Design Studio

Reflecting and Reframing

Reflect on your and your project’s current stage of development allowing your project to talk back. Analyze your so-called “failures” as opportunities for redefining your frames of reference and repositioning yourself and your project Accordingly.

Deliverables:

An updated version of your design space. A 500 word text with a summary of your journey so far, adding the repositioning of yourself and your project. Make explicit new project goals and next steps including a proposal for the 1^st intervention of the second trimester.

Reflections

Innerbot

Innerbot is a GPT3 powered mobile application that uses real data to help users connect with simulated versions of themselves or others.

Key Learnings

• Potential to use it as a conversation rehearsal tool for example to stimulate hard conversation.
• Some people find it taxing to collect information so if this would be a digital product eventually, we have to find a way to remove pain points.
• Concern of ethics, fear of being unable to tell the differences. Need to manage expectations.
• Potential to adapt functions such as identify patterns in user’s behavior and communication style.
• For violence prevention would be interesting to see if the tool will be able to show the participants when there are red flags or when someone can be violent. Need to design full experience for the product to be responsible.
• The process of building the AI bot can be part of the healing process.
• AI was able to answer in another language.
• However, if it is not mentioned, AI will default back to answer in English.
• Might need to prepare a list of questions as sometimes some user is unsure what to ask.
• When asking general questions such as future plans, etc, we get general answers. When asking more intricate and detailed question, we get a response that will better depict who the user are as a person
• Some users feel uncomfortable with the notion of machines one day having the ability to write so humanly and eventually begets the question of what it means to be human? Especially if the “Geist” is so easily captured by a non-living object.

Building the Futures

This is an intervention where we co-creating and imagine futures with and for children in public spaces and schools in Barcelona.

Stories that was created from the activity:

• “A kid and a car” - 5 years old, male catalan in Park near Raval.
• “The grass and the hat, and the sloth will go out of the hat.” 5 years old, male catalan in Park near Raval.
• “The baby brushes her teeth, goes to the car and sleeps”. - 3 years old, female in a park near Raval.
• “A boy and her little sister, he teases her and the bees tease them” - 4 year old Italian female in a park near Raval.
• “The worm teases the baby.” - A 4 year old Italian female in a park near Raval.
• “Cars are bad for the future because of the gas, I prefer bikes, walking. The future with gas and cars is bad.” - Group of 7-10 year old girls and boys in a park near Raval. They said the future with pollution looks bad. They seem like migrants, and are environmentally conscious. Had no adult supervision.
• “In the future technology and contamination are everywhere.” “Barcelona has no space for animals, animals should be free not in zoos”. “Nature should have more space in the city”. “Barcelona is not very accessible for handicapped people”. - 13-14 year olds girls and boys outside of school in Sant Antoni.

Key Learnings:

• Hard to approach when the childrens are playing, and it is important to talk to parents first. There is no need for consent forms.
• Sometimes the kids can be too young , parents act as translators and facilitators.
• Places of transit are not a good place to engage with children.
• Very literal interpretations.
• Teachers bringing groups for field trips on site will not be a good option as they were busy working managing large groups time constraints with no consent directly from parents.
• Potential to drive workshops that can be designed for play.
• Potential to incorporate AI.
• Consider aesthetics and graphics when designing for different age groups.
• Kids from age 11-13 had better critical thinking skills and were able to make connections between images.
• We can potentially try using words instead of images.
• Potential to use pictures that the kids do not pay attention to as part of the data collected

General Reflections

Through my projects, I learned how to collaborate with people from different backgrounds. I had the opportunity to collaborate with experts from their fields and I was able to learn from how they work. Secondly, I learned how to apply AI and technology on subjects related to healing and mental health. In the beginning, I thought that it is quite hard to relate mental health with current technologies, as research suggests that the use of technology, increased screen time especially social media links to negative effects to mental health. Right now, I think technology could be used as a tool in healing. Third, I also noticed that it was not easy to work with a subject that can be quite heavy and personal to some people. Therefore, I am starting to observe ways that can be more subtle and gentle.

For co-creating futures with the kids project, we learned a lot through our intervention. It is important to just go out and try out our ideas even though the activity might seem imperfect. As we planned our intervention to have an activity with the kids in school, it is good that through executing it earlier with the park intervention, we failed early, and were able to try things out. We were able to learn our point of failure and the parents were happy to help us. This will help us to be mindful and design a better activity when engaging with school children.

