studenthowareyou-blog

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Week 24 - Pop-up and finalizing prototype

We’re getting closer to our exam! This last week we’ve followed up on the photos we shot in the photo studio and made some of them into gifs (as above).

These are visualisations of stories told by students, most of them either directly linked to or inspired by a co-visualisation we had with the student. 

We have also worked more focused with three particular stories we will show at our final exam and as part of our final deliverable, the Student, how are you? platform. We’ve tried to keep in mind what several students have said throughout the project about tone of voice; That it should be more light hearted and portrayed as “issues we can all relate to” in difference to focusing only on that they’re serious matters. It has been difficult to find the balance that shows that these are individual yet universal struggles, however, we’ve found that the feedback we got from our initial invitation video (link here) , on the visuals and how the topic was presented, is also the kind of response we’d like to get from the platform itself. Personally we both also liked the visuals created for the invitation video as well as the “speculative scenarios” we created for group workshop (link here) , and therefore concluded that continuing this tone of voice would also lead to a coherency of the visual style of the project itself. (It’s important to remember that this part of the project - the making of the final deliverable - should also be fun!)

Sneak peak of the final prototype.

Later this week we’ve had both a final meeting with Studenterrådgivningen, and conducted a small pop-up at Copenhagen University (Søndre Campus), where we tried to ask students questions about how mental health is discussed and perceived in their university environment. 

Screenshot of “possible Facebook post” by Student, how are you? social media channels.

We imagine that if the project was to continue and exist in real life, it would also have social media pages to e.g. spread the word about Student, how are you?, post videos of pop-ups or events at universities, and to post questions or polls for students to answer that would be shared across different platforms.

We will follow up on explaining what happened at the pop-up in a later post. For now we will spend the last week on preparing for our final presentation the 22nd of June. Stay tuned!

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Week 22/23 

 We are currently working on bringing our final prototype to life. In order to do this we’ve been busy in the studio creating props and elements to create the student story videos. We’ve had two long days of shooting in the studio, taking inspiration from the co-design visualizing sessions we had with our participants. 

Next up we will edit these videos and gifs, finish up the rest of the platform prototype and finally stage another pop-up in public space. Stay tuned!

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Week 21 - Report done 🎉 

This week we’ve finished our report ! Over the last days we’ve spent all our time writing and designing the report, and finally it’s done! 

Next up is following up on all the things we want to do before our final exam in the end of June, which includes doing an experiment/pop-up in a university environment and visualising 2-3 student stories and the digital platform. A short break now for a couple of days before we get into the last part of the project. 

Hurra!

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Week 20 - Part 2: Encounter with Pernille and Marcus (long read)

On friday we had an encounter with two first year students from KADK, Pernille and Marcus. We were interested to discuss with students who were early on in their studies, as those we had spoken to previously had been further along or had graduated and were looking back.  We started out making the studying journeys as discussed in week 17   , following this we showed a more developed digital version of the platform, and talked through their experience and impressions of this.

We found the discussion very useful, they had fresh perspectives on how student struggles should be represented and also some interesting insights into how they as ‘users’ of the platform would best like to engage with the content.

(If you want to follow the conversation and look at the prototype we shared with them, here’s a link to it! Copy and paste the link into your search-bar if it doesn’t automatically pop up :) https://marvelapp.com/d6375a9/screen/42918199 )

For this encounter we had visualized the story ‘First semester lows’.)

Marcus and Pernille were supportive of our key concept ‘for students by students’, feeling this was something that was missing in other organizations that offer support to young adults, or students in need. However, Pernille asked a very central question to who would be behind this platform and ‘spread the message’ so that it would get through to its main target group:

“I’m not so sure people would… well, organizations or people who had their own experiences and have been helped, perhaps would share it and try to spread the message, but the issue here is that people who is in need of this sort of help either don’t realize it themselves or try to hide it and don’t talk to others about it. So I think the master math here might be a bit tricky…” 

This is something we ourselves have been questioning, and also wanted to ask these students: Who should be behind the platform? Is it a student-led organization, Studenterrådgivningen or a university? 

Marcus: “It can definitely be in association with Studenterrådgivningen, or similar, but it’s good to have it separate, as it’s own entity. So it’s not… it’s more for students, by students, and not like the ‘bureaucrats’ and ‘old people’ are doing to try to…” (Pernille cuts off)

Pernille: “Yes, not another campaign, ‘this is how you do it at university, this is how you’re feeling’. Because sometimes it can get a little… Whenever people tell you how you’re feeling in one specific way, you almost want to say ‘no I’m feeling the exact opposite’, just to prove them wrong.”

Marcus: “And there’s negative connotations to government initiatives, ‘cause so often they miss the mark, and it feels like they’re just spending money, but not knowing their target audience well. So definitely, it seems here that it’s more from other students, it definitely gives it an advantage.”

Pernille: “The ones you are targeting, [who are] not looking at trying to find some… large organization who can help them through a program, and lots of bureaucratic stunts, I think it’s more smaller.. more personal ways to do it. Of course I think as well you should be in association with Studenterrådgivningen, because it seems like they would have... they would come across people they could send your direction, or the other way around, but it seems like it should be an independent thing.”  

