Reflective Diary Questions

What was your biggest learning that you took from this paper?
The biggest thing I learnt from this paper was thinking about empathy and making sure to design for what your audience needs rather than wants. I think this makes a major difference in terms of whether your audience will respond to your issue. Learning to develop the ideas behind the visuals seemed to be a major part of this project.

What aspect of your project are you most happy with?
I like the concept of our project and some of the imagery turned out pretty nice. However, I think that we could also improve a lot of aspects to make our project more appealing to our target audience.

Week 11

We pretty much just continued to refine our ideas further. In class we discussed the prototypes we made and how we could improve them. Also, we discussed the dossier and what we are putting in it. After that we went on to collectively write our dossier, I think it was a lot more helpful to write the dossier together, as we could see whether we both were thinking the same things about the brief and what we made.

Week 10- session 2

We just had a lecture on courses next year and went through the different touch points in the dossier for hand in. We then continued with our work in class and had feedback to apply to our work but also some more insight into what is expected in the dossier. It was also helpful to understand what is expected in terms of prototyping. The 960.gs tool came in handy since I had made most of my files in illustrator to begin with, hopefully there aren't colour issues when I import it into invision. After the critique yesterday, we finally developed a visual style that was more consistent between each of the design responses that we had. Moving ahead, we just need to finish the poster (x3), App and Website prototypes (invision). Then over the course of the week we just need to create diagrams and write content for the dossier so that we can fine tune it better in class next week.

Week 10-session 1

We had an interim critique today. First, we presented in groups and got feedback. I think this was particularly useful in seeing other people's reactions to the work we've done. In terms of "does it make sense?". In our one we found that we still needed to make our posters more sleep related.

The second phase was when we swapped with the other streams upstairs and gave people written feedback. Looking at the upstairs I found that a lot of projects had developed a nice design style, however in our one we still needed to pick the one consistent design style. I think that also looking at other people's work, I found that maybe some were harder to understand as to why they had chosen a specific approach. This would be something to consider as not only the visual style but the products produced need to make sense. Moving forward from the feedback we received, I think we still need to refine a lot of things such as the visual style, content and type.

Week 9- session 2

We continued developing our ideas. From the lifehack discussion I did realize that maybe we were straying from our main topic of sleep. So from the lesson and also the feedback that we got, we tried to revise our ideas a little and make sure that it focused more around the idea of sleep deprivation in students. We also found that maybe we were making the project bigger than it could be, when we only have around 3 weeks left. So we decided to limit down our posters and content a little to make it more accomplish able. However, we will mention that there would be more of a series if the project were to progress further.

Week 9- session 1

Lecture, Workshop and studio

There was a lecture on design thinking. The thing I learnt from the lecture is the importance of perspective of the people who will use or be affected your product or service. It also linked into the whole empathy thing and understanding your users.

For the workshop they had already conducted research on poverty. We were tasked with finding a solution for poverty from the perspective of a created persona that they had already created from their research. We studied the map and then went and thought of a solution to one of the problems on the visual map. We looked at the parent hiding food from her children and how she was always sent away from food banks for receiving too many food parcels. The solution we thought of was the agency hiring an extra group of people who will conduct research into all the cheaper places to buy food and essentials. This information would then be communicated to the person via mail, phone, text or in person so that the mother wouldn't have to go around looking for the best deals herself. From the exercise I learnt that not all solutions need to be products, as services sometimes suit the matter better. The workshop made me think more into user perspectives and in terms of advancing our project, this could be used to identify areas to improve.

In studio we just discussed our ideas and drew up some more ideas. For homework we're continuing with this but also considering colour.

Week 8

We had a lecture on the initiative, s.k.i.p. She mainly just talked about how they used design as an innovation instead of a tool for money and process. The initiative was based around the issue of smacking. The initiative was based on the assumption that all parents did love their children but other reasons may cause them to act out. Through the use of empathy they found that they could find opportunities and get people to relate and help. Just reaching out and asking people to help, got people to go and volunteer for the cause. She found that going out and talking to people changed the perspective she initially had on her target audience. I think the lecture was relevant as it shows how important empathy is in design. Maybe the whole idea using design as a service somehow getting the audience to design your prototype to form new ideas that you couldn't have thought of.

In class we just developed our idea further. An issue we ran into last time was the whole idea that people would just walk past posters. We decided to maybe make the poster more interactive so that maybe people would look at the posters or atlas slightly longer than usual. The other component was an app to keep good habits of sleep. We thought of maybe the poster promoting it and also maybe social media (e.g. Facebook) may be a important component to get people to download the app (maybe through likes and recommendations). I did develop some app prototypes but I'm still thinking in terms of what content would be relevant or useful. I think we did develop our ideas a little more than last session but maybe using the importance of empathy, understanding how students would look at things or use things could be something to look into further.

