Week 8 is ideas day week, tomorrow 1st Nov we have some people from various backgrounds visiting our studio to talk over our 3 main ideas and hopefully gain some useful feedback to work on in PHASE 1. After last weeks draft boards I worked on tidying them up a bit, loosing the sketchy drawings and trying to keep my mark or design style on the a3 boards.

All work Copyright© October 2011 by Fiona.R.Harper

Last week was spent looking refining draft boards and focused on planning for PHASE 1.

Here were my boards last week:

After another week of being a bit confused about what was being asked of us Monday morning started with Graham spoke about his experience working on a project he did whilst working for IDEO called Spyfish, this was to help us understand how they decided what type of project Spyfish was going to be. We are nearing the end of PHASE O and are having to refine what direction we think our projects are going in. Below is my notes from the different areas we were asked to think about where, we felt, our project fitted into.

So where on this grid do I see my project and what area do I want to be in by PHASE 1? I would say ‘Social’ with some characteristics from ‘Pragmatic’.

Why?

Well, whatever I plan on designing is going to be user centered and I intend to involve my users gaining insights along the way, I was advised this week to look at somebody who is the opposite to my set user group and I am trying to think up people who fit the opposite bracket.. is children too obvious? I said from early on to my lecturer I wanted to apply my empathic head when designing this year but as I know all too well from my dissertation to be a fully empathic designer takes time, and I just haven’t got enough to be engaging fully with my users, that’s not to say I won’t be empathic just not to the extent of my role models such as Patnaik and Moore.They are big influences in my project though. To understand people is quite a skill and I need to get it right if I want to design in such an area I am investigating. I have been ‘told off’ if you like from my lecture using sentences such as ‘they are not’ ‘they thought’ which comes across as stereotyping the elderly, when I should of been mentioning specific examples. On another note this may be down to my inability to articulate my work well, I see some members of my class talk about they projects and ideas with such confidence and although I know what I mean, my recipients don’t.. this is more of a personal goal I hope to overcome this year, I am going off into a tangent here but from 1st year I do think I have improved slightly when it comes to public speaking.

The rest of Monday went by quite quickly and by the end of the day I didn’t feel I had achieved very much.

Tuesday:

On Tuesday Andrew took the class and showed a short slideshow about layout boards for Ideas Day; for those of you that are not aware, Ideas Day is when the pros come in to tell us what they like and what they don’t like about our current ideas, we have been told that unlike previous years we are to have 3 strong ideas on a3 boards with atleast 50% photo which 6 questions about what we are planning on addressing. We are to have a draft of these by Monday (argh). We are also to think about three areas:

1. Situation: What situation are you addressing?
2. Idea: Have a vision of your project
3. Prototyping: Materials of processes

And we have also been told to look at what Design Language you wish to use/ take influence on etc.

On the ideas front I have two contenders and a ok-ish 3rd choice, I have to be honest and say I did not like the way we went about coming up with ideas, the insight gathering stage was good but I feel rushed into thinking up ideas for an honours project, I understand we are under a strict time scale but I feel from now till Monday I need to make my ideas clearer in my head and go beyond the line drawing and short paragraphs.

Last week was filled with a lot of confusion about where the project was going and what was being asked of us. After scribbling half a dozen mind maps I had a clearer direction. Then Monday morning arrived and we were asked to find an example of a project that has a similar role to yours, I found this really quite confusing, I found my self looking into service design to find answers researching thinkpublic‘s dementia project and looked at  Enabled By Design  an organisation passionate at providing design for everyone, were all about. I also found a Spanish designer called Ferran Lajara who now works from Smart Design, he previously worked on a design project “In collaboration with fuelfor and Ollie Niemi” called Considering Elderly I can see from the photos they have used a ‘daily routine’ page- really nice way to gain insights from participants. Here is a slide show by Fuelfor explaining the collaborative project: Slideshare

Also on Monday we were set the task of 100 ideas in 24 hours, yes you are reading it right 100 IN 24! The afternoon was spent thinking up some ideas by 4pm I was on about 15 ideas by 5pm I left the studio 6pm I went to my business class till 9pm (which was all about entrepreneurs this week!) so I spent the rest of the night and the majority of the morning trying to think up some inspiration. The problem I found was that last week, having typed up my insights page, I was told I was being too specific which is true but I wanted to look into all areas.

The areas I stuck my gold stars to were ‘care call’ / the problems with care call and ‘what day is it’. In total I managed 63 ideas and although most were rubbish I realised that it doesn’t matter how long you are set the task of 100 ideas you still have your favours from the start. I was slightly surprised we were given the 100 ideas tasked because we are being taught slighty differently this year but in reflection, it was helpful albeit stressful. We were asked on Tuesday afternoon to pick out our ‘favourite’, ‘really bad’ and ‘not sure about idea’  and from my ideas (which I am keeping schtum about atm!) I was told to consider it being a some kind of research style project if I prototype early enough, I am a bit unsure but think that it could be really interesting.

PICS TO FOLLOW in the mean time heres a studio shot