Senior Capstone
On Empathy: To help people become more reflective and better support systems for others
2/1/18
Albert and I are tackling the super broad problem space of empathy. I think I was mostly inspired by Jessica Walsh and Timothy Goodman’s project to become more kind. I really like how they threw themselves in to their social experiments and how honest they were in their reflections of how the project changed them. Throughout my years here at CMU, I’ve learned a lot about house energy efficiency, crime in Pittsburgh, financial planning… but for this last studio, I want to learn more about myself and how I view the world and others. In a way, I want this project to impact me. I want to be challenged in different ways, not just in design, but in the extent I will go in understanding what it really means to be more empathetic.
I was also really enjoyed reading through 40 Days of Dating (yet another Jessica Walsh and Timothy Goodman project). I think I really liked how they documented their process throughout their experiment. The vulnerability and authenticity in the way they wrote made it feel like almost a story, which made it really easy to digest. They also added little artifacts that supported the story visually and kept it light-hearted even when they were talking about more serious topics.
Albert was interested in looking in to how the nature of a conversation can signal the self-centered-ness of someone (conversational narcissism) and create a digital piece for his portfolio.
So we had this broad topic of empathy and to be honest I never realized how uncomfortable it was for me to start a project without knowing exactly what I’m doing. (I guess afraid of wasting my time heading in the wrong direction.) But after spinning our wheels for a little bit, I think we decided on designing 5–10 different activities that would help people be more aware/conscious of their decisions and document them on a website of some sort. What kind of activities? I think figuring out which ones and refining them is where most of our time is going to go.
2/6/18
Today we met Chris and Richard.
Kristen told Albert and I to start doing some of the experiments ourselves so we get a feel for it, so we decided to talk to and help out the homeless people we both have seen many times in our four years. It’s kinda sad to be honest that it takes a project for us to talk them, and in a way feels a little weird. Like if it wasn’t for this project, would we have ignored them like everybody else? And now after we’ve done this, do we continue to say hi to them? It does make me a little uncomfortable thinking about what would we do next. Do we want to make lasting change or just quick things that happen once (compared to not at all?) But it was good, it felt good to help people. It felt nice to exchange smiles and shake hands. I think what kept me from reaching out to people in the streets here was because no one told me I had to. No one expects me to, so I don’t feel obligated or motivated to get to know them. But at the same time, it wasn’t very difficult for me either? I’ve spoken to the homeless/poor many times when I was doing a service trip in Philly, but that was the reason I was there so it felt different.
Another challenging thing for me is to make sure I don’t go around talking about what Albert and I just did. I like to share the stuff that I’ve done, so people would respond and I guess approve of me. But I don’t want to be doing this because of other people’s praises, I really do want to be nicer and more empathetic!
2/12/18
Volunteering:
This Saturday, Albert and I volunteered with CMU’s APhiO service fraternity at Light of Life, a ministry that focuses on serving the homeless.
Why did we do this?
I think after meeting Chris and Rich, we were feeling especially altruistic and volunteering seemed like the obvious next step when it came to compassion. (We are however still focusing more on empathy, hoping that empathy would lead to actionable kindness/compassion). I’ve done a fair share of volunteering before, as a girl scout for over ten years and as part of my Christian fellowship at CMU. But I don’t think I’ve ever really did it because I cared deeply for the cause, I just did it because it’s a good thing to do and thought this type of service was a good way to give back. And I think I had similar thoughts for this outing. It was like hitting two birds with one stone, it was good for our project and was a good thing to do. I guess I was hoping that we would feel challenged to empathize with the homeless people we would be serving and that would add on to the insights for this project.
Do you think you understand more people’s perspectives?
To be honest, not a whole whole lot. We ended up not serving meals and was put on cleaning duty because they had an open house event that day. Didn’t really interact with people outside the CMU bubble much, other meeting some of the APhiO brothers/potentials. Was actually a little frustrated at seeing that some of the brothers seemed to be only there for social reasons, but didn’t care that much since I wasn’t planning on joining the frat anyways.
What did you gain from doing this?
I guess a good feeling of doing something productive with my time and at least was of help to a ministry that helps such a marginalized group.
How did this change your perspective?/Anything you’re going to change from now on?
It’s still a little weird for me, like this project is making me more aware of how I need a reason for me to do good/be compassionate? Like to be honest, if it wasn’t for this project, I doubt I would spend my Saturday morning volunteering. I’m not as compassionate as I hope to be. Although our motivations were off, isn’t it still good that we both went and did the work?