This makes us rely on what we had assumed before, that there should be a link to Studenterrådgivningen, but the platform itself should be something independent, run by students or someone who represents students fully. Through the ‘Student, How are you?’-platform, students can become aware of Studenterrådgivningen, but also Studenterrådgivningen can refer to this platform if, for instance, they feel the student they’re talking to either needs some extra ‘back-up’ after the 5 free counselling sessions, or perhaps the student wasn’t meant for counselling in the first place.

We asked whether the platform would be something they could share with friends, or with a friend they thought was struggling, as an ‘incentive’ that could spur an action:

Pernille: “To give a very personal answer, then I would probably not share it on a Facebook page, but I do that very limited on Facebook anyway [...]. If I had a friend who I was a bit worried about, I wouldn’t perhaps just send this particular friend a link and imply ‘I think you have some mental issues’, go here… I would take a conversation to this person, from one person to another, sit so that we can talk to one another, and I would express my concern, but I still think that if that person isn’t ready themselves it could be quite a lot to just… give them this kind of platform. Perhaps it’s easier to publish it, or get it out there by posters or notes, so you’re aware that it exists on college ground, like this.”

This brought the conversation forward to discuss maybe it’s something introduced to all students at university, it’s not targeted at specific students but the general public of students from beginning of, so that people are aware of it, and that those who feel related to know where to look for this information. It was also made clear to us that this platform should have social media profiles as well, to spread the word, and thereby maybe reaching more students.

Pernille: “That could be a way as well. To go out there when the semester starts and present this platform to the students, saying ‘welcome to another world, welcome to a new world anyway. That’s something fantastic for some people, and challenging for others, and it can be very difficult for even… another group as well.”

And we believe Pernille is right in this, that exactly acknowledging that for some, university can be difficult, and that’s completely normal, is something we should be open about from the very beginning when we start studying. We later also discussed how the tone of voice of these stories not necessarily have to be ‘heartbreaking’, because that is not the focus, and it might come across as fake and unreliable. Marcus expressed that the tone of voice in the story we showed them was ‘fitting’:

Marcus: “I think the case you showed was really good. The tone of it. I liked that it was very.. just like the content[...], what was great about it was that it was very undramatic. Just being very open saying ‘hi, this was kind of hard, but…’ The more you try to dramatize it and make it… it loses some sincerity and becomes.. then you start distancing yourself. You don’t want to ‘Hollywood it’ too much.”

Screenshot of the story we discussed.

Pernille agreed in this, saying:

Pernille: “Also to focus on how small trivial problems that should be easy right, I don’t know, sometimes small problems can have a huge effect. And if you underestimate that or try to explode it and make it this huge problem, but the person himself might not think that.. Just to keep it that as light-weight and simple as possible, that would be a good way to get about it. I was more thinking that it’s not necessarily somebody with an overwhelming anxiety who will find help here, perhaps it is someone who is developing a problem, or hasn’t acknowledged the situation to themselves, and it is something that is escalating into a bigger problem but you need to catch it before it’s that bad. And a way to do that might be just to… well to keep in mind that, and be aware that, sometimes it’s also enough to have a smaller story.”

We feel that what Pernille is saying here is almost a ‘breaking point’, in terms of almost opposing the dilemma we’ve felt from time to time during this project: Are the stories we’re telling dramatic enough? Are they ‘hitting you in your stomach/heart as you read it’? Here, Marcus and Pernille are saying this is not necessary - quite the contrary, the small stories matter a lot to the students who are about to develop a more serious struggle. This is a good way to reach out to those students without frightening them off. 

Screenshot of the prototype, here the ‘overview’ of stories, where “Christian”’s story, “First semester lows”, was the one we talked about.

It was surprising to find out that they liked how stories were represented through imagery and ‘objects’. They only noticed there were no faces when we brought it up and asked them if ‘they felt people were missing’. Saying:

Pernille: “I didn’t even notice before you just said it, that there’s no faces.” 

Marcus: “I feel like [using photos of faces] it’s kind of… trying to pull at your pathos in a manipulative way, that maybe turns people off. And then it feels more like one of those governmentally made sadness-campaigns (...). I think the drawings is a good combination, because it’s good to have some sort of face on it, but that’s the right amount of abstraction.”

Pernille: “There’s a fine line of not putting too much focus on the person and then not trying to make it a journalist story with no face to it, because if you don’t see that this actually happened to a human being it might be difficult to relate to it.”

Marcus: “And that’s why it also helps with the audio you have, some personality.”

To sum up, Marcus and Pernille felt that the combination of audio of “Christian”’s story; hearing the person’s voice, together with a drawing of his face, was the right amount of details, otherwise they would distract themselves more from the story. It’s been something we have discussed many times before, the two of us and together with other students and tutors, whether using faces alongside a story is a positive or a negative thing. Hearing Pernille and Marcus reflecting on the pros and cons makes us trust more the idea that we don’t necessarily need to see the real face of the person to empathize and relate to her/his experiences.

Another surprise was the students’ thoughts on being able to ‘contribute’ and that they preferred their role as reader rather than active participant. This goes against the common UX trend to make everything ‘more interactive’ an assumption we have also made at times, however these students actually felt the opposite, they would rather watch, observe and reflect on the information. We (Ingeborg and Alice) had discussed earlier whether the platform should be of an open form where students can contribute with stories, or if it should be more static, where we were in charge of keeping the platform updated.

Screenshot prototype where we talked about whether it should be an open form where you can add stories or not.

