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.