Exchange

In exchange we just talked about our projects so far. The industrial person had developed rough prototype models for her topic in relation to food. The fashion has chosen materials and sewed examples for adding texture to her garment, textile person had examples of the patterns and textures that she was going to use for her space and the vcd students had either paper prototypes or an act out play type thing where we answered questions in relation to their topic. I like seeing the different areas and how they developed from the beginning and maybe I could take into account some ideas from their brief and introduce them into my ideas. It was however, difficult to critique their designs and models as we are from such different majors.

Week 7-session 2

We had a lecture on prototyping. It isn't really a new concept but it was sort of a new structured way to produce new prototypes. It was good to learn about the different techniques of prototyping for concepts. In particular I think the story boarding and drawing from the user's point of view could be useful in our topic as I think I still need to think more from the user's perspective. more 3D models for screen type designs could also be used for our topic as I'm thinking of making maybe a app or website.

Overall the class did help to generate some prototypes quickly, test them and then develop them however I think I need to think more from a user's perspective because from the feedback I may be lacking in knowledge. This will be fixed through more research. I thought that it was also helpful to see the different techniques each group used. I found that the people that made more 3d prototypes got the more positive feedback however maybe ours wasn't as well received due to its 2d nature. But I think this maybe linked back to thinking more about the user's journey.

To summarise I think that the prototyping session was kind of helpful as it helped us to identify thinks that weren't working as well and going forward we can use this feedback to make our ideas better.

Week 7-session 1

We had a lecture on the different approaches to design for wellbeing. It was interesting to see good design briefs others had created and also it helped to inspire ideas for my own topic. This would be helpful in terms of generating ideas. There was also a lecture from lifehack where I learnt or revised stuff I already knew about wellbeing. It was good to be refreshed with all that information after the break.

In class we used the technique discussed from the lifehack lecture. The spiderweb wellbeing table. Me and my partner incourporated the things we did in the holidays into this web. I learnt that I did do things that were for my wellbeing in the holidays without really noticing it. This was all to slowly ease into more rapid ideation for our topic. For the remainder of the lesson we spent it generating more ideas under the statement of trying to make people value sleep more because we found that there were these techniques out there but people often ignored them. We thought about before during and after scenarios. A idea I thought about was maybe certain words could influence the way we think before and during when we sleep. For example putting motivational or calming words to read on the walls before we sleep could maybe influence our dreams or take our mind off work before bed. However, I think more iterations are needed in order to push our initial ideas further.

Independent work

Over the study break we decided we are each going to come up with concepts. I conducted some interviews with people I knew however they are anonymous. It was useful as it helped me understand how other people's sleep habits are when compared to my own. The interviews and also the activity brainstorm in class should help to progress our project further by helping us come up with concepts to solve the problem of a lack of sleep.

Week 6

Sorting Research and Thinking of Solutions to Problems

We discussed our research from asking or creating a discussion on our topics. This then was used to create a chart with the IDO words. We used the words to categorise the different parts of our research into say, think, feel and do. After doing this exercise we then went on to creating 3 personas. This was particularly helpful to identify the different personalities which may sit in our target audience. The personas were then used to create the How Might We questions. At first we did have some trouble creating these questions but after making the questions less specific we were able to create some How Might We questions which was then helpful to think about solutions for.

Week 5-session 2

Deciding on brief and video on IDO

Pretty much most of the lesson was spent deciding on what brief to take on to the next project. I hadn't really decided yet whether I wanted to stay with the topic of sleep or try another brief someone else had made. I liked the nutrition briefs and they had lots of information collectively which was why I was considering switching topics. Although I did research on sleep deprivation , I felt as though I didn't have a large amount of information on the topic and also there was only one other brief that someone did on sleep.

The IDO video was pretty interesting. It was nice to see how a group of different disciplines come together to design a trolley for a supermarket. They also only did the project in one week which was pretty amazing. I learnt that random input without judgement was useful. I also like the concept of doing and then asking for forgiveness.

Week 5- Session 1

Lecture and Visual Brief Presentations

We had a lecture which explored different issues and how the issues were solved using visual communication design. It was interesting how the people wanting to save troy library used strong negative approaches to push people towards wanting to save the library. 

We then went into our streams looked at the briefs we made and then went onto look at the other streams. I got a bit distracted by all the visual techniques when reading the briefs and found myself looking mostly at imagery. However, there were some that were interesting in terms of written content as well. After looking through the briefs it did make me consider trying someone else's brief. 

Week 4-Exchange

We met up with the same people from all the disciplines. It was interesting to see how much everyone had progressed from the first exchange where it was mostly just research. Each of the people had different mediums to present their brief such as the industrial student had to make a video whereas the vcd students made visual books. Hearing more feedback does help to find the little things that could be tweaked before handin.

Week 4- Session 1

Lecture and Studio Critique and Refining

We had a lecture on "design thinking". I learnt that the term 'design thinking' is very broad and ubiquitous and that it is better thinking of it as "deep design".  This is because everyone is a designer and thinking of being a designer means that everyone does design thinking. Other things to think about are the customer journeys, customer personas and the impact of the outcomes of your design. I think this lecture helped in terms of discussing techniques to help make design better, which could ultimately help inform decisions for the current brief.