Next Steps

Personally during my exploration last term, I was able to dive deep into the topic and encountered a lot of confrontation. I learned how to set boundaries to separate design interventions with my personal life. Even though the process is uncomfortable, my internal healing process is apparent.

I was very honest to myself and after building the AI chatbot, I was inspired to seek closure with people who have caused me pain in real life. It was what I really needed. As a result of the confrontation and embracing it, I was able to release the burden on my shoulder that has been with me for many years. It is really unbelievable to see the quality of my emotional well-being have improved. I was able to see joy everyday and woke up feeling content, peaceful and safe. Even when there are negative emotions and events, they come and go like a cloud.

I also noticed that I have developed a skill set to accept myself. I was able to appreciate what makes me different from others, such as my way of living, the love to spend time being alone, and not being sociable enough as an essential part that makes some of my talents possible. I will not be able to paint, to play the piano and violin, and to write stories without these traits. This is an important realization as I have always been trying to force myself to ‘fit in’ and when I failed to do so, I was trapped in an endless whirlpool of self-blaming. Being honest with myself, and being able to say no to what is not for you without guilt is a big advancement for me. Since we’re living in a world that explodes with all sorts of information and opportunity, I think it is crucial to know what you really want to be able to dedicate your full presence and attention to. Time and attention is a scarce resource, so I want to make sure that for every decision I make it is a conscious and mindful act so that I am able to face whatever challenges and be accountable for the decisions’ output.

Critically observing myself, I noticed that my strong drive towards mental health is slowly fading as a result of my healing. I guess in the past I had a strong desire to be heard and heal. Even though I am still really concerned about topics related to mental health, what drives me more now are topics related to the brain, subconscious and the cognitive process. While I am still interested in designing a product that can ease and improve the therapy process, now I will start to wrap up the Inner Bot project and focus more on the group project-co-creating futures with children.

I will pay attention to what this change might lead me to. In the meantime, I will be focusing on my new interests and see how it could potentially combine with my on going projects. I will be visiting the Bologna Children’s Book Fair as an illustrator, and right now I am preparing a series of books that teaches children how to manage their emotions. Therefore, I think the series of intervention, my interest in cognitive science, subconscious and learning would help me grow professionally and personally to create a meaningful artifact.

Updated Design Space

My Design Space might look a little different than the conventional ones, but this is what make sense to me and I was able to work in this format better compared to the initial design space. Thus, I will keep building on my design space with this format. For full prototype of my design space, please check here

1^st Design Intervention in Context

Deliverables

Document the 1PP design intervention, analyze it and reflect on the findings. Describe the alternative present scenario that this intervention is offering. Then, update your design with the relations you have built.

Reflections

As our first official intervention after our experimentation in the park, we carried out our first workshop in Collegi Sant Andreu (Infantil - Primària) with 7 years old school children.

This would be a 60 minutes workshop, carried out with 25 students.

We will be facilitating the workshop where the children imagine future scenarios on topics related to climate change and gender equity. They will be making a collage of the future scenario in different settings, for example: future for the park, for the school, sports, etc. based on the theme we selected.

We will be using magazine pictures and worksheets showing pictures of places, such as parks, schools, zoos, and etc. We are using ‘local’ images so that the children can familiarize themselves with it.

General Observations

• Children at the age of 7 are very obedient when everybody is doing the same thing. For example, when the children are getting too noisy, we raise one of our hands as a signal for everyone to pay attention. As a result, every child followed the action and they were able to keep quiet and pay attention.
• Furthermore, when dealing with children, they have a very short attention span. It is hard to keep them engaged and ask them to listen while the other group is presenting.
• Children tend to speak freely among their peers and have an activated discussion.
• There is a difference between children age 7 and age 13/14 when interacting with an adult. Teenagers interact with an adult like a ‘friend’ whereas little kids will feel a little shy.
• When guiding the activity, as facilitator, we try not to give concrete examples so that they have more room to be creative and create their own collage.
• In the process of explaining, we tend to squat down so that we are at the same eye level with the children.
• Children prefer hands-on activity rather than presentation to keep engaged. I notice that when we are showing slides, some of the children start to get distracted, whereas when we are doing the physical activity, most of them are engaged in an active discussion.

