S22: Capstone Reflections
Week 1: Since the beginning of my college career, I have been working up in my head that capstone must be this monumental moment that needs to have profound meaning behind it.
To be honest, this first week was a lot to take in. My biggest concern is committing to a subject matter that I am not emotionally attached to; I want to be excited to work on this project and invest my time into it. This week, I am giving myself grace and reminding myself it’s ok not to have it figured out completely.
I have been reflecting on what is important to me and what interests me as launching pads for coming up with a more narrow topic. I think that has been quite helpful, as there seem to be certain themes that keep reappearing in my idea pool.
After studio this week, I called my mom and was talking to her about how a lot of my ideas are rooted in family. My strong bond within my big family has been very influential, which made me think about how I grew up with my grandma living with us. I want to pursue a capstone surrounding caretaking and the dynamics of caring for the older generations within families. I am not really sure what that will look like in terms of design; however, I think the topic is really close to me and will help me create work I am excited about.
Cheers to the start of a long journey!
Week 2: With more clarity comes more questions, too.
This week I felt like I had more direction in my concept; however, I still feel unsure about what the design outcome will be, and what stakeholder is the most appropriate to design for. During the round-robin, I got feedback about potentially making the design more collaborative between the parties that make up the family unit: the siblings, caregivers, and those receiving the care. I am really most excited by the opportunity to visually share my family story and the experience of having my mom taking care of my grandma as my sisters and I grew up.
Ultimately, I hope to have a print piece come out of the project, but I don’t want to narrow myself in too much this early in the process.
Another area for work is to more clearly define terminology for the parties at play because that was some feedback I got from my peers as well. I want it to be about family members (most likely an adult child) caring for an elderly family member (most likely a parent).
Trying to take it day by day and not overwhelm myself. Here’s to week 2 down!
Week 3: Slowing down to examine my goals
This week I sat down to comb through the multiple versions of capstone review decks I have made and tried to combine the strongest elements from each into a final version. It took me almost a whole afternoon, but I think that it was beneficial to make sure all of the elements make sense together.
At the end of this session, I felt like I had remained true to the inspiration behind my whole project: my mom serving as a caregiver for my grandma growing up. Many might not have realized the stress of balancing caring for my grandma who suffered from major depression and dementia, along with raising four girls; she was a brave and positive face amidst the heaviness she experienced on a daily basis. I want to ensure that telling her story among others is at the center of the design, along with opening conversations for individuals who may have an unpaid caregiver in their life to find ways to support them (big or small).
Now, I am starting to plan discussion guides for interviews/prompts for my mom to journal throughout the semester. Looking forward to the next steps this coming week.
Week 4–5: Primary Research Begins
The past two weeks have felt like a whirlwind. I have felt like I keep going back and forth about who is an appropriate stakeholder for my design outcome and with this lack of clarity, it feels hard to nail down how to navigate from here. The feedback I received from the faculty review was really helpful but set me down a new thought process. The faculty shared that they thought a sibling of a caregiver would not use a print piece to help understand how they can support a caregiver, as they might already feel like they know the struggles of the caregiver and feel a sense of guilt behind it. That is totally valid.
My thoughts in response to this feedback were to pivot back to my original stakeholder of the caregiver themselves, but more specifically someone that is entering this role for the first time. I had an informal interview with my mom this weekend about her experience and what she would have wanted to alleviate the stressors as a caregiver which reaffirmed my thoughts. She discussed how she wished she had guidance in organizing my grandma's care and more readily available resources for respite care, etc. I plan to continue interviewing caregivers to see if patterns emerge from responses that better direct my design.
Week 5–7: Shifting Gears
The past two weeks have given me more comfort and the most clarity this semester. I conducted 2 more interviews with different caregivers and had them share their stories: the good, the bad, and the ugly. After each interview, I created a journey map to understand how to organize all the information I was given. This process allowed me to realize commonalities in pain points and potential avenues for design interventions. The biggest takeaway from my primary research was that 1. the process of planning care for aging parents is time-intensive, and requires a lot of knowledge and resources that children serving as caregivers don’t have. 2. Parents feel vulnerable and avoid talking about aging and the future needs they may have.
Children serving as unpaid caregivers for their parents are overwhelmed with creating plans for care (legal, financial, housing, medical) as it is needed exactly in the moment.
I want to create a design intervention through a print book that helps facilitate difficult discussions with parents and children to help create a plan of care for when they grow older. When the time comes, the caregiver can follow through with the plan without as much stress.
My next steps will be to map out the book contents, create a card sorting exercise to help stakeholders determine the content that is best for the book, and consolidate the 3 journey maps into one.
Week 8–9: Content Collection and Synthesis
I feel like I am starting to have clarity and a general idea of how the form of the book will take shape…it feels like a relief. I finished the book that I am translating which was almost 600 pages and was definitely an intense undertaking, and now I have content mapped out. The scariest part for me is actually jumping into design because it feels like I’ve spent so long in the research stage. When I talked with Matt, he suggested finding 3 areas of content that I want to do small prototypes on and then execute 3 different ways to communicate that message. I think that process will definitely bring more structure and guidance to my prototyping.
Week 10–11: Prototyping
This stage of the semester has been challenging and time-consuming, but fun. I’ve spent a lot of time considering how to make content more interactive and simple because a lot of the concepts are really dense and can be not very exciting at times. I think there’s really a need to make this content more engaging because it is so important to understand. Maybe too, if it is somewhat more enjoyable to learn and look at would people be more apt to talk about it?
My next steps this week are to do some user testing to understand is it: 1. understandable, 2. desirable, and 3. usable? I also need to formulate specific questions that help me really understand those three checkpoints. Looking forward to the last push of the semester!
Week 12: Wrapping Up
I spent this week getting the process documentation ready for the presentation and creating a finalized prototype based on my feedback from the round-robin. This week in particular I have sat back and realized the amount of work and research that has gotten me to this point and that I am proud to have accomplished…it hasn’t been easy in many respects, but I am glad to have kept pushing even during times of overwhelming fear and doubt.
In general, I am finishing this semester feeling accomplished but also hungry for more. I am truly excited to get into the nitty-gritty of design styles and further refinement of forms.
