close to the amateur side put everything into perspective seeing how far we all still have to go, and how much better I will get at design.

Class

We received critique on our prototype that we made over the break. We received some really helpful critiques on our spreads, people really liked our visual approach, which is promising. 

The imagery may need some tweaking so that it fully relates to the sections.

Our pacing is good and we have thought about which pages should be punchy and large and which pages should be a bit quieter and information based.

This critique made us consider how our text and how precise it is. I am going to define the copy as much as possible over night

Another really important point that I took away from class was that when you put yourself in the shoes of the designer who receives the brief, it's easier to get a clearer layout of the sections to organise the information appropriately. I think we need to experiment with different arrangements and get the best one for our subject.

Week 3 Class 2

Today we decided on a visual rhetoric, using a desk top on the page. I was having trouble last night when I was working on spreads using layering, there wasn't enough of a link to the office

Our idea also defined a lot more. Instead of focussing on solving the huge amount of things that can contribute to stress, we decided to focus down on a single area so that the designer that receives the brief has a clear direction. One of the main problems that we had seen throughout our research was that people were doing a lot of overtime and their work was taking over their personal lives.

After rewriting the copy for the pages that needed to be changed, sorting out the order and amount of pages and storyboarding everything, I am feeling really confident with our brief and I think it's going to turn out well. I'm excited to get stuck in and get all of the imagery and put it together by next week.

Week 3 Class 1

Photography lecture:
I really enjoyed the photography lecture, I have always shied away from photography because I haven't had much experience with it. This lecture inspired me to try when I can.


Feedback on our 8 pages:

This was helpful, the people that gave us feedback said that they really liked our brief, but they also gave some great critique on how we can make it clearer for someone who is receiving the brief.


important points of feedback

• Desired action - think about moods (laughter and positivity) as a way into solving the brief (gently suggesting the solution not solving) also will help with synthesising this
• Barriers - think about peer pressure from people around (bosses, families, employees...)
• Issue - can also involve moods, needs to be synthesised more to be a lot clearer in direction (2 sentences max.)
• Audience - Need to identify a group, and include the audience profiles as examples.

Wordlists:

Creating the wordlists helped identify some possible rhetorics that we can use in our design

I'm going to explore the idea of stacking up and building up of work

and Georgia will look at making a sterile document

EX-CHANGE 1 - GATHER

In the GATHER exchange, we discussed each of our disciplines and what we are doing as briefs and the differences between all of the briefs, and also went into a bit of detail about what each of us specifically are doing.

The three of us from VCD shared an overview of our brief and then we each went into detail about our own topics. We didn't get much feedback yet but I am looking forward to getting more feedback as the weeks move on.



Some notes from when other disciplines shared

Industrial
They are looking at wellbeing, but specifically to do with food.
Phillip's group are looking at mobile food
- Food trucks
- Culture
- The showmanship of food
- Wellbeing comes from the 'display' of making the food

Fashion
Looking at what well being means to them.
Robyn has chosen focus on nature
 - reduce carbon footprint
 - They have to design a collection the the first 5 weeks
 - In the second half, they will choose two outfits to make.

Textiles
The textiles students are looking at the Cancer Society in Newtown.
They will be redesigning the space with textiles.
 - it's currently a sad space, and they need to make it more uplifting
 - They need the space to include everyone, because cancer can affect everyone.
 - Lighten and open up the space


I found the exchange really interesting, I wasn't expecting much going into it, but it was surprising how similar our briefs are. VCD seems to have a lot more freedom over our brief than the other disciplines but that makes it harder for us in many ways.
Hearing their approaches, I think, will help in the second half when we are responding to the briefs.
I'm really looking forward to seeing what the outcomes of all of these projects will be.

Week 2 Class 2

Today in class, Georgia and I had a little bit of trouble working out which information fits in which section.

After presenting our 8 categories to some other groups, I think we both found out that we need to really define our target audience so that then we can begin to define the whole topic. We were deciding between students, young/new mothers and business workers and we decided on business workers because we feel that the stress there goes the most unrecognised and needs the most attention.

Defining our topic from the target audience, we focussed everything on the corporate workplace.
I found it really interesting how many studies and statistics there are on stress in the work place

http://jamesclear.com/cumulative-stress

http://www.stuff.co.nz/business/industries/9859149/Focus-on-stress-at-work-to-grow

https://www.businessnz.org.nz/__data/assets/pdf_file/0005/74615/Wellness-in-the-Workplace-Survey-2013-Report.pdf

We left the class with a clearer direction of our topic and I feel confident to go away and really flesh out the topic and come back with really defined 8 sections.

Week 2 Class 1

The research that I had conducted over the break between classes consisted of:

 - Assisting with decision making after high school

 - Promoting a positive body image

 - Encouraging more socialisation

 - Improving time management

I found that some of the topics that I had looked into were not specific enough, I needed to define the topics through defining the target audience and the issue/background.

Talking to other people, I built on the 'encouraging more socialisation' topic and thought of it from a different view. I thought about Stress and the issue, and socialisation as the action.

Choosing a partner, Georgia's topic was similar to mine, but really stood out to me over the others because it talking about worrying about the small things in life, which is an interesting topic.

Looking more into it I discovered that the name for stressing about the small things in life is 'cumulative stress'. I looked into the biological affects on the brain from the build up of stress, causing erosion in parts of the brain and weakening it to the affects of larger, more significant stresses.

Week 1 Class 2

In this class we had the Lifehack workshop.

Some of the highlights were:

- I found the part when Gena asked us to get into the position in the room according to how we feel about the questions that she asked. It was nice to know where I stand in relation to other people in the class.

- The part when we were in groups and we were writing down possible audiences/causes/ideas around wellbeing issues. And then we sorted them into categories as a big group, I found this helpful to clarify my ideas about wellbeing.

Week 1 Class 1

The first class was interesting, being introduced to the new topic. I was confused about what the project actually was, but the lectures in the Pit got me thinking about wellbeing and how design can be used and is often used to improve people's everyday wellbeing.

Thinking about this, I'm excited to have a project that I am purely thinking about improving everyday life for people. It will no doubt be rewarding.

The Lifehack presentation reminded me of the health education days on year 11 at college. However, instead of learning about it and then never thinking about it again, I am excited to be implementing the principles of wellbeing for a project. - connect, give, be active...

In studio time we shared some times that we felt good and some times when we felt bad. I found this awkward at times, but I can see why we needed to do that to get us thinking about what issues we could possibly look into for our brief.