Alternative Presents

As a team, our intention is to collect the ideas that they generated and work on it and continue to be inspired by the collage that they made. Questions that we asked ourselves include:

• Is there a difference between their interaction among their peers vs adults (facilitators and teachers) during this project?
• As a facilitator, how can we communicate with the children more efficiently using body language, expression and choice of words?
• As a facilitator, how can we collect children’s ideas of the future without influencing their creative process?
• How can we move forward from what we have learned?
• What do we do with the data collected?

We foresee a few potentials, including creating a standard workshop so that any school can use our framework, create some workshop materials and make a demo video so that it is more accessible to other schools, or perhaps collaborating with more schools to refine our methodology.

We also received some feedback for improvement.

• Some pictures might not be appropriate for the children.
• While children are sharing, it is difficult for all of the other kids to see the collage.
• Children ask if we would be going back for another intervention.

Next Steps

We would be preparing for another intervention shortly for two other classes on the same day. To be well equipped for the next intervention, we will be refining our project by preparing more materials (pictures and worksheet), find a way to forecast the children’s collage and so that everybody can see it during the sharing session, and also keep our presentation time short and quick. We did well in time keeping so we would try to keep that up. We will see what happens during our next intervention and decide how to move forward from that.

Presentation

Updated Design Space

2^nd Design Intervention in Context

Deliverables

Document the 2^nd collective design intervention, analyze it and reflect on the findings. Then, update your design with the relations you have built.*

Reflections

After our first workshop in Collegi Sant Andreu (Infantil - Primària) with 7 years old school children, we decided to carry on a second intervention with modification.

This would be two 60 minutes workshop, carried out with 25 students respectively

The workshop will be almost identical with the previous one with some changes. The children will imagine future scenarios on topics related to climate change and gender equity. They will be making a collage of the future scenario in different settings, for example: future for the park, for the school, sports, etc. based on the theme we selected.

This time, we experiment with two different modes: for the first time, we will encourage discussion with images distributed. For the second time, we would ask the children to discuss for 10 minutes and start drawing, then only we will distribute the images for them to add on to their collage.

We will be using magazine pictures and worksheets showing pictures of places, such as parks, schools, zoos, and etc. We are using ‘local’ images so that the children can familiarize themselves with it.

General Observations

• This time, children will gather around the table when we have a discussion on the story, most of the children are engaged during the sharing sessions.
• During the first group when we distributed the pictures before the discussion session, children were using the pictures mainly to create their future scenario.
• During the second group where we delayed ten minutes and encouraged the students to start drawing first, the pictures were almost not used at all.
• Most of the children prefer to keep working on their existing stories no matter how interesting the pictures were.
• From this, we learned that we could manipulate how we want the children to engage with the workshop simply by deciding the sequence of the activity.
• When children are engaged in an activity that they are interested in, especially something that they have put in effort to work on, it is very hard for them to change their direction or switch their attention to new materials. They will be in their own world.
• The end stories of the second iteration were more reflexive and of higher quality. With the collage they struggled incorporating all the elements and with no collage they could focus on their stories.

Feedback & Reflection

• Need to think of what we would be doing next after this, do we create another intervention that is similar, or make it as a series of succession intervention?
• Children ask if we would be going back for another intervention, overall they enjoyed the activities.
• Need to have more facilitators as some time during the sharing session some children got distracted (need help from teachers to keep the children focused).
• How should we iterate the materials to package this workshop? Ie. eliminate collage Gender inequality is too complex for their age range, would iterate that section to talk about inclusion instead.
• Let the messiness of the situation jump in. Asking kids to facilitate the workshop.
• Let the project fly(?)
• Who should be in control?
• Who should not? What point could you actually be giving to others so that it can be part of the project?

Next Steps

We would be organizing all the data we collected. We will be documenting the different future scenarios created by children, and find some opportunity to use the data with AI. For example, using this AI Word Cloud Generator to see what are the common words that come up.

We could also do one co-creation session with the 3 teachers + the organizer. We can also have a workshop online training teachers and facilitators so that they can carry out in their own school. We plan on using all the collective answers from the workshops and create a podcast format.

Presentation

Updated Design Space

3^rd Design Intervention in Context

Deliverables

Document the final design intervention, analyze it and reflect on the findings. Update your design space with the relations you have built.

Reflections

The third intervention will be done together with the two micro challenges through the Fab Academy. Our end goal is to test out the prototype during the remaining time that we have and use the prototype with school children early next term.

After doing the first micro-challenge, building a perception board for future intervention, I started to reflect on questions about my project in general such as to whom can I speak with, what am I doing, and is there any alternative materials to consider for my prototype. Also, after learning about radical situatedness, I also took this opportunity to reflect on my design spaces, micro challenges and also the collective interventions that we did.

