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.