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Week 11-12

Presenting

During weeks 11-12, we were completely focused on completing outstanding tasks for our upcoming presentation. As there were scheduling issues with some members, I took on additional tasks including making promotional material to add to our mock-ups. I first made a promotional poster for our project to create a sense around our branding. I incorporated aspects that would be found in a gallery, as well as imagery related to trains. I wanted our promotional material to look fun, creative, and relatable to the general public but also keep a sense of professionalism. I incorporated the MRAG logo and the NSW Government logo to emphasise that support from both would be needed to support our prototype. I then went on to use the logo designs made by Rosie to create physical material in the form of badges. I felt that this would make our prototype feel more real, both during our presentation and to our group. 

I also liked the idea that was brought up in interviews that people enjoy having something physical to take away from an experience, so I thought that these would make good keepsakes. According to Interaction Design Foundation, “Designers can provide simple, scaled down versions of their products, which can then be used in order to observe, record, judge, and measure user performance levels based on specific elements, or the users’ general behaviour, interactions, and reactions to the overall design.” This is what I hoped to achieve with physical merchandise prototypes.

Dam, R. F. and Teo, Y. S. (2020). "Stage 4 in the Design Thinking Process: Prototype."

https://www.interaction-design.org/literature/article/stage-4-in-the-design-thinking-process-prototype

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Week 10

Revising the Prototype

For week 10, we started to revise our prototype so far and take into account what we could add or what could be expanded upon. We revisited our previous journey maps and improved our previous ideas by focusing specifically on the journey a single mother and her children would take on our experience. We specified that the main pain points in this situation were time limits, particularly when trying to keep children settled for a long amount of time. We considered that positives in this situation were that it would make the experience of catching public transport more educational and creatively stimulating for children, but it could equally over-excite them.

We also brainstormed what we would include in our 1-minute video, which we wanted to be in the style of a PSA. We wanted our prototype include mock-ups of the variety of interactive carriages we could include, as well as promotional materials and merchandise. Digital NSW states “Keep updating your map. It's a living artefact.” Iterating our journey map multiple times helped us to develop new features of our prototype to accommodate for any new issues we found, e.g. having a sensory carriage and a free-space drawing carriage to provide entertainment and accommodate for neurodivergent people.

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Week 9

Rose/Bud/Thorn

“The reframing phases are used to check the validity of or changes in thinking, identify shifts or changes in focus, monitor changes in the context or problem and ascertain learning progress or needs.” (Kueh & Thom, 2018.)

In week 9, we worked on revising our ideas through the lens of finding a ‘rose, bud, and thorn’. We did this as a group, thinking of everything we’d looked at so far, including our interviews, desk research, and feedback from in class. This process was helpful as we were able to step back from our work and look at it more objectively, seeing what worked and what we needed to develop more. This also allowed us to decide which of our ideas we would focus on, which we decided would be the ‘art on a train’ concept, which I titled ‘Art on the Line’. We believed this idea best addressed our UN goals, as it promotes well-being (#3), provides sustainable economic growth for artists (#8), and made cities more accessible in a sustainable way (#11).

I began compiling our research into a presentation, including the necessary information from our first presentation and also expanding upon those areas with new information. This involved communicating the information gathered in our interviews with Kim and Sophie, our co-workers, and parents. I then interpreted this information by asking how our prototype answers the valid concerns raised by interviewees. I also wrote up an overview of our prototype, explaining our main goals and how we aim to achieve those. There were some challenges this week, as many of our group members were busy with other assignments and jobs. We tried to keep in contact via Instagram chat and discord; however, this was confusing for some, and information was missed. We also tried to divide up jobs as evenly as possible, but the bulk of the work ended up falling on a couple of members.

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Week 8

Prototyping

“The prototyping phase creates an example or prototype of the solution to enable experimentation and further development of the solution” (Kueh & Thom, 2018.)

For week 8, we focused on realising our ideas through making a paper prototype. The Interaction Design Foundation states, “Prototypes are often used in the final, testing phase in a Design Thinking process in order to determine how users behave with the prototype, to reveal new solutions to problems, or to find out whether or not the implemented solutions have been successful.” This is what we focused on during the process of prototyping, as we focused on our most successful idea and looked at the many different ways we could accomplish that. It was very helpful to work through our ideas physically, as it was inexpensive and gave us the sense that we were making something real.

3 Things I learned in this process were:

Prototyping can be messy

Nothing is set in stone

Collaboration enhances individual ideas

2 Questions I have:

How can we adapt these paper prototypes into a final product?

What can we improve between this and our next prototype?

1 Thing we could have done differently:

Made our prototypes larger and more detailed

Dam, R. F. and Teo, Y. S. (2020.) "Stage 4 in the Design Thinking Process: Prototype." https://www.interactiondesign.org/literature/article/stage-4-in-the-design-thinking-process-prototype

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Week 6-7

Finalising A1

In week 6, we were grateful enough to have another opportunity to discuss our wicked problem with Alex from the MRAG. This time really helped us to refine our presentation and make our ideas clearly reflect our Wicked problem and the UN Sustainable Development Goals we needed to address. It was also great to have an opportunity to discuss ideas with the other groups, especially learning what research and lead-up work they had completed to further their ideas. Alex took an interest in all the possibilities we were considering, and we talked about how we could take those even further- for example, we talked about having a portable gallery and the issue of limited transportation, and the concept of taking that idea and blending it with the issue arose, leading us to explore the idea of making an art gallery from a train carriage. Our discussion also started to go past the brief, discussing artists we found interesting and finding common interests.