I don’t think my perspective really changed, I’m fine with volunteering, but I think I’ll still need a reason (that benefits me) to go. Not sure how to change that right now…
Side-note: We said hi to Rich on Saturday when we passed by him in Oakland. I half-joked with Albert that the reason why we made sure we said hi to him was to even out the cognitive dissonance that was happening inside us (doing this for a project vs. doing this cause we really cared)
Work session today
We talked through our experience with volunteering and basically decided that it’s not going to be one of the activities we’re going to be putting on our site since we 1) wanted to focus on empathy and 2) we personally didn’t get too much out of it. Albert talked about how he played a video game called That Dragon, Cancer over the weekend. The game is about the experience of a couple with a terminally ill child and how they face the difficulties of their reality. I clicked through a few scenes and it’s literally perspective-taking. You hear the mom and dad’s thoughts and you come to understand how they deal with the whole situation. Albert says he’s come out the game with a better understanding of their struggles.
Something that I thought was pretty cool was the use of metaphors in the game. (For example, there is a scene where the mom is on a boat with their son not knowing how or where to steer it while the dad is drowning in the water. It’s suppose to show how the mom is hopeful, but doesn’t know where to go, but the dad is doubtful and doesn’t want to join in the mom’s hope in fear of disappointment.) I think metaphors are powerful in the sense that I can relate to a physical feeling or a more abstract situation often better than to someone’s specific situation.
Evaluation questions: We also created a guideline to help us evaluate our experiences during this “feel research”, so at least we would have a way to objectively talk about them. (Was also thinking about how it’ll look visually in our documentation, like color code common words Albert and I used?)
Mission statement: Thought it’ll be good to have one, to make sure we were on track and on the same page. The two main points:
- Help people become more aware of what they say and do (reflective), and how it affects others
- Provide resources for people to become better support systems
and the mission statement is kind of a mash up the two points:
We want to help people to be more reflective so they can become better support systems for others.
We’re going to spend the next few days brainstorming other activities for us to try, what we have so far:
- Conversation about misconceptions/assumptions
- Reflection
- Metaphors (more generative and visual way to empathize with stories)
- Something on conversational narcissism/active listening
2/13/18
Activities brainstorming
Albert and I decided to take some time to brainstorm more activities that we would like to test out. My friend showed me a lecture from Paul Pangaro about how we design conversations (in the lecture’s context is was more like between people and machines), but it proved to be very helpful for our project.
Some slides from the lecture:
I think a major takeaway from that lecture was the importance of a shared language. Without being on the same platform, it’s hard to exchange thoughts in a way that the parties respect and understand the intent of the conversation.
So, what are different ways to create a shared language? (other than just words and text that are most prevalent)
With that in mind, I looked in to youtube videos, classroom activities, installation art that prompted people to be more reflective or communicate in a productive and respectful way, but was still fun and not too crazily structured.
Some resources that I found:
- Interesting format to start conversations about assumptions (having people sit back to back and describe each other after a conversation) https://youtu.be/zbpYqzDo2PQ
- Another interesting format to get to know someone (filling in the blank of someone else’s story and having them correct you) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mBWZad_wUg4&feature=youtu.be
- 35 interesting questions to ask to get to know someone deeper, The Proust Questionnaire: https://www.vanityfair.com/magazine/2000/01/proust-questionnaire
- Teaching one concept in different levels of difficulty/audiences (how to think in another’s perspective) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eRkgK4jfi6M
- Classroom reflective activities: https://www.nureva.com/blog/15-ways-to-spark-student-reflection-in-your-classroom
2/14/18
Misconception forms
Albert and I regrouped and shared our ideas for the activities. He went more in depth for our first category of dispelling misconceptions and looked in to understanding values of another person, whereas I chose to explore a wider range of activities for the different categories. We also talked to Bettina who is also working on empathy/compassion for her senior capstone (with Haewon), she’s going to be joining our activities/exploration phase since we seem to have similar goals.
Inspired by this video, I wanted to see how a semi-structured conversation using a form where one person fills in their assumptions about the other person. In this context, Person A shares a passion/interest they have that Person B doesn’t understand, they both fill out the same form about Person A’s passion (prompting Person B to confront the assumptions they have about that passion/people like Person A). And then opening a discussion where both can understand each other better.
We did two rounds. First one was with Albert and Bettina on Bettina’s interest of “Questioning the Popular Belief.” Second one was with me and Bettina on Bettina’s passion for “Sincerity”.