Marcus: “I think definitely the better angle is the curated one. I think it’s definitely more appealing that you have these fewer stories that cover different grounds, but that you’ve done such a good job with setting it up visually (...). It makes it so much more intriguing. Especially compared to one text block, put in these bite-size chunks, and have the thing with the counsellor commenting on it, making that whole package is what’s really nice to me. Whereas just reading some guy saying ‘I’m sad’ won’t help as much. I think for some reason it feels more appealing to me that it’s more curated than an open form. I don’t know about comments… Maybe, maybe not. Or definitely then you’d have to approve them before, cause comments in general… I don’t know, it’s more okay that it’s one-way communication.”

What Marcus says here is pointing to what some of the other students have mentioned before, that it’s difficult to know whether you’re ‘eligible’ to add content when it’s this sensitive topic. There’s also a risk in making it an open form, where people can add whatever content they wish, which is probably why Marcus says that we have to “approve them before”. Also hearing how important he thinks it is that the story is visually set up, and that the different elements are all important pieces of the “package” that makes it coherent and reliable. 

We want to end this post with a quote from Pernille, pointing at something we’ve mentioned earlier in this post, and something we believe is the core strength of our project. She said this in the very end of the encounter when we were wrapping up, repeating something she mentioned earlier, as if ‘to make clear’ why she thinks this is a good concept: 

Pernille: “Especially the main idea to help students by students instead of all that ‘it comes from above’, somebody says ‘okay, there’s an issue’, and looking down on the issue. It’s very much... it’s very pleasing that it’s the same level, so that the people who are helped are by people in the very same situation, and not somebody who educated themselves 10 years to become a psychologist to help, where they don’t know where the problems are.”  

[studenthowareyou-blog]

Week 20 - Part 1

This week we have been back out meeting with collaborators. Starting out with a discussion with Mette from Studenterrådgivningen. We met Mette to present and discuss our findings from our conversations with students about Studenterrådgivningens website.

Discussion and Platform Building with Mette

We had a discussion around the findings and reflected on how these insights have helped to inform our new prototype. We discussed how the students we had spoken to had found the information helpful but hard to use and access or engage with:

Mette:“We have spoken about this website [SCS website], that we could do so much more, that it could be more interactive. Also that you have to dig into the website to find the information - if you read our folders it is page 1-20 which is not the way people are reading today - today it is more like you search and you want to find it”

“The story about Emil has been there for several years (...) Recently we have been talking about using story examples, so you could have a student who is talking about an example say relating to that topic. e.g. performance anxiety. But it is the leaders who have to find this out in our organization”

“Because we are a public organization there is some thoughts that we need to be neutral - so we should not be using too much colour and in the pamphlets or in the logo for example - I know we have to be open minded and represent everybody and all ages, races and religions ... ”

We found the question of neutrality interesting, as thinking about how we represent images, people and identity is something we have also been debating. For example, how much of a person should be representing on our platform, is name and age enough? How much transparency is the right amount? Will we scare some people away if we show too many details about a person and the audience does not empathize with that particular person? 

Further, on the storytelling side we had been encouraged to think about representing the full character of a student - if that happens to be hot pink or metal music that should be represented in the imagery and tine, however on the other-hand to exaggerate visually will put off certain people - it seems it is an important, yet delicate matter to strike the balance right. 

“This is good, to hear from students, as they are thinking the same things that I have been thinking - it [SCS website] would be better with small stories, small statements of what people get when they go there or why they go there, examples of what to expect so they know okay maybe this is why my doctor told me to go there.”

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Week 19 - Taking a break to write and reflect 

This week we have been kept busy working on writing our thesis report and planning our next meeting with SCS and Mette. Next week we will be back with updates on the project, including meetings with two new students for a generative prototyping session and feedback from SCS. 

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Week 18 - Prototyping the platform

This week we have discussed and prototyped what kind of angle the digital platform should take. We wish to centre the platform around a couple of detailed student stories, and we were questioning whether the stories should be presented in a long-read format (with shorter clips of audio and video), or in full video format.

We quickly prototyped the two different directions. Above is a short excerpt of a longer story from Sebastian, student, visualized through a more graphical approach, as an example of what a video format could do. After discussing with supervisors, we realize that if we choose the long-read format, inspired by webdocs and interactive articles, we might reach a more diverse group of students. This format offers many more entry points, in difference to the video format, for a viewer. If we choose to only focus on the video format, we depend more on people relating to the particular story and angle, and the videos need to be of very high quality to keep the viewer interested. 

“Despite its concrete detail video is ambiguous. It allows varied interpretations - just as in real-life situations.” (Ylirisku & Buur, 2007, p.27).

Audience may like to have more options on the way they consume and share the information, and therefore we’ve decided that the long-read format is the best option. 

We’ve also had the time to briefly look at the individual conversations we had with the students in week 17 about the digital platform, to get an overview of what is important to keep in mind, and what they would be interested in reading more about on the platform. 

For the following week we’re focusing on writing, as our report draft is due in the end of the week, as well plan two encounters in week 20: One with SCS, where we aim to get some insights to what SCS would appreciate finding on the platform, if they were to recommend it to students. We would also like to have their comments on the particular student stories, to see whether this could be a useful feature of the platform. The second meeting is with two new students, where we hope to present parts of the platform to get feedback on what they would find useful reading more about, and possibly some new perspectives on the topic from new students’ point of view. 

