Week 9 Ex-Change

Today we had another exchange and it was exciting to see everyones ideas coming together. I showed my exchange group my team's idea of high five week as a campaign leading to an event a the end of the week. I also showed the group the range of tshirts I had photoshoped with our logo on it. They liked the watermelon colour and the logo. They also like the prototyped videos of us hi-fiving business people and commended us on our bravery and found it amusing that business people behaved in such a surprising manor of accepting our hi-five.

The following are some quick notes that I took down while I was telling them my team's ideas and development:

-Focus on their reactions
-Give people something to take with them
-Brighter colour palette

Bree talked about her Spatial project of designing an aquatic house inspired by boat houses. Built half on water and half on land. She is developing the layout of it and testing out a detachable room that floats on the water. Callum suggested that the room not be completely detachable as I said that it would be unnerving to sit in a room that could potentially float away. So we thought that she could pull the room out so that it has a mote of water surrounding it and leads through from the kitchen. I also suggested to her to use more curves in her design to give more of an aquatic feel and so that the users can follow the sun around the house and would connect the kitchen and living areas together.

Callum is doing a multipurpose camping utensil for his industrial project. He is redesigning the pot clamp thing and giving it more purpose in preperation of food while camping. Since the last exchange he has scrapped his original idea and moved to this. The purpose of his design is save space and give more purpose to existing product thats out there. His current design incorporates a fork and spoon and the pot clamp. I suggested that he can go bigger and also put a clip or possible attachment for a torch and the tong feel also leaves an opportunity for a flint in the clamping motion

Class Critique/interim

Today in class was interim critique. For this interim we had to bring in three prototypes for our hi-five idea. In prior to this class we had to book in with a tutor to test our prototype we chose Donald as we only had 10 minutes and we didn't want to have to spend it explaining our idea. We also had all streams to go around and prototype on. Our three prototypes were a video of us hi-fiving on Lambton, a teaser paper hands that let people know a hi-five was coming and and cardboard frame that we can frame people in to hi-five. We got alot of positive feedback from this session, and also some good insights from new people that saw our project for the first time. I also liked today as we got to experience other people's projects we havn't seen before and I love classes that make you get up off your seat and away from your laptop.   

Prototype on Lambton

Today we went out tested our hi-five idea on our target audience in the CBD. We had prepared ethics forms and printed and cut them ready if anyone would ask for them. We were wearing black to be semi matching but it was cold so we all had coat and jumpers on. We started with Georgia and Hannah walking down the street offering hi-fives on their way past. But neither of them could build up the courage to be the first to go. It was much more intimidating than we thought to approach people. I went with Georgia next and once I did the first one it soon became easier. I was rather surprised at how many positive hi-fives we got from alot of people. I think some people were hesitant because we just looked like students messing around. The cold weather also played a factor in people not wanted to take their hands out their pockets. After we hi-fived people as we walked past we also needed to test our traffic light idea which we started this with. This was very scary as we were immediately approaching people. Weirdly for me I found too invasive so I couldn't do it. Luckily Georgia built up her courage and took one for the team. It was very awkward but funny to watch. Some people found it brightened their day but most did not know what to do when Georgia approached them and panicked. So this prototype day has been helpful in ruling out hi-fives at the traffic lights.

Week 7 Class

Today was the first class back after mid semester break and we had all brought in our examples of design for well being. In our stream we split into groups to present our example and asked to chose the most interesting. We liked Lily and Alex's as it was an illustrator connecting to kids. When our streams got together to present the most interesting no one from our class offered so we got randomly picked to present. It was a bit put on the spot but luckily we had a little bit of a script to follow. I think people responded well to the twist cap idea but were reluctant as it was for coca-cola.

Mid Semester Break

Over the mid semester break we met up a few times to complete the tasks that were set to us for our break. We also used this meeting time to discuss our ideas and think about where we can take it. For task 1 we were asked to bring in 1 example of a man made experience that addresses a persons well-being. We looked at a few existing examples and I showed my team the coca-cola twist video that Callum from my exchange group showed me. We were all drawn to it, not because it was coca-cola, but because of the way it encouraged people to interact through clever design. I also liked that they really thought about their audience and had a well-being issue they were trying to solve.
With this coco-cola idea we made up a quick slide show and short script to show in class when we get back.