Context

For the third intervention, Ariel and Jimena came together as a group and discussed our common interest.

Based on our previous project, we’re interested in exploring future perception and attitudes of school children. We have worked on a collage exercise to ask 8-year-olds their perspectives reimagining the future of parks, zoos, schools and sports. Therefore we would like to bring it to another level. We are looking into creating a prototype that will aid facilitating the workshop and also how this intervention could create a lasting impact to the local community with the absence of all three of us.

Purpose

What

A “perception board” that allows children and teenagers to map their sentiments, attitudes and perceptions around global problems and their potential solutions.

Who

Our goal would be to integrate the tool into a session with teenagers (over 13 years old). This is because their capability to reflect on global problems is much more developed than on younger children and we are inspired by debate sessions carried out by children over 13 years old.

Where

Indoors or classroom settings.

How This can be done through a workshop or a small game session with our Artifact. The artifact includes: set of question cards, wooden board, pointers.

Why

By showing an analog version of their attitudes, this will help because:

• If we ask one same question to a whole class, people will feel differently depending on the topic, their emotions that day and the knowledge they have on the subject. So it is helpful to document the sentiments that can also later be compared in future sessions.
• We want to visualize diversity in points of view and exemplify how points of view are flexible and can evolve over time.
• Stresses the importance that each thought can be challenged and evolved.
• Teaching kids to express their point of view in a diplomatic and peaceful way respecting each other.
• To create safe spaces for sharing their thoughts because it can stimulate difficult conversations.

Prototyping

Our game is separated into three parts: Question Cards, Pointers and Perception Board.

We started with a series of discussions to prototype this ‘perception board’. To start with, we did a user testing with a digitized version on this Miro board.

After a series of testing and discussion, we improvised it to better suit the children. Things that we improved includes: - Replacing numbers on the ‘pointers’ so that children can recognize it better - Reframe our question so that it is more children friendly - Enable participants to stack upon each other should they have similar opinions

After testing out the concept digitally, we proceeded with the physical manufacturing.

• Initially we wanted the design to be a peg hole with a board. But we noticed that it is a problem as the same person could not choose the same position. This is the reason why our design evolved from the peg to the pointers that fill in the negative space. Integrating electronics.
• We want this to be meaningful and not just flashy or integrating because we want to add another fabrication technique. We planned on adding LED lights to help with wayfinding what is a Positive attitude / Strongly Agree in green and a Negative attitude / Strongly Disagree in red.
• We faced a difficulty to include several questions in one game, so we explored a stackable design and fine tuned our initial prototype.

After a series of iterations, we finally came out with an MVP.

General Observations

For this intervention, we tested this out with our MDEF peers. - Most people seem to be very interested in the emoji’s printed on the pointers. - There was feedback by our peers stating that perhaps adding a ‘question’ card so that the participants would have an option to use it when they encounter a topic that they want to challenge. - This could be a great ice-breaking board game.

Reflections

• Generally, this game might be more suitable to young adults rather than children.
• We are planning on making the digital and physical version, so that even when we are away, the teachers or anyone who is interested can still be using it.
• We are also thinking of bringing this into the community sometime next term once we carry out more testing.

Updated Design Space

Exploring Alternative Presents

Instructions

Map, visualize and analyze the evolution of your design space over the 3 iterations based on ways of drifting, create a narrative in relation to your alternative present.

Reflections

Based on my experience, I think my design space follows an expansive model. This is because even though everything seems very disconnected, they are still very relatable in some ways. I think one point that ties everything together is my focus on UX and interests in human behaviors and motivation. From that, I was able to expand into different fields such as mental health, children activities, and urban agricultural systems.

I will approach my alternative present in my personal perception.

My narrative would be:

Wen is struggling to find good UX opportunities as there are limited resources and faculty that are specialized in the interaction design field in the MDEF program. It seems that the program has a more emphasis on physical objects and engaging with the community. Actually what Wen wants is really simple, is that her talents would be able to be contributed in the right place at the right time.

Alternative Presents:

Wen started to find opportunities by looking around what is available to her. Instead of focusing on things that she cannot change, she starts to actively engage and look for signals around her cohort. Even though she failed a few times during interviews to get a UX design intern position, she is still able to use it as a practice ground so that she is able to be more confident in future opportunities.

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Last update: June 9, 2023