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Week 17 - Three individual encounters

This week we continued what we started in week 16 and had three more individual encounters with students, Christian, Mathilde and Alma. In these sessions the focus was two fold, in the first part of the session we focussed on gathering individual stories and co-creating the visuals together.  In the second half we looked more concretely at a paper prototype of the platform to gather insights into what kinds of content and ways of communicating should be used. Below we  have briefly summarized each session and present reflections and relevant insights.

Meeting with Bengt We needed to adapt the storyboarding approach we had developed previously, as we did not have a pre-recorded story from Christian. Instead we asked him to map out his ‘study journey’, looking at wellbeing over time.

Following on from this we started a discussion around the low points. Inviting him to share a particular memory or event that stands out to him during this time. He shared a reflection on his first semesters, the challenges of being a new student and his decision to seek help through a psychologist. Because the gathering the story ended up taking longer than expected, we will meet again to continue visualizing the story together.

“But it’s difficult. It's hard to tell other people why you feel bad. Because on paper you should be happy.. You just started uni, everybody tells you university is the best time of your life, well older people tell you this. And then you just go there and it is overwhelming…..”

“It’s a very weird feeling when you have a panic while at the same time you are paralysed so you cannot really do anything... so you lie in your bed but you feel restless all the time, you wake up with a racing heart beat. So you are always tired and nervous. At this point it just got too much and I did not want to drain myself with alcohol so i just needed to see a psychologist out of desperation. I just got so tired of not being in control of this entire situation.”

Here we are going through the platform prototype together. Below are a selection of some of feedback from Christian.

“I like the alone standing quotes. You get an idea of the variety of opinions and different personalities. I think it is actually good if they contradict each other. It reflects well how different people have different experiences and opinions. Also it shows you that it is real. You are not only trying to show the nice things that are streamlined to one vision. It gives you a more open idea of how situations are different while studying.”

Thoughts on a platform from student to student vs expert to student

“Well of course if I knew that when I had problems if I could look around the room and see that other people had problems too that 50% are thinking this too.. Then of course I would feel better. This has the same effect, if you can reading this then you see okay this guy has the same problem then you say wow this is similar - that you are not the problem.”

Alma On Friday we carried out a similar workshop with Alma. She shared her experiences of being a new student. 

“I’ve felt I didn’t fit in school because I was less focused than the others. And haven’t known what I’ve wanted to do. Everything has been a struggle, so I’ve felt like… all the possible choices we could take, I couldn’t deal with that.”

“It’s something that has always followed me. That I have a more chaotic approach to things, very open from beginning of. That also makes it easier to think “it can go this way, this way, this way”. It’s about navigating in the chaos. I’ve almost been jealous of those who, from beginning of, have been more determined. Still I’ve thought ‘it’s cool, but that’s not me, and I can’t imagine myself like that’, but I’ve always felt that this would be the best in order to reach goals.”

“I thought I would enjoy it more. It was, to me, a great pressure. And that pressure was about trying to fit in, to try and think more clearly”

“I’ve wanted to express, that I can take more than I actually can. That I’m stuck. But on the inside it’s been very liquid…  People have sensed that something’s been going on, because there were periods I couldn’t go to school. And instead of coming to school and being honest, I’ve either been there or not been there. [...] I think people could sense that I was walking on thin ice. 

Above: Alma choosing the visuals that represent this experience.

Mathilde Mathilde stresses that the digital platform could become a conversation starter between friends, and ... 

“Not only a helping-page but an inspiration-page to make it less taboo. Maybe that’s an easier way [to talk about it], to make your friend check this page, because ‘here you can find the links surrounding this theme’. A way to introduce others to it. And not only where you find something serious.”

Regarding reading advice from other students, Mathilde mentioned that using real names isn’t necessary, as long as they come from a real person:

“This [the 'tips’] is really good. I don’t think it makes a difference if this was true [pointing at the name], but I think it’s important to give the feeling it’s a real person and different people. Good for the impression, but not necessary that it’s true. And it works well with illustrations.”

Mathilde has earlier explained that she struggles with performance anxiety. We had a brief discussion on what kind of information she would like to find on the platform, where she questions:

“Do I then want to read about it [performance anxiety]? Most likely, yes. It’s something I want to talk about when I am going to get help, then I need to talk about it… Maybe then it’s nice someone has discussed it in advance.”

At some point during our discussion, the question of ‘who shares’ and ‘why should I share’ comes up, where Mathilde expresses it’s a big step for her to share something at this stage, when she’s in the midst of figuring out what she’s struggling with. “When I’m over it, it’s something I’ve conquered. I don’t feel strong enough to say ‘look at me, I struggle with these things’.” However, after the session Mathilde comes back to say that she’s thought a lot about our discussion on her specific story and the digital platform, and that while she was a bit critical to sharing her story initially, she’s now realized that sharing is a step in the right direction. Through sharing and discussing you immediately become more aware of your issue, and you are more able to understand it and even think of specific ideas to what you might try next time you face a difficult situation. 

“I think it helps a lot, in my mind. And I know that from before: I solve issues by talking about it because then I’m more clear about it. I need to talk my way out of it.”

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Week 16 (Part II) - Visualizing with Rachel

Like mentioned in the post from week 15, we want to go back to students we’ve already talked to and to meet new students as well, to hear more about the specific situations that have affected their wellbeing as students. This week we met again with Isabella, who we first met for the group session 20th of March, to hear more about a specific story she mentioned during the group session. 

