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.