Why did you do this?
Although we’ve been in the same class all these years, I don’t think Bettina and I have ever had a deeper talk about what we actually think. Did it to“Pick her brain,” get to know the other person.
Do you think you understand other’s perspectives more?
B: C seems a lot more chill, and goes with the flow
C: B is really passionate about this thing and tries to improve herself
What did you gain from this?
C: Better understanding of what sincerity means, as well as her own self-reflections on what “sincerity” means; not an issue for most, not an issue for her
B: Undersrtand C more as a person
How did this change your perspective?
B: Acknowledged that most people don’t want to be insincere, but they just don’t think about it as much as her
C: Why is “sincerity” so important? how B wants her relationships to be; sees “sincerity” as a result of people not wanting to be vulnerable
Takeaways from misconceptions form format:
- Took a while to find something where we didn’t align
- B took time to think back on what the other person was trying to say, actively listening and trying to understand my pov
- Writing my own misconceptions about people who valued sincerity, was a very reflective process in itself
- During the conversation, I had to admit to a lot of my own I guess “flaws” (things like I tend to go with the flow) that led me to how I thought about sincerity, which made the conversation a bit emotionally tiring (in a good way)
We spoke to Molly and showed her this method of having a more guided discussion. She thought it was interesting to have a documentation or artifact after a conversation which is something that usually just happens and doesn’t leave anything tangible. She was iffy about the word choices/how I framed the question and wasn’t sure if “passion” was the right word, which I agree with. A good first run, nevertheless. She also suggested that we explored different ways to document a conversation using the same topic (sincerity), drawing, sculpting…to see if different mediums would bring forth different affordances in how we understand each other or process our thoughts.
2/15/18
Drawing out our conversations
The next day Bettina and I spent a bit over an hour talking about sincerity and this time a story from my side, how my faith has helped me through loneliness when I was abroad.
Why did we do this?
B: I guess it was curious how it would work with drawing, wanted to hear more about Christie’ story
C: Same, curious about how it turn out since conversations are usually not recorded this way
What did you gain from doing this?
B: Learned more about each other! It was nice to be able to share my past stories and see how you’ve grown. Very soul-filling!
C: Nice to get to Bettina better, and like share stories that I usually don’t tell people outside my Christian bubble and have a nice discussion about it
Did you understand more people’s perspectives?
B: It helps me see a lot of underlying similarities with people that I didn’t think there will be. Hopefully help me be more patient and understanding in the future
C: It’s cool to see how we’ve have a similar mindset to how we responded to obstacles
Takeaways:
- Drawings are a good way to document a conversation, an artifact after a conversation where you can look back at the most salient points
- Stories seem to be literal because of time as a guide (in terms of drawings, especially by the person who is listening), whereas conceptual thoughts are more abstract
- Talker tends to be more abstract (probably hard to draw and talk at the same time), listener is more literal trying to capture salient points
Side-note from a few days later: I’ve been thinking a lot more about sincerity and how when we aren’t genuine with others, it really does hurt relationships…
2/28/18
Sculpting metaphors
I feel like Albert and I talk a lot about this project, but there hasn’t seem to be as much results as I hoped for. We need to be better at setting goals, sticking to it, and evaluating what needs to be changed.
We started with sculpting metaphors. Basically asking people to tell us a story where they’ve experienced some sort of growth and sculpt something that symbolizes that story. It actually took people a pretty long time to think of a story and most of their sculptures were really literal. (For example, Priscilla sculpted a medal when she talked about the time she ran a metaphor.) I think sculpting is a fun and approachable medium, but I don’t think it really adds much to the understanding of the story. (Not really for the listener, and especially not really for the storyteller) I did however really enjoyed listening to my housemates stories and I felt like I’ve gotten to know them better.
I think the point of the sculpted metaphors was to help people understand a feeling better as a part of a shared language. Like in my own experience of feeling like I was repeating old mistakes over and over again, it felt like I was in a washing machine. And although people would not have gone through the same experience as I did, maybe they have had a time where they’ve felt like they were in a washing machine too. But we’re realizing it’s hard for people to think metaphorically like that.
Sculpting responses
Both Albert and I really liked listening to the stories of our friends. Are there things we can do to help us be better listeners? Since these stories are for the listeners, how can we make sure we are hearing them right? We decided to pivot and have the listeners be the ones that sculpts as a response to the story being told. Sculpting would be in a way for them to ask for clarification if what they were hearing is right.
