Class 9.2 - Our Twist on the Project

DEFINE     l      IDEATE
Since we didn't see Jason in our last class. he came to see us first to check where we were at. From the week before, he was happy with the direction we had taken the marquee as well as our logo and colour pallet. The one thing he was concerned about was that we were becoming too event reliant and needed something to give it that little bit extra. We needed more of a twist on our big idea to make our event exciting from the initial point of contact.
Emma and I struggled at little at the beginning to try figure out what would work best to help our idea. Once we identified that before this point our twist to the event was mindfulness it seemed to all fall into place. Even though through some of our prototyping the word 'mindfulness' didn't have any specific negative to conversations as most people hadn't heard of the term at 17, it doesn't really seem very exciting either. To help this aspect fit in better with our aim of the event and be more appealing to our demographic, we thought re-branding the term mindfulness would be a good way to engage as well as educate them. Our final outcome was 'an event that will help you become your superhero self'. By some miracle this take on our project fits in really well with the visual approach we already have. It was such a relief to finally get our big idea down packed and now all we need to do is do!


EX-CHANGE
I used this exchange meeting to practice for our interim presentation next week and make sure what we play to say would make sense for those that don't know anything about our project. This was mainly for our big idea because I was worried that it may be a little vague without any further explanation.
However, the feedback I got was really helpful and everyone said that it was a good way to introduce our our idea and the simple the better. One even said that the superhero annotation was the one thing she remembered most from when I was presenting. The only question that was asked about the project was where the event will be so this is something Emma and I need to be clear on in our next presentation. It was very reassuring to get to hear this so I am now a lot more confident about the interim next week!

Class 9.1 - Making Decisions & Design for Social Good

EMPATHY     l     DEFINE
I thoroughly enjoyed our lecture from Leslie who works for ThinkPlace today and loved the idea of design for social good. For me personally, the fact that design opens up possibilities to help people is one of my favourite things about this degree and the key reason why I am so passionate about it. 

What is the role of design in creating change for social good?
Design is an easy and effective way to communicate to an audience and therefore is a good platform to help spread positive word as well as solving social problems. Apart of this is the process of design thinking which allows for innovative approaches to problems and therefore resulting in an innovative solution.  

What are the key elements of designing real change for humans?
Empathy is definitely the key factor in solving real problems. Taking yourself out of your own shoes and going to the audience / problem and investigating the issue yourself is the best way to make sure the design is centered around the user and not just your own assumptions of them. 

I like that...
There is a trend toward design thinking and approaches and so is becoming a discipline that is more respected within society. People now take design more seriously which opens up a whole new world of real possibilities with this design for social good and actually helping people.

I wish that...
This could be somewhere I can take my degree with. I have a lot of strong beliefs and really care for humanity and the quality of people's lives and the idea of being able to affect people in such a positive way with something I have been passionate about for a long time really amazes me. 

I will...
Definitely use this approach to design within my own work meaning there is a strong possibility that this would be something that I will incorporate into my major project next year.


IDEATE
After touching base during the week between our last class, we decided on a design style for our brand that would reflect a fun yet honest and free persona. Having bright fun colours coupled with hand drawn aspects we feel would be the best way to engage with our audience while not becoming to corporate and distant from the user. We also decided to rename our event as Spring Board as we felt Kindred was too soft and fluffy instead of exciting. All of thee decisions were based on a really helpful article Emma found about teenage trends as well as statistics and the like that showed the common interests and things that 16-18 year olds consider important to them.
This class we dedicated to sorting out our carry on design after the event as well as setting a timeline for ourselves so we dont get bogged down with the details and loose sight of the final work we need to produce. We were successful in both these areas and finalised our decision to focus on social media and video as a form of communication for the after design. Just need to keep on keeping on.

Class 8.2 - Our Big Idea

DEFINE     l     IDEATE
At this point we found it quite easy to put together our big idea and issue. From the feedback we got from prototyping in our last class we were more assured that we were on the right track. However, we hadn't talked to either Nanz or Jason for two classes so needed to confirm what we found through our testing was accurate. Thankfully, Jason told us our idea was looking good but we just needed to push our ideas for the possible structures during the event and reflect that in our overall design. We hadn't really thought about having anything more than a simple marquee and the like but since we dont have a budget we can go crazy.
Next for us would be to get some inspiration for fun, portable structures and start designing our own. We are also at a point where we can start designing other aspects of our project as well, including an aesthetic and logo. Exciting times ahead.

Class 8.1 - Event and UX Prototyping

PROTOTYPE     l     TEST
Since we had pretty much sorted how the digital questionnaire would look we thought it would be best to focus on the actual event and overall user experience for the next round of prototyping. To do this we set up a small model of our current idea for the event layout to use as reference then took who were were testing on through the essential journey map. We made sure we set the scene and take the tester back to when they were 17 with descriptive words. Our process involved doing this two times where the second time was more refined with the specific script we used and when we asked questions.

The feedback we got was very insightful and will definitely help us refine more of the smaller details for the event, such as making sure the activity stations are more secluded so there is no outside distractions for the group inside. It also reassured us of our idea and both Emma and I are very excited to get into the designing stage!