With the digital platform focusing on student told stories, we want to co-create and visualize these stories. The idea is that we draft a visualization of the specific story with the student, and afterwards interpret and edit it so that we end up with a series of coherently visualized student stories. This is only one example of how we intend to include the students in the making of the content of the platform, using their personal stories as a starting point. 

In the group session Isabella also mentioned it would be nice to have some physical making involved in the activities we presented, and we kept this in mind when planning how to co-create her story. We split her story into different frames that together outlined a storyboard. Together with Rachel we co-created/visualized each frame. For each frame we had planned questions that could trigger the visualization, one example being to visualize the feeling of shame. We also quickly prototyped how Sebastian’s story could be visualized, to get a sense of how to interpret a story into something visual.

We had prepared a set of different materials that could be used for the making of each frame. In the text “Ways to engage telling, making and enacting”, Eva Brandt et al. (2012) explain that:

“A good set of generative tools provides ambiguity to non-designers in order to evoke and provoke thoughts and feelings that they do not commonly talk about. [...] It is a full palette of predominantly visual components that enable participants to explore and express playful landscapes of past, present and future experiences.” (p.159)

The generative tools are often characterized by a toolkit of different materials (photos, modeling material, velcro, fabric etc.) that through making, can help facilitate a conversation around a specific subject. 

The making session turned into a very fun activity, and (I believe) we were all positively surprised that the room suddenly became part of the making, not just the white A4 “frame” we had planned to use. At one point Alice became a prop to visualize what kind of work  Rachel was doing at the time the situation took place, Isabella explaining: “I did a lot of work with string - this would be the thread of theme connecting the studio”. 

Other visualizations were more connected to what bodily feeling looks like. An example of this is showed in the short video above.

We also wanted to hear Rachel’s ideas to what the digital platform should include. Should it be highly informative, from a psychologist point of view? To what extent would she value reading/watching other students’ stories? And what kind of tone of voice should the platform have? We started off by looking at SCS’s existing website to see what’s good and less good about it. One thing Isabella thought of when she saw the website of SCS is that matching student stories with a face of the student is not necessarily the right way to do it: 

“I like stories, I just think with a face – you can’t read a person by their face. When that’s the portal to a story I think it makes it harder to relate, actually, in a digital platform.” 

It hadn’t occurred to us before that portraits of students can be misleading, but we could definitely relate to what she explained. This is of course from Isabella’s point of view, so it will be interesting to hear what other students think. 

We mocked up a physical prototype of the platform in advance of the encounter as a conversation starter, to hear what kind of content she would appreciate the platform to present. One of the things she mentioned was that she would be interested in reading more deeply into the stories. For instance if you read a student’s tip to another student, she would want to know the context of the tip. She also mentioned that the platform in general should be more playful than serious:

“I imagine it being very helpful to explore, because the nature of many of these issues is that it’s not about a single thing […]. I think that’s where expert advice can be misleading, and mental health, and to say ‘just this is about mental health’. It narrows the scope of everything that is around wellbeing […].”

In regards to whether we should focus more on student stories vs expert knowledge (from psychologists, for instance), Rachel thought both have  benefits, and that the student stories should be more visual than the expert knowledge. We played a short audio clip from Anna Sillemann, psychologist at SCS, explaining the three different systems our brain responds to (drive system, threat system and soothing system), in which Rachel commented: 

“The expert allows you to take a backseat and be driven through… ‘this is what the reptile brain does’. Great to be in that listening/lecture headspace. Student stories is more about empathy, which is also important. Especially in this context, because so much of your life is around making new connections with people.”

Overall, we found it very helpful to talk to Rachel about the platform. The following weeks we will aim to have at least 2-3 more individual sessions with students where we will ask into similar questions and build on what we discussed with Isabella.

Also up next is to further plan the experiments, in the shape of a pop-up installation for instance, that we aim to do at university. At our presentation in class this week our fellow students and professors showed a particular interest in what these experiments could turn into. At least we have a feeling that this part of the project is equally important as telling the students’ stories. We also aim to find a way to incorporate this into the digital platform.

[studenthowareyou-blog]

Week 16 - Mapping completed

We started week 16 with naming the different clusters we grouped from the ‘bottom-up’ mapping session the week before. Analyzing and re-analyzing material is something we do to get a sense of what links the different encounters together: What are the recurrent themes participants talk about, and why? This analyzing phase resembles what Visser et al. (2005) explain in the text “Contextmapping: experiences from practice” as part of the Analysis:

“In the search for a variety of patterns, all of the annotations and the data are organised and reorganised. Determining recurrent and/or striking themes about the experience creates an overview. Working spatially, e.g., on a wall or large boards, supports creating overviews and may show the relations between different experiences and themes visually.” (Visser et al., 2005, p.133)

Visser et al. write about contextmapping as a generative technique based on 6 phases (preparation, sensitization, sessions, analysis, communication, next…), however stresses that «The phases are often not that clearly separated and the roles of stakeholders often overlap and mix» (p.136). In this project, and in co-design in general, these phases are often iterative loops. Knowledge from the first loop is consciously brought forward into the next loop and so on. Throughout this project we always take time to reflect and synthesize, and transcribe material, straight after each encounter. We have now conducted a first analysis of the material gathered from the initial encounters where we wanted to get an idea of what this project could be developed into, in terms of content and deliverable. The next loop of iteration we’ve just started now is more centered around the more narrowed focus of a digital platform and experiments (pop-up, vox-pop, installations).