I’m still unsure that clay is the best for this, would the results be better if people just restate what the storyteller said? Or does sculpting allow for a different (and visual) way to start a conversation about what they just heard?
We decided to run this activity with Kevin and Nina:
Kevin and Nina
(Pre-Activity questions)
How well do you know each other? 2/5
How similar are you guys to each other? not very similar (but ended up in the same place)
Kevin’s Story:
- Internship worked for ad agency excited for his first job
- good opportunity to work with new ppl enjoyed New York, but didn’t really like the experience
- learns he want to be alone
- had no AC
- main thing he got out of it was presenting in front of other ppl “fake it til you make it” not uncomfortable around people with more “power” (e.g. professors, interviewers, etc.) went up a level in terms of maturity
Nina’s question:
What do you want in life? Maybe design isn’t my future, but I want a real good group of people to work with
Clay Sculpture:
- New York is crazy
- Possible directions (forks in the road) went partway up a certain direction
Why did you do this?
Kevin’s internship is very relatable in this moment, fresh in this moment
Do you think you understand other’s perspectives more?
I think so; didn’t really have a judgment before
What did you gain from this?
Nina learned more about Kevin
Kevin got to rethink what he was telling and about his life… and himself
Does sculpting add anything?
Not really sure, but it was nice to play with it while listening
3/1/18
Organizing our Activities
I think our activities fall in to three different categories so far:
- Dialogue (listening and talking in a conversation)
- Listening (active listening in a conversation)
- Reflection (after a conversation)
We might want to look in to:
- Responding(thinking before speaking in a conversation)
because after our feedback session yesterday, people seem to be very interested in knowing what to say to someone…
Some more takeaways from our round robin:
- How to define being considerate and thoughtful?
- People are interested in knowing what others want to hear, they want straight up application
- For the activities, might be interesting to do it with different pairs (couples, strangers, best friends, acquaintances)
Instagram Self-Reflections
Albert and I have been doing this activity where after a conversation we felt was deeper than small talk, we post on Instagram a reflection of how that conversation went, what we talked about, and what we feel like we could have improved (by listening or responding better). We have noticed that being reflective allows us to be more aware of ourselves and others especially in this context of conversations.
We also recruited two groups of ~10 participants to share an Instagram account to do this activity. One group is a group of people who know each other, while the other is a group that doesn’t. I think what we’re looking at here is how vulnerable people are willing to be if they know that other people might know who they’re talking about. We just started to phase in this experiment over the weekend and there has only been a few posts. I wonder how effective this is really for people. Is there a better way we don’t have to force reflection on people? So far the posts that we did get have been really interesting to read, although the reflections are broad, I don’t think we should control how people should reflect too…
Interested to see where this experiment goes, and hopefully post-interviews will help us assess how successful this was too.
3/5/18
Diagramming a conversation
I was feeling uncomfortable with where we were again in our project. Just felt like a little lost, we have these activities, but I wasn’t sure what they were trying to get at or I couldn’t really explain it well about how it fit our bigger picture. And then I was getting anxious that it’s already halfway through the semester and I wasn’t exactly happy with what we can show. Albert and I talk a lot about the topic, but I’m afraid that we aren’t very good at setting goals and making sure we actually do things.
We spent most of class diagramming out our understanding of a conversation. It was kinda helpful for me, Albert thought we were going in circles a little, which I also agree.
After like 2 hours of diagramming, I think we came to the conclusion that:
- Reflection (which happens outside of conversations) helps us build awareness (which happens during conversations). Being more aware helps us reflect more from previous conversations.
- Effective listening is being more aware of when to talk
- Effective responding is being more aware of what to say (in support of what the other person is saying.
- We would want effective responding come from effective listening
I think even after this we were still a little lost. It felt better for me to at least be able to take our minds off the nitty-gritty details of what activities we should do and look at the bigger picture, but I felt like we were still not on the right direction. We talked to Molly and she gave us some pretty good insights on how we should proceed.
- What questions are we asking? (for the overall project and for each activity) → Would that help us assess the quality of our experiments?
