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.