From a more ‘bottom-up’ approach we extracted specific themes that gave us an idea of what this digital platform should communicate. These themes will be integrated/touched upon through the different elements in the digital platform, whether it’s through expert knowledge (from a psychologist point of view) or through student-told stories. They will also be brought further into individual encounters with students, where the participants are to choose and discuss the themes that they relate the most to. The following image visualizes that many of the themes are linked in some way:

Reference: Visser, F. S., Stappers, P. J., Van der Lugt, R., & Sanders, E. B. (2005). Contextmapping: experiences from practice. CoDesign, 1(2), 119-149.

[studenthowareyou-blog]

Week 15 - Going somewhere... 

This week we’ve made a decision! To develop a digital platform that reflects that it is a complex and individual issue. 

Studenterrådgivningen has expressed an interest in challenging the ways they present themselves and the topic online, and so we hope they will take inspiration from our findings. A digital platform is also where we see we might reach our target audience best, and it is also something we find interesting to work with, where we can use our knowledge and focus on video, audio, animation and storytelling. 

A discussion with our tutor Eva Brandt led us to realize that we need to focus more on the individual stories of students, this is the core of our project. This is where students can identify themselves with others, and this is what makes the project rich and relatable. The next couple of weeks we’re planning on going back to our participants from last group session and ask more into the individual stories and involve them in the making of the digital platform. We also want to invite new students into the project, especially some who are a bit newer to studying. Another idea we have in mind is to do a pop-up exhibition in universities to get feedback and more stories from more students, as we realize that we need insights from a larger group. Through this, we can also challenge the stigma through introducing the topic in students’ everyday at the school.

We ended the week throwing away the “themes” we identified last mapping session and redid the mapping from a more bottom-up approach. Last time we created the themes simultaneously as we mapped out the quotes, and therefore might have lost something on the way, because the quotes were ‘pushed’ a bit to fit somewhere. At the time, we thought the mapping would help us understand which theme we were to focus on, but it ended up confusing us. So now we didn’t categorize/name the quotes, only clustered together the ones we found to be similar. We were also much more critical to whether the quotes were saying the same or not, if they belonged somewhere or needed to start a new cluster. This lead us ending up with around 21 clusters compared to last time’s 8 (normalizing, stigma, structuring, expectations, anxiety, social, identity and information/knowledge). We are yet to name these clusters and see whether some belong to the same category. Maybe they will give us new ideas to content of the platform. 

[studenthowareyou-blog]

Week 14 (Part II) - Conversation with my brother

During week 14 I (Ingeborg) had a talk with my brother on Skype about his experiences with his studies, as I knew that his first semester at university had been quite challenging. 

As we (Ingeborg and Alice) were still discussing which direction to take with the project, another student’s perspective could only lead to a better understanding of what to do next. And why not take advantage of our personal networks and talk to the ones we know the best? Being a sensitive topic, it’s also easier to talk about it with someone you’re comfortable with. 

This was a casual talk (over Skype, as he is in Norway) concerning the project and his personal experiences, rather than a co-design session. I still believe his thoughts on the issues is worth mentioning and including in the process. 

My brother is now on his second year at university, studying to become an engineer. Being a very social and outgoing person, he experienced the transition from the very social everyday life at Folkehøgskole (boarding school) to moving to a new city, where he was to live on his own and start studying, very challenging. 

He mentioned that some kind of tips and reflections from older students would have been beneficial for him. The older students who introduced new students to the university briefly mentioned some tips in the beginning of the semester, but it wasn’t something he remembered as particularly helpful:

“When you’re in the middle of it the first semester, you don’t really think of what they said… Some kind of ‘letter of experience’ would have been a good idea. Before starting, I watched some videos that were supposed to represent what it’s like to study in Trondheim, but for this they always choose the good students, etc.”

During his first semester, my brother developed mononucleosis, and his wellbeing was heavily affected by this. He told me that getting mono was to him, some sort of relief, it was something that could explain why he had been feeling so down. 

“I was so relieved because I was sure I was about to have a nervous breakdown. When I found that out, and got medicines for it to get better, was away from school a couple of weeks, came back… It was just much easier, because then I had an excuse to not deal with everything. I must say I still use that today, if people ask me how first semester was, ‘Well I skipped a class, BUT I had mono’.”

This is also something we’ve noticed other students mentioning: you always want an explanation or understand why you are feeling the way you are. Anna, a counsellor at SCS, also explained to us earlier that 

“Some of the reasons people also want to have a diagnosis is that then there is an explanation for the way they are reacting […], also if you have diagnosis it will also unlock a lot of help you can receive [assistance].”

When I asked my brother about what had helped him, and what kind of tips he would give new students, he told me that himself had benefited a lot from trying to plan his time. 

“When you move away from home, and you’re not used to an everyday where you live alone and make your own food, to plan the day… in the morning to think ‘today I should get this and this done’, for instance write it the evening before. And then you also have a plan for the week and month. You have more control. That helped me a lot. [...] To be more organized. Because that can be a difficult transition, that you don’t have the time schedule you had in high school, where you go to school and see your friends in lunch break, and when you’re finished you go home, get some food, and then do homework and go to soccer practice, in safe environments. Now, you have to be in control of your economy, your spare time, school and exercises, etcetera…”

What I talked with my brother about will be brought further in the development of our project. Again, it shows that students’ mental health and well-being is a very individual topic, and it addresses us all in different ways. For my brother, it was particularly the transition to becoming a student, and living up to his expectations of what being a student entails in terms of social life and level of studying. 