- More research on existing frameworks and “listening theorists”
We are thinking a little bit more now if a web piece as the container for these experiments makes the most sense. Since most of these experiments/activities are very hands on, we talked about whether or not it’ll be more appropriate if we had a more pop-up shop exhibition thing where people can come by and do these experiments. I do think that this type of container for our experiments makes more sense, I’m just concerned if we would have enough time to pivot and have a space ready to design. (uhg just thinking about the logistics of it all too)
3/7/18
Thinking like Designers
We met with Kristen today and she urged us to not be conversation/listening theorists because we’re not. We are designers, form-givers. We need to stop researching at some point and make stuff. So she asked us to quickly sketch out two ideas of what we thought would be an end deliverable for our project.
As I was sketching out the exhibition, I think I began to feel even more strongly about that idea. I think one of my qualms with only having a set of activities was that people won’t fully understand what the activity was supposed to do for them, also felt that doing activities would feel forced and almost a burden. (The feeling I got when we asked people to participate in our previous activity testings.) But in a space that has research along with the activities, people are able to read about how they can improve in conversations themselves. I’m imagining it to be interactive and generative, I really enjoyed looking at people’s drawn conversations or reading their reflections, it could be like a museum that allows you to add to it! I think a physical space also affords a mental space for people to be more reflective and be able to practice these skills at that very moment if they choose to.
But also writing and drawing out something so concrete, it made me realized that we don’t have much time until this exhibition is supposed to exist in real life and not just in our minds and sketchbooks. We have so many details (what information, what specific activities, branding, logistics of building this) that we have to consider.
3/21/18
Merging & Pursuing Pop-Up Exhibition Idea
Wow… I feel like our project has progressed super quickly in the span of the last two days. Kristen and Molly had us do a two day sprint, and for the first time this semester I felt like I had to do exercise a part of my brain that I haven’t in a long time.
We have merged with Bettina and Hae Wan’s group. For the longest time I didn’t particularly want to merge with their group because I thought our topic of conversations with a focus on reflection was unique enough, but at the end, both teams separately came to the conclusion that we both wanted to make a pop-up exhibition. There’s no point in having two separate pop-ups next to each other about the basically the same thing haha… Why not just have a bigger one with richer ideas and thought behind it?
Our system currently includes a website for marketing purposes, pop-up exhibition, and a takeaway zine thing that we would hand out at the pop-up exhibition.
For the sprint we decided to divide and conquer. Albert and I would come out with sketches of the pop-up exhibition spaces since most of the activities would be coming from our research (Drawing conversations, Active listening, Self-Reflection…) Bettina and Hae Wan would explore visual styles and continue to flesh out their communication styles activity.
3/23/18
Setting visual direction
After the round robin crit, it was clear that we were all very fragmented in what our visual style would be even though we did write down adjectives and pinned stuff on Pinterest.
We decided have another meeting focused on just figuring out the visual language. To start us off, we revisited our mission statements and tried to puzzle one together that encompasses both Albert and my interest and Bettina and Hae Wan’s. Although we didn’t end up with a very well pieced together mission statement, I think we were able to at least pinpoint the essence of our project.
Something like:
We want to help people be more aware of their conversation styles through reflection/introspection in order to become better support systems.
3/26/18
To direct our visual style, we also really liked the idea of growth, organic shapes, and patterns. But after a few heads-down sessions and coming back together, I think we realized that our concepts and adjectives were still too loosely defined. We needed a more concrete direction so at least we were iterating in the same space.
We went back to Pinterest with the mission to clarify what exactly we wanted our branding to look like. Being meticulous in which adjectives we used and very specific in explaining our reasons of why we liked a certain style over the other. After combing through our Pins we came across these three that we decided we wanted to explore and listed out better defined words to guide our visual style.
Adjectives for visual style:
- Lighthearted but factual
- Encouraging (let’s think about these things!)
- Open
- Layers
- Interaction between key elements
The abundance of contrasting elements that [merge/collaborate] and repel
- Lots of different shapes, patterns
- Playing with transparency blendings
- Positive and negative areas of shapes that “seem to fit”
- Layering, depth
[self] building upon and strengthening
- Layering, depth
Growth, adding onto
- Shifting the balance
The layers a conversation has
- Layering, depth
- “Peeking through”
— — —
Amorphous shapes vs geometric shapes
Contrast between shapes
Components should form coherent composition
Mix of literal to less literal shapes (e.g. speech bubbles)
Isometric/layered typography
- Not Childish
- Confident
- Personal/Intimate
- Playful
Introduction poll
While we grappled with what our visual direction should be, Albert and I started solidifying what exactly the activities would be at the exhibition. At this point, we have an idea of the topic of each activity and we know what drawing conversations and the voting poll should be, but I think we need more research to inform our active listening and reflection questions activities.
