Week 3/Friday

31.07.15

Thinking & Development
Define/Ideate/Mock-up

The entirety of the class was spent developing, discussing and iterating on our 8 page mock ups from the day before.   

Reflection:
During this session Nick and i spent a lot of time discussing our new issue and research about antidepressants and through tutor feedback the project took on yet another slightly angle. Now that we are guiding the designer toward a solution (exercise) it makes sense that should be apart of the issue itself, and not antidepressants - which is better suited to be in the background. 

Week 3/Thursday

30.07.15

Brainstorming & Story telling 
Empathy/Define/Ideate/Mock-up

Jason gave a presentation on photography in design before we headed into class to begin discussing our full 8 page mock ups done for homework. This was done by presenting and discussing to fellow class members before participating in a cross class exercise.  

Reflection:
During these presentations Nick & I realized our interpretation of the client page was wrong which needed addressing. after some discussion with teachers and students Nick and I have adjusted our pitch to include a solution - (physical activity). This helps to provide a way for the designer to take this brief and helps us focus our desired action and audience needs. We also began to integrate research we had about the adverse effects and problems relating to antidepressants. Alot of this research was put into background and barriers and we decided it was a better issue than lack of motivation. The new issue for the project came the overuse/reliance on drugs despite depression globally getting worse. 

Week 2/Friday

24.07.15

Listening & sharing
Empathy/Define/Ideate

The class was focused on presenting our 8 pages to other groups several times while reiterating the information to make sure the info was clear and concise. 

Reflection:
Nick and i did our pages separately so initially we spent a bit of time comparing our different takes on the subject and picking the best path through the topic. We presented our idea to three different groups and the feedback told us that although we had a lot of research, it was still quite broad and our pitch was still focused broadly on depression as an issue apposed to the symptom we had chosen. What this meant for homework was more in-depth & specific research about depression and the symptom, more specifically - background information eg. Why this particular audience? what causes this symptom? how does this directly affect our audience?

Week 2/EXCHANGE

24.07.15

Exchange
Empathy/Ex-change
   

Reflection:
This was the first meeting i had with my exchange group. I found it really interesting to hear about how the majors were going about well being. I felt that we were all at about the same stage of our briefs - the research stage. Everybody was still wading there way through their ideas and trying things out which it made it a good time to discuss them. We did have a fair bit of cross talk, giving advice to each other and so forth. I myself didn't receive any alternate direction or things to think about but my ideas were received well. 

Week 2/Thursday

23.07.15

Empathy & Design Thinking 
Empathy/Ideate

Whilst in the pit we had presentations about the design expedition and Empathy followed by some more explanation about the semester, including examples of a visual brief and we were introduced to the exchange part of this paper. 
Back in class we broke into groups to share our research from the past week discuss our ideas about where we might like to go with the project, and found clusters/groupings and paired up. 

Reflection:
Upon sharing our research we realized that we were all still mildly confused about what exactly we were looking for, our research was still quite broad and lacked the specificity toward any particular issue or audience. of course it only after this we had the 8 pages explained to us which cleared up a lot of confusion about the type of things we should have been looking for.  
I got a little confused initially and thought that i was thinking to much about a solution instead of the issue and ended up selecting an issue (depression) instead of physical activity like i had originally wanted to. 
As depression is a broad subject it was suggested to us that we should narrow it down a bit, to which end we chose the symptom of lack of energy/motivation as a point if focus. 

Week 1/Friday

17.07.15

Life hack Workshop w/ Gina 
Empathy/Ideate

Gina ran a workshop to further our understanding of well being in relation to ourselves. We positioned ourselves in a liner fashion according to how well we thought we knew well being, how good we thought our own well being was and how confident we were feeling about the project. 
Following this we broke into groups and brainstormed different turning points in life, user groups and general topics. 

Reflection:
The 3 questions aspect of the workshop did not improve my understanding of well being or the project. in fact after placing myself with the best well being out of the class i found that i was unable to define exactly why i feel this way. 
The group exercise was valuable, i met some new people in the class i hadn't spoken to before and as a group we produced a large number of ideas, both specific and broad to aid our thinking as we move forward with the project. 

Week 1/Thursday

16.07.15

Intro + Life Hack presentation 

Empathy

We met in the pit for an intro into the brief and received a presentation from Life Hack on the importance of well being, what the term means and what it means for our project. We then broke into our streams had a chat about different situations in life and how they affected us. 

Reflection:
Although i had a general idea what well being was before attending this class the presentation from life hack really helped put a finger on it. Sam gave us some very good ways to think about and approach the concept of well being. 
Brainstorming different situations and times in our life seemed a bit strange but it did help us think the issue that was behind some of the reactions we have during situations, and/or some of the ways they can be prevented or countered.