“Later I’ve realized that I did more than necessary for me personally the first semester. In the beginning I thought ‘I can’t join this and that because I have to work on my exercises’. The stress the first semester, which was also why I got sick… today I can sit down and think ‘there’s no point in stressing about it’. I do as much as I can, and that’s enough.”

[studenthowareyou-blog]

Week 14 - It’s decision time 

This (short) post Easter week we set out to try and ideate through the affinity diagram.  Within every design project there comes a point in time when some harder decisions need to be made, at the moment we are floating out in a virtual sea of insights and possibilities and It can be a struggle to say goodbye to certain ideas and move towards others. 

While it can be a kind of painful process, it’s necessary to go forward into a more concrete space. Our plan was to ideate further on what could be a possible outcome. In order to do this we used a variety of strategies, a mixture of looser debate/discussion, literature research and more structured ideation.

In one exercise we took our 9 previously identified themes we extracted from our encounters e.g.  "transitions", "student identity", "expectations", "stigma", "different forms of anxiety", "social life" and "normalizing/common humanity", “structure and organization” and “information and knowledge. Some of these themes are very open, while others overlap each other, this is not necessarily a negative thing but something we need to be mindful of. We then wrote down a  variety of mediums or outputs through which we could continue our co-design process e.g. “Video animations”, “Digital platform”, “Interactive exhibition”,” Speculative object” etc. Drawing from 1 from each pile we set the timer, and wrote out  possible outcomes that could emerge from a combination of these two elements.

We like to work visually and to push further we tried out sketching how some of these ideas might look,  attempting to make concepts more concrete or understandable. Visualizing can also trigger new ideas or help rule out crazy ideas that might not be practical or feasible. 

These sketches should by no means finished idea but to use as an anchor on which to base the following month of co-design explorations and encounters, in other words by doing this we place a tighter frame around how we will continue our co-creation process and experimentation - answering questions such as “will our workshops be more hands on with video sessions?”, “where  and how should we situate and structure our next encounter”?

This activity helped us to clarify certain issues within our process, while at the same time uncovered new questions, concerns and confusions.This ‘messiness’ is an example of a standard reference within the participatory design community that describes the designer as a “reflective practitioner”. A concept reflected in the research of  the social scientist Donald Schön, who, acknowledging the complexity of design situations suggests rather than attempting to transform and reduce this messiness into a stable design space through systems thinking,or a rational, problem solving approach, to instead pay attention to how other professionals “master this messiness and complexity ‘in the swamp’ acknowledging the stable state is an illusion”.

(Ref: Routledge Int Handbook of Participatory design, pg. 46)

[studenthowareyou-blog]

Week 13 - Quotes and insights

This week we focused on transcribing all of our encounters with students, counsellors and psychologists, and synthesizing them into clusters or themes. What is challenging, is making the decision to move towards a more specific direction, when we feel a lot of it is connected to each other, and many of the insights are equally valuable.

Do we want to focus on something specific and thereby excluding some perspectives? Or do we want to keep it open but thereby faced with the challenge of it becoming more ‘vague’? These are some of the questions we have been asking ourselves.

Students’ mental health is individual, and for each and everyone of us there are different factors that affect us, such as the specific study in particular, our backgrounds or family relations, or what kind of expectations and goals we have.

Some of the discussions we’ve had the past weeks have given us unexpected insights to different perspectives, whereas other discussions have confirmed our thoughts and ideas. We have added some of the quotes from our discussions to this post. 

«Let’s not take it for granted that we talk about it. Let’s give it a room or and activity or a ritual of some sort. You need to contain that thing and say it’s important.» Mattheo, 25

«I feel like I’m educated enough to do stuff, and that makes me insecure, which makes my work and everything I do worse than it can be. Just telling yourself you’re not good enough.» Sarah, 25

«In some way, there’s a taboo around being transparent about our emotions. It’s not just that, it’s actually that we have all of these cultural and social mechanisms that are guiding us to feel certain ways.» Rachel, 23

«In university I felt so out of place. The whole drinking culture… I think we’re just trying to numb ourselves. I think it’s more a sense of ourselves, and we’ve lost that, whether it’s spiritual or not… Times are changing.» Meghan, 24

«There is a disjoint, we are all kind of isolated and students on our own experiencing the same thing… We can get a bit stuck only focusing on ourselves. It was important for me to realize that we are all a part of a something bigger than this.» Rachel, 23

What would you say to the student today that is in the position you were before? «That it’s okay not to know. And say it out loud that you do not know and that you need help. And that if you find it difficult to have many choices, then it’s okay.» Alma, 31

[studenthowareyou-blog]

Week 12 - Group session

This week we had a discussion with a group of current and former students about the topic. We used the invitation video as a starting point, and prepared a set of ‘what if’-scenarios as well as a writing activity, to start conversations around students’ well-being and mental health.

The first activity was based on visuals from the invitation video, and we had prepared 4 different posts the participants were to “visit”. The participants were to discuss a question together, e.g. “What affects your confidence in your study environment?”, then fill out an answer to this question individually. This worked as a ‘warming up’ exercise, and also enabled the participants to share individual stories. 