For the introduction of our pop-up exhibition, we wanted to create a voting poll that acknowledges the common things we all struggle with during a conversation. Because the exhibition space is a place we want to foster growth and reflection, we thought it was appropriate to have people see that others also struggle and to say its ok to start where we are. We tossed a survey out in to Facebook to see what kind of categories we would make for our voting poll. (We got 49 responses through Google surveys and 12 from Reddit!) From there, we took the responses and chunked them in to 11 categories to make a physical poll that we taped outside studio (we might want to narrow down a little later).
It was really encouraging to see how many people resonated with these categories and nice to see that using stickers for voting was pretty effective. For our next step, we need to analyze the results and see which categories we will keep.
3/30/18
We only have one month left!! I feel like this period of time is crucial to the success of our project. We can’t slack! I was feeling antsy about the time crunch and was wondering if what we’ve planned to do was even possible so we got together to write out a more detailed timeline.
We also decided on a name! BLAB LAB (or BLABLAB?) I guess it suits the playful nature of what we would want to pop-up exhibition to be.
Big milestones that we would need to hit:
Web Launch: 4/18
Pop-up Day: 4/27
I feel a bit better after seeing concrete dates next to specific deliverables, it’s all about being able to make those deadlines now.
Update on visuals:
Hae Wan and I decided to continue in this direction and refine it a little more:
For the silent crit, we also wanted to explore the exhibition space a little more. I’m the type of person who would limit our explorations to the things I can understand how to make. (I guess it helps me feel like I have control over the situation haha…) But Bettina brought up a good point, we should explore a bit more before we narrow down, so she made a slightly higher fidelity model of our pop-up exhibition.
Update on the website:
We’ve decided that there will two launches for the website. The first launch (happening a week and a half before the exhibition date) will be mostly for marketing purposes, giving our audience a quick understanding of the intent of our pop-up exhibition and where it will be. The second launch will be after the pop-up exhibition and will act as both an archive and a way for the exhibition to live on after it’s physically over.
4/2/18
It was really cool to see how other group’s projects were coming along. I think through the silent crit, I realized how important it is to present your work well, especially when you can’t physically be there to explain everything. Groups that were able to layout their journey to where they are now and were very clear with what their problem and intervention were definitely got more useful feedback.
Feedback
Branding
- People likes color, name, energy in visual
- How can you use symbols and shapes to visualize conversation? Agree that the wavy marks don’t it seems relevant/purposeful?
- Hard to read
- Blend wordmark + the type on a path, there is big contrast
- Circle and Blablab logo is not connected
- Lab is not coming through its wordmark
- What this blub really say?
- Humanness like in conversation drawing
Make it more relevant and purposeful in entire visual system
Pop up Shop
- Intro poll: Any prompts for this part? I think it is difficult for some people to be aware of this stuff
Activities
- I think they should get something back to reaffirm they are being heard
- What other activities can you have people do that actually involve no speech at all and still taught how to support friends?
- These are only useful to the people who had the conversation. How do you make these accessible/understandable to outside people?
- I like the energy in drawing conversations
- Are you gonna practice the activities before doing if on the cut?
- Can this more proactive to reveal the users own contribution to less supportive conversation habits? Most people assume it is the fault/issue of only others
- Reflective Questions: I am not sure whether people can actually answer these questions. People are not generally good at reflecting. Esp. if it’s something that there’ve done for a life time.
Space
- Will there be some sort of way-finding system or will users be informed of the # of activities and where they’re located? A map?
- The prototype helps me get a sense of the environment, but show should navigate it?
- 3D form is weak — system (material, voice, etc)
Way-finding, navigation system
After Pop-up Shop
- What would this look like in the long-run?
- Are pop up shops happening regularly?
- What are potentially takeaways from this project? Pop-up Shop seems like a good idea for “realization” but for continuous reflection. How will you consider the habit building process for mindful conversations?
- Is there a way to extend the project beyond the exhibition itself? Being reflective during the moment is great, but how do you make sure people continue to think about it? And not forget this reflection?
- What is my takeaway from this? The tone/connotation of the project doesn’t encourage people but kind of calls them out
- What do participants get in return?
Content
- Prompt — language/message odd to one another
Target Audience
- Who is this targeted audience? I do not feel like my conversations are lacking, So I would not attend?
Website
- Not sure If I would have incentive to go to website. What about ____ media?