We completed our presentation, which I put together the slides for, and got some helpful feedback including utilising pictures, graphs, or diagrams to keep our audience more engaged, as well as focusing more on the UN Sustainable Development Goals and exploring new technologies. If I were to do this presentation again, I would reduce the number of possible solutions that we present and focus more on the research we did.

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Week 5

Customer journey map

In week 5, we compiled our prior research to create a user journey map. We explored how our design could be interacted with, as well as how it could be improved based on how we envisioned someone experiencing it and the emotions it invoked. For our journey map, we considered our personas and the interviews we had done so far. We kept in mind the issues that exist around bringing attention to the MRAG, including mentions that the gallery is too far to travel, public transport being inaccessible, the environment of the gallery being sterile and unwelcoming, and artworks not resonating with audiences.

This journey map helped us in narrowing down our many ideas to a few that we could explore, which we brainstormed in our weekly meeting time. Our refined ideas included a market where artists of different medias could sell or promote their work, as well as making connections, a flash mob (video below) or street art experience- which we discussed with Kim and Sophie when asked what they would like to see in the future- and a portable art gallery or VR gallery. These were not intended to be our final ideas, but they were interesting to explore nevertheless and helped us to see what worked and what could be expanded upon.

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Week 4

Ideation & Development

“The ideation phase develops and documents ideas that can assist in providing a solution or lessens the impact of the context or problem;” (Kueh & Thom, 2018.)

In week 4, we continued developing our initial ideas into something more fleshed out and accomplishable. We also continued researching, both by finding real world examples and exploring how we can consistently link back to our wicked problem and evolve our ideas as we discover new information and gather feedback. At this point, my individual role for A1 had been decided as designing the slides and interpreting all of our gathered research into something presentable. Although, I still continued researching and contributing my ideas to weekly exercises.

We completed an empathy map with the goal of understanding what our consumers and stakeholders say, think, do, and feel throughout our proposed solution. This process helped us to step into an unfamiliar mindset, which was somewhat challenging. We brainstormed many contradictory possibilities for how someone could experience our ideas, which helped us to find positives and negatives, and see what areas could be expanded upon or reworked. We also started on developing personas, which we could take in many different directions as our solution was aimed at artists, the MRAG employees, and all kinds of everyday people. This was a challenge as it was hard to narrow it down to only a few personas, but we moved past this by focusing on ones that were based on people we knew- e.g. Aimee’s parents, Kim and Sophie from the MRAG, our coworkers.

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Week 3

Interviewing & Empathy Mapping

In week 3, we experimented with methods of design thinking, including empathy maps and personas. We worked to re-frame our issue from a point of empathy with our stakeholders and consumers, which we did by questioning how our design would function in the hands of real people, and whether it sufficiently fulfilled the needs of our wicked problem.

I was very interested in the questions surrounding the validity of empathy in design, as they brought up issues of privilege and biases, pointing out the inherent disconnect between those designing products and those using them. As Cloke, Roxburgh, and Matthews state, “How do we know we are not projecting our own emotional state or extrapolating from what we would feel in a similar situation? And if we struggle to achieve empathy with another human, where does that leave the more-than-human world?”

We also began our field research stage, visiting the Maitland Regional Art Gallery and discussing our Wicked problem with Kim and Sophie. They gave us lots to work with, including some main issues they’re facing, which included reaching a variety of audiences, appealing to non-artists with creative minds, and giving artists exposure and opportunities to form connections. These points linked to our UN Sustainable Development Goals, which were 8. Sustained Economic Growth, 3. Good Health and Wellbeing, and 11. Sustainable Cities and Communities. We also had the opportunity to explore the exhibits on display at the gallery, which was a great experience and helped us to form connections as a group.

Cloke, S., Roxburgh, M., & Matthews, B. (2023). "Who gets to wear the black turtleneck? Questioning the profession of design thinking." In K. Straker & C. Wrigley (Eds.), "RESEARCH HANDBOK ON DESIGN THINKING." (pp. 46–70).

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Week 2

Forming Groups

 “The framing phase investigates and develops an understanding of the context and the problem”; (Kueh & Thom, 2018.)

In week 2, we entered the problem framing phase and were sorted into groups. Our chosen wicked problem was “How can the Maitland Regional Art Gallery help people understand that art provides both career and well-being opportunities?”. We made a contract for collaboration, in which we outlined our goals and everybody’s role to achieve these. We understood that our problem had no clear solution- “Design thinking is a non-linear, iterative process that teams use to understand” (Interaction Design Foundation - IxDF. 2016) We explored how the UN Sustainable Development Goals tied into our research process, which we then used to guide our interview questions in preparation for meeting with staff from MRAG the following week. We also began brainstorming some initial ideas, which included community events, gallery workshops, and promotional events. These were all ideas that we believed could educate the general public on the versatility of art, either as a career or a hobby.

Interaction Design Foundation- IxDF (2016) “What is Design Thinking (DT)?” https://www.interaction-design.org/literature/topics/design-thinking

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Week 1

Intro to Design Thinking Methods

“User-centred and user-participatory approaches… rely upon the user to provide information that the designer may not have even considered. “

Salvo (2001), p.275 .

Tim Brown, the Executive Chair of IDEO, states that “Design thinking is a human-centred approach to innovation that draws from the designer’s toolkit to integrate the needs of people”. Week one was my first introduction to this line of thinking, and immediately I had some challenges with grasping it. My understanding of design has always been focused on the creativity, so seeing it through the lens of ‘problems’ and ‘solutions’ was difficult. It was also daunting to see all the different design models, but I was invested in learning more as I knew they were a key part of professional collaboration.

Salvo, M (2001) “Ethics of Engagement : UserCentered Design and Rhetorical Methodology Technical Communication Quarterly ” Vol. 10, No . 3. (273-290)