In studio, we presented our layouts and some potential imagery. Other groups then critiqued our work so far, pointed out what worked and what didn't. I found the feedback did help to develop our ideas better and hopefully create a more visually appealing brief. For the rest of class, we spent the time discussing the specific imagery we want to include in the spreads. Also, I changed some layouts around to make each spread more interesting.

Week 3- session 2

Refining Ideas and Visual style

Today we just went through our 8 points and just tried to make them all cohesive because we had each done parts of the 8 points and they all seemed disjointed somehow. After we were happy with the copy, we then went on to brainstorm different words that relate to each of the 8 points. The point of this was to help us decide on a direction for the visual on each page that related with the body text. We're also considering maybe having a story that is told through the whole document and just relates to the topic of sleepless students or using objects to tell the story. In terms of visual style we did consider photography but were thinking mainly of using the combination of typography and illustration. Over the course of the week, we were thinking of just going into thumb nailing layouts, making imagery and typography layouts.

Week 3- session 1

Lecture and Visual Metaphoric

We had a lecture on Photography. I think that the lecture was inspiring and made me want to try photography although I wasn't really that great at it. After that we went to class and presented our 8 points in the form of A3 visual pieces. I wasn't really too sure what medium to use for my topic but after seeing what everyone else did, I did get some inspiration on what I could try out for my visual metaphoric A3 visuals to present for tomorrow could be. We also brainstormed through picking out certain words from our research, to use as inspiration for images to create. Also, we drew one A3 visual metaphoric together. I think this helped us to understand our topic in a little more depth.

Exchange

Exchanging ideas in groups

We went into our assignment groups with multi disciplines. I think it was interesting with the different developments in research from each discipline in terms of thinking and way around researching a topic. Fashion went for a more personal response to well being in terms of reflecting your well being ( being comfortable with yourself), Whereas textiles and industrial were more visual with the way they wanting a hands on product that could be interacted with e.g. making things from food or making patterns to distract and aid well being. As for vcd it was more research on the statistics and written words. It was also interesting to hear comments on the personal history of others that had little sleep or too much from lack of sleep which alternatively turned into illness.

From the meeting I took away that I could probably think more about how to get more information on my topic such as, Do I survey the students at university to get an accurate statistic? Asking Doctors?

Doctors could also be a stakeholder in terms of caring for the patients?

Week 2- session 2

Expanding on idea in groups

We went into our partnerships and expanded on the research we did. We were tasked of creating a poster which had a statement, a statistic and a visual. We went with sleep deprivation in students and how there was a substantial amount that weren't sleeping. Then we went on to honing in and discussing the 8 points in relation to a persona. We presented these in front of the entire class.

I guess I was still generalizing our idea and the topic wasn't really as defined as it could be. I think I was still slightly unsure of what the brief was and through the activity we did in groups I did get a slightly better idea of how to go about the brief. 

Week 2- session 1

Lecture and Group Work

We had a lecture which outlined and explained the brief and reflective blog. There were also examples of the visual brief shown. This was interesting to see and helped me understand what we were doing a little better. It was also interesting in terms of the different approaches to represent the ideas and styles , such as drawings or collage formed images.

We formed groups based on the topics we wanted to explore. In each group we discussed the different ideas and then commented on each others direction and helped each other to maybe explore further options. This will push the project idea slightly further into the visual brief.

Week 1- Intro, Studio

Lecture/Intro to Lifehack

We had a lecture that kind of showed us what we could do for this brief possibly and what the meaning of well being is. It was good to see examples of fourth year work that adopted well being as it aided to understand how we could transform a concept into a product. We had a speaker from life hack who spoke about how they focus on well being. It sort of changed my mind about the meaning of well being as I did see it as being well and unwell. However, well being has a deeper scope of ideas such as lifestyles, sleep, anciety etc.

We also discussed when each of us were happy and when each of us struggled or witnessed someone else struggle. I guess it did sort of get us to know each other on a slightly deeper level but it was hard to share really difficult stuff with people that you aren't really close with. The last question focused on how to resolve the issues. We found that there wasn't really a fix for our issue but there were ways to make it less stressful or difficult.

Studio Activities

There was a workshop where we went into groups and discussed similar questions to the previous lesson. Again I found it a bit difficult to share things that were really hard but I found that many people shared difficult times. 

We then each wrote down on post stick notes of perspective topics, target audiences and struggles that we could possibly focus on. These were then limited down to 10 per group and we then shared then on a whiteboard to identify the links between each group's notes. There were trends and a lot did come under specific topics and some groups had similar ideas as well. After this exercise I was thinking of maybe doing something in relation to sleep deprivation (connection with Health/Lifestyle). However, that is pretty broad at the moment and probably needs to be narrowed down as it applies to many areas of well being.