4/4/16
Advice from Chris Stygar / Pivot for Pop-Up Space
Bettina went to Porter to talk to Chris about a possible plan to make our pop-up space a reality at the beginning of the class. Chris told us that it’s pretty impossible to actually construct the space we want and suggested we make a hi-fi model instead and to have a low-fi space for the actual pop-up exhibition. Right now, we’re scrambling a little to find the proper resources to be able to create a lower-fidelity space. We are thinking of borrowing tables from the UC and hopefully these large wall dividers we’ve seen before.
Definitely a little discouraged that our pop-up space isn’t exactly what we would have wanted, but I have confidence that our activities and message can get across to our audience even if it’s not in a space that we have full control of. (We can think of these set of activities could be reused in any space, make it flexible enough that other schools can do this as well? traveling pop-up activities?) I think we just have to be very intentional in how we set the exhibition up for the space that we will have.
Testing our activity instructions
Albert and I spent most of the work day taking a stab at writing copy for our activities. We were able to have a really rough draft of “Drawing Conversations” and “Active Listening” (might want to think of a cooler name for active listening haha).
Drawing Conversations:
Intro: Conflict between others commonly stems from misconceptions and miscommunication of what one is trying to say. How can we get on the same page?
Purpose: Helps both people get on the same page about what they’re talking about; helps avoid misunderstandings and misconceptions; shared energy/language
“Dialogue requires a shared language, a language of constructed meaning and understanding. [...] When conversations are not open to sharing and collectively creating a language of socially constructed meaning, communications breakdown and incoherence takes over.”
Instructions:
- Grab a blank sheet, some markers, and a friend
- Have a conversation (Prompt cards are on the table if you need something to get the ball rolling)
- Draw your conversation (There is no right or wrong; go as literal or as abstract as you want!)
- Once you’re done with your conversation and your drawing, share it with your friend and pin it up on the wall for others to see! ...or bring it home and frame it!
We tested these instructions on Carolyn and Steven.
Carolyn had a little more exposure to this activity so she might have been a little biased in knowing what to do already, but Steven gave us pretty good insight in how to clarify our words.
Feedback:
- Didn’t know you were supposed to draw+talk at same time (Steven)
- Didn’t know you were supposed to draw Carolyn’s side of the story (Steven)
- Conversation prompt cards worked pretty well
- Add instructions to tell people to share with each other
Next Steps for 4/9 Presentations
We have so much to do!!
- Flow of website before and after pop-up (CC)
- Service map of pop-up, site, and takeaways (TEAM)
The takeaways
- Write copy for activities (CC and AY)
- Drawing convo sheets (CC)
- Drawing convo prompt cards (CC)
- Communication style cards (HW)
- Active listening postcards (AY)
- Folder zine (AY & HW)
- Reflection Questions??? (AY)
- Process documentation and statement of intent (TEAM)
Test activities
- Communication Styles (BC & HW)
- Drawing Conversations w/ Convo prompters
- Active Listening (CC & AY)
4/10/18
Thinking more about the space
We also started to think more about where we would want our pop-up exhibition after receiving a email saying that we couldn’t use the boards in the UC. Bettina made some nice foam core models and spacial layouts that would help us imagine how the space would look like.
During Stacie’s class (in which I TA for), she showed an alumni’s installation project in which they strung string across trees to hang tags. I found it very dynamic and fun, which I think would fit the vibe of our pop-up. I think it would also create a better sense of enclosed space or barriers around the pop-up. (The edges of the magic circle??) We decided we would want to try this sort of display for our active listening postcards.
4/15/18
Unifying the experience and takeaway
I think because these activities were first designed separately, the experience does not feel like the activities are part of a bigger unified whole. It feels like a bunch of little things that happen to be under the same roof. To take a step back and look at our system as a whole we looked in to the experience cycle model by Hugh Dubberly and Shelley Evenson.
We went through the cycle for each one of our three pieces. I think a question that stuck with me was “How can we make a lasting impact?” in the context of our pop-up shop (which is temporary). How can we have the mental takeaways be something that lasts? How can the physical takeaways be a vessel for that?
“Our group also talked a lot about having a way for the physical takeaways from the pop-up be more unified. Since a bunch of the takeaways were cards, we wondered if they could all live together in some form that wasn’t just a folder (which was our original plan). After much deliberation, we settled on handing physical bottles (akin to milk bottles) as our “center”-piece; various activities would decorate the bottles, and visitors can decorate it to be their own, and take it home with them. The bottle was also a sort of metaphor for conversations, since many friendly conversations happen over drinks.” (Albert’s Medium)
4/21/18
Website & Visuals update!