Class 7.2 - Rapid Prototyping

IDEATE     l     PROTOTYPE
For the prototyping exercise, we wanted to test the questionnaire that we would get the 16 - 18 year olds participating in the event to fill out the day before the event to help us put everyone into groups. We wrote down a bunch of questions but wanted the answers to be kept open so we can get an idea of what some good answers to supply would be. Instead of getting them to write their answers down, I acted as the device that the questions would be on (as this part would be on an app or website) and spoke the questions to the other team. Emma recorded the answers they provided. The feedback and insights we got from this prototype was really helpful to improve our idea. The key point being to make sure it was fun.

We went through a did another prototype testing how the questions would look on the app as well as how the user would answer them. After that we came to a good conclusion point for the day getting the feedback that it was fun to answer the questions. For our next prototype we want to move on and start testing the even itself so looking into layout etc. So both Emma and I will go away and create some layout concepts to produced a developed copy for our next class.

Me being a smart phone

EX-CHANGE
For some reason there were hardly any people at the ex-change today so, again we had to combine with another group as there was only three people (including myself) present from ours. Although this was annoying, it was cool to see even more people's work and where they're going with the brief. I didnt want to test our prototype here as one one person can test it at a time and with a group of 6 it wouldve got quite messy. Instead I showed them the questions and answers and asked if there was any other questions that they think should also be included or any answers that were missing from the questions we already had. I got some good possible questions but they seemed quite happy with the answers we had.

Class 7.1 - Refining POV Statement

DEFINE     l     IDEATE
After a discussion with another group and Nanz, we decided that we needed to refine our target audience even more. I think, for me, I just really wanted for our project to have the possibility to help everyone and not make it more of an exclusive thing. Even though its hard for me to accept, I know that focusing on a smaller group is going to make the project a lot more successful. Mid this discussion I had a brain wave on how we can make the POV more refined while still keeping it open. Our event could be used to create connections between students through providing an environment of common interests. If we focus on those that have little to no friends and struggle with making new ones, we can include a secondary POV that targets those with lots of friends to create an initial connection which can hopefully flourish more friendships to be made.

This revelation came towards the end of class so Emma and I decided to take one POV each and work on that separately as well as doing further research.

Holidays - Research & POV Statement

DEFINE
Unfortunately, our plan to go sit in on a health class at Wellington High school fell through because at the moment they're preparing for exams. Since all high schools will be at this point in the curriculum as well, there is very little to no chance that we would be able to go through with our plan else where.

So we now have to go back to our original idea and ask a health teacher questions about the students. Next step is to plan out some questions, fill out another ethics form and get it all signed off again.

DEFINE
Was a little confused about how the POV statements worked to begin with so decided to first brainstorm possible profiles for our topic. This really helped me get my head around the idea as well as understanding the possible people in our target audience. I drafted out two examples to discuss further with Emma when she gets back from holiday.

Class 6.2 - Interview Questions

DEFINE     l     IDEATE
We got our ethics forms all checked so our next step was to finalise our questions for our one interview. Initially we didn't really put much thought into the way the questions we wanted to ask were worded but eventually made sure that the questions were specifically tailored to get the exact information we wanted. The first few questions are now designed to just get the raw information and then adding an extra section at the end to offer any personal opinions on the topic.

Class 6.1 - Refining Our Target Audience and Approach

EMPATHY     l     DEFINE
After a discussion with our tutors we decided it would be more beneficial to us to narrow down our target audience since there is a very large difference between 13 yer olds and 18 years olds. We settled on 16-18 as this is a transitional period into adulthood and therefore a lot more responsibilities and decisions needing to be made about their future. This also eliminates the problem around interviewing youths under 16.

Also, following our week of research we decided that sitting in on a health class will give us the most information, and a first hand experience, of how youths are toward health, and mental health specifically as a subject. This will also eliminate any bias opinions that may cloud the answers from health teachers themselves. Emma will also interview a lady that works within mental health while she is home to get more of an understanding on what techniques and approaches toward mental health are currently being used in New Zealand.

Class 5.2 - Ethics & Primary Research Approaches

EMPATHY     
We got introduced to Massey's ethics process and the forms we need to fill out. Since our target audience includes youths under the age of 16, the parent consent forms were something we need to take into account when going through the interview process.

DEFINE
Our first step was to go through and identify what information we needed to find out / what we need to know. We then decided then best was to gain this information was to do some initial research to help inform the questions we ask in our interviews. At this point we decided that it would be best to ask the health teachers about their students and how they respond to health classes which would get around the issue with interviewing under 16 year olds. This would also cover a larger group quicker. If we were to talk to the students we thought it would be better to give them activities (e.g. sorting images into groups) that would help us gain insights more subtly rather than asking straight up questions that they may answer untruthfully.

Class 5.1 - Hand-in

EMPATHY
It was very interesting to look at what everyone else had produced for this paper and the differentiating topics that people had chosen. There was some briefs that I thought might be interesting to tackle, one of them including Meow which was about sibling relationships. However, the brief that Emma and I worked on was the one that I felt the most connected with because of all the research I had already done on it. I was already invested in ours with a base knowledge as well as an idea where it could be taken. Emma also wanted to continue with our brief and after a discussion together we found that we both wanted to explore more into mindfulness as part of it. At this point we thought it would be best to stay together for at least the initial research and interview process and then decide later on if we want to stick together with the designing stage.