Following, we had prepared and visualized 5 different What if-scenarios to be discussed in larger groups. The intention of the What if-scenarios was to spark a discussion around our values, and have the participants bring in their perspectives to why these proposals were good or bad ideas. What if-scenarios are fictional scenarios, with the intent of provoking and creating reflection around a question. One example we proposed is: “What if counselling happened in open glass rooms where people could see in and those inside could see out?” 

The What if-scenarios triggered a general discussion on the topic, whereas the first activity was more focused on each individual’s story. In retrospect, maybe we should have focused even more on the personal stories, but it was also nice to have some immediate comments and a discussion around the different What if’s. These were also more connected to what we could potentially see this project develop into. Maybe it’s not a physical glass counselling room we are to make for our final deliverable, but somehow use the reflections on why this is unrealistic.

The activities varied from discussing in pairs and in groups, writing individually, and discussing altogether. We didn’t want to bring too many participants into the ‘workshop’: Enough to be able to be inspired by each other, but space enough for everyone to bring forward their thoughts. Visser et.al. (2005) also write that “In a group with more than six participants it becomes more difficult to pay attention to every individual” (Visser et al., 2005, p.7). We found the group of 6 students plus us two being a suitable amount of people.

In the end of the group session we gathered for feedback and reflection. Some of the participants mentioned that the activity where we used the audio from Alma was easy to relate to. To hear a different student’s perspective seemed to trigger a response that the other activities did not. Another comment was that it would be nice to do something more “making”-related, this group session was more focused on discussing and writing. We will keep the feedback in mind for our future encounters.

Later in the week we also met with Student Counselling Service, psychologist Anna and social counsellor Mette. Here we presented the What if-scenarios once again, and played the audio of the students’ feedback/discussions to have the counsellors comment on this to establish a “reflection on the reflection”. These direct comments can be used later in the project. Anna and Mette commented that it was nice to see the real prototypes, and that the What if-scenarios was something they could imagine themselves also using in their group sessions at Student Counselling Service. They also mentioned an interest in us having a look at their website, as they find it a bit “traditional” and not really speaking to its target group. They also expressed an interest in using more rich media on their website, such as video and audio, comparing it to Psykiatrifonden’s website.    

The next step in the project is to map out different possible directions we can take, and to get an overview of the insights we’ve gathered from our latest encounters!

Reference:

Visser, F. S., Stappers, P. J., Van der Lugt, R., & Sanders, E. B. (2005). Contextmapping: experiences from practice. CoDesign, 1(2), pp. 119-149.

[studenthowareyou-blog]

Week 11 - Mid-crit and planning next steps

This week we’ve focused on preparing for a presentation at school and planning the next steps of the project. We wanted to give an update on what we have been doing lately, and present our encounter with Alma, student, and Anna Sillemann, psychologist, at the Student Counseling Service. We transcribed audio and had a look at the video material from both encounters, in order to mark important parts of the conversations that we found useful for the development of the project. 

Documenting encounters through photo, video and audio is something we value in co-design projects, as it is often at second glance that you are able to fully extract what the dialogue was about. Many times, the things people say they do compared to what they actually do, can differ. In these situations documenting is an important tool. Using people’s own words and voices, in the shape of an audio clip, for instance, is much more powerful than “making up” quotes based on dialogues. In co-design we are also a bit critical to the use of personas, as we believe that content is much more trustworthy and honest, and can lead to sustainable solutions, if it’s a real person instead of an “imaginary user”. 

Below you can see an excerpt of our encounter with Alma. We showed this at our presentation at school, to have teachers’ and fellow students’ reflection on the conversation:

[studenthowareyou-blog]

Week 10 - Encounter with student

The following week we had an encounter with a student, Alma. Here we wanted to try out or ‘rehearse’ certain ideas we had to gather insights with a larger group of students. We used paper what if scenarios to explore various ideas we had about discussing issues and themes relating to the experience of students, mental wellbeing. 

To continue working iteratively, we wanted to incorporate elements from our invitation video - to continue certain visual themes we chose to take frames from this to use as conversation starters. We did this by laying out the images on the table and asking Barbara to pick any which resonated most with her. Below is an example of a choice and the conversation that followed.

“When I think of the design school, everything is visual, and you have to show both yourself and who you are, and your story. It’s also very clear to people where you are in your process, and I find that really hard. If I do not know people well it becomes even more difficult.”

“What made it easier is when everyone had shown their ‘vulnerable’ side, they had seen each others presentation. I could see how they were struggling just like myself. And in some way it helped, because… it’s not to say that other people should show that they are struggling, but… many times, on the outside, these are not sides of people that you see.” 

Another exercise we tried out was ‘what if’ statements and visuals. Placing somewhat provocative statements on cards we used these to trigger dialogue around a speculative idea and an exploration of pro’s and cons if the scenario were a reality. Below is an example of a few cards and the conversation that followed.

“First thing I’m thinking is that it’s really daring… it would make a shift in accepting and embracing these challenges, and saying ‘it’s here, let’s face it and do something about it”

Five years ago she wouldn’t have done it. “I have been very embarrassed to have all these difficulties. today, maybe it’s also my age, I’ve been here for so long So I think it would be nice. As I said- a real statement. A concept. This is for making people notice, and then you could do something afterwards. To make society aware, kind of. I don’t see it as a solution - it’s very performative and staged. But sometimes that’s necessary. I see it as this third space, this hybrid”.