Things are moving along as we the pop-up exhibition date is coming closer. We decided to have it on May 4th on the Cut so many of our marketing materials need to be done by this coming week so we can publicize our event.
After our pivot towards using the bottle as the main takeaway and using the communication styles to decorate it with, Hae Wan has been working on incorporating those communication styles icons in to our branding. I think we finally have our branding down!
Albert has been working on the website which we wireframed out together. The shapes on the website bounce around which I feel like it fits the vibe of our brand.
4/28/18
Marketing begins!
Pittsburgh weather is really unpredictable. We originally wanted to do the event on Friday, May 4th, the last day of classes. But as I obsessively checked the weather, it seems like Wednesday, May 2nd would be our best bet. We are supposed to have everything done by then anyways for our presentations so moving it up two days shouldn’t be too stressful. (Other than having to prepare both the presentation and all the artifacts at the same time.)
After finalizing the date, we started postering! It’s really something to see your designs in the real world.
We also launched our Facebook event. We plan to share our process leading up to the event with the public so they can feel the excitement we have for this exhibition.
5/1/18
Presentation and Blablab prep
The big day is tomorrow!! We spent today printing, cutting, and shooting our takeaways and putting together our presentation. Hopefully we are able to convey the importance of understanding your communication style and how Blablab plays a role in that.
Pictures from our photo studio shoot! I had a lot of fun editing them, I love Photoshop haha.
5/2/18
BLABLAB
I think our presentation went well, hopefully people were able to understand what our mission and vision was for Blablab. Having the event right after the presentations really helped with inviting our classmates over after class too!
Blablab was a success! There were maybe around 50 people that came by and spent on average of 20 minutes. It was a bit chaotic at first and I was a bit overwhelmed with how disorganized things felt when people started crowding around one of the tables. We were really lucky that some of our classmates stepped in and helped facilitate too. Some of my friends let me know how great of a time they had after the event and I overheard some really meaningful and thought-provoking conversations as well.
Pictures from the event:
5/8/18
Feedback and Final Show
For our final show, we wanted to incorporate feedback from our participants so we can present back how we would improve Blablab in the future. Here are some quotes from students who came:
- “I can’t do this [conversation struggles poll] because I’m amazing at talking.”
- “These are…. Deep questions so… [laughs] yeah” (as if hesitant about talking about these questions).”
- “Damn, I struggle with all of those… [looks at conversation cards] I FEEL SO ATTACKED LOL.”
- “I liked the vibe, very bubbly, but also very thought provoking”
- “I was kind of confused with where to go and what to do because there was so many people crowded around the table and only one person could explain at once. I didn’t even notice instructions were on the corner of the table.”
- “I enjoyed learning about communication styles and thinking about how I talk to friends. It was nice learning that other people also struggle with the same things as me.”
- “I’m happy I had a drink to hold while walking around; it made things less awkward because I knew what to do with my hands.”
- “Deep conversations are hard, I was more interested in how people wanted to be listened to. I liked the bottle caps too, because the questions were something I was personally interested in, but unaware that others would be too.”
- “I took away that I’m a very direct person in the way I communicate and I knew that beforehand but it was fun seeing it confirmed”
- “It was a bit crowded at other tables, so the main activity I did was talking with a friend using the bottle cap questions. We felt like every question we picked up was super well done, not cheesy at all and actually made us have a genuine conversation!”
- Overall, I really really enjoyed the exhibition. I thought it to be a great learning experience to be able to think about how I communicate using a defined set of parameters, I really liked the touch with making a bottle with a reusable straw that was something that I can keep and it doesn’t just have to look pretty on a shelf but can actually be used. The only thing I would have liked to see would have been something where I could read all the elements from the middle table about “what kind of communicator are you” — perhaps some laminated sheets that I could take, step away, read at my leisure, then put it back, because I felt crowded and overwhelmed in that area and felt I should get out of people’s ways, but then I never got to read everything. My fav activity thing was probably exchanging the tags on the clothes line because first you had to think critically about what you wanted from people and then you had to reflect on yourself to see what kind of listener you were being to other people. Ultimately, I really enjoyed the exhibition and recommended it to people :) so yeah, great job with it.
Taking the feedback we got, we synthesized it and organized them by the activity they were referring to.
Here is a picture of our final show! What a cool project to end my four years here with :)
