Designing Systems: Work / Life Balance
2016 Spring: Communication Design Studio II
For this project, Lily Fulop, Faith Kaufman and I will be working together. We are brought together based on common interest in an area of study : to “create/maintain effective work/life balance”. Even though this topic is of great personal pertinence, it is just as relevant in the broader scope of CMU, where stress culture is highly prevalent. Our goal is to create a system consisting of 3 pieces: a paper, a digital, and a spatial, which seek to inform, engage the target audience, and provide for them a call to action.
Lily’s post: https://medium.com/@lfulop/designing-systems-process-494cdd86bb8f#.i4hzoidef
Faith’s post: https://medium.com/@fkaufman/an-effective-life-work-balance-3d01ef3e2c5c#.vtl8hfnxq
/ 03.29.16 / Initial Research + Thoughts
Prompt: “to create/maintain effective life/work balance”.
Just as I sat down to reflect on the personal meaning of this prompt, I came across this post from a fellow student in CMU on the shared page Overheard at Carnegie Mellon:
It’s true. I think many of us that come to CMU carry the mindset that “[our] heart is in the work.” It makes sense that it’s such a common mindset among students here, given the level of academic achievement (hence probably effort and desire) it required to be accepted in the first place.
However, somewhere, in that motto, implicitly lies another word: “my heart is solely in the work.”
Work has become an idol of this place. It has become a center of focus, an obligation to prioritize, and a place to find our identity. I think that’s absolutely wrong, and honestly quite terrifying.
/ 03.30.16 / Personal Reflections…
At precisely 12:55pm, I received a message from a friend asking for a prayer request. It was about the deaths of two students from Carnegie Mellon that had occurred in the past few days. I was shocked, and even more so when I confirmed via an email from the school.
It all seems so unreal. It was just yesterday that my team was talking about a stress-induced suicide at CMU back in 2012.
I’m not at all surprised that this would happen at a school like ours, yet the fact that it happened shocks and upsets me tremendously. One, because of the loss of such beloved and talented people from our community; and two, because we, as a community, failed to observe and watch out for them. There is a huge flaw in CMU’s way of addressing the balance between life and work, in how we approach our human side.
— A Personal Anecdote —
Why My Leave of Absence was One of the Best Decisions I’ve Ever Made
I just got off the phone with my parents, each of whom called me upon seeing my message about the recent suicides. I still can’t help feeling like I’d have an emotional breakdown when talking about it. It breaks my heart because it’s so real.
I’m going to share some personal experience with this struggle. I’m not sure how useful this will be to our research, but hopefully it’ll provide another perspective, another voice.
In 2013, I came to CMU as a freshman design major. I was born in China, raised in Canada, but returned to China in high school to graduate from an American international school there. I’d experienced some pretty stressful academic culture there, but none of which could compare to the level of difficulty one would face at CMU, to the level that resulted in my anxiety, depression, and ultimately a semester of leave of absence.
Deciding to come study in the States was for me, already a challenge. I barely had any connections here, friends few, family none, and really in Pittsburgh, no one at all. At the time, I was at the peak of my sense of accomplishment, so it felt alright. Who knew that things would plummet so quickly, so unexpectedly.
It didn’t take too long for me to discover that there were many more issues at hand. Bear with me, as all of the following things were real issues to be addressed: I was afraid of the people, by how hard they worked and how much they took pride in staying in studio and almost living there; I hated the food, growing up in China and being pescatarian in my freshman year…no; I had to do all the chores at home, and I’m very O.C.D. about living conditions; American culture was unfamiliar to me in all ways — transportation, etiquette, even the diversity of lifestyles…I was constantly overcome by fear. I came to America under the impression that Americans are assertive and unapologetic — yes a stereotype — but a stereotype that was inaccurately confirmed by a few individuals that I encountered early on during my time here.
I do think that as a freshman, I held some arbitrarily high standards, which I’ve since learned to compromise to a reasonable extent. But going back to the subject, the worst part wasn’t dealing with all of the existing problems. The worst part was my fear of expressing my fears.
I’d noticed very early on that CMU has a culture of comparing to see who’s closer to pushing themselves to the breaking point, also dubbed the infamous “stress culture.”
Before coming here, I always felt I had ample time to nurture my interests outside of academics/work, yet still have enough time to complete my work to a level I was satisfied with. That was definitely not the case with CMU, where I felt like all my time was constantly robbed by work, or stressing about work, or even just trying to live.
It was a negative cycle that went from an overloaded amount of work to stressing about it, to being compromised from working by the level of anxiety, to self-guilt and self-shame, to ultimately reaching depression.
In studio, no one aside from two friends whom I confided in even noticed. Not the students, nor professors. In a way, that was good; one of the biggest fears I had was that people would notice my struggles and see it as a weakness, that they’d perceive me as inferior. But it also reveals something that was really quite dark and shocking…where’s the humanity in all this?
I felt like the school was okay with leaving me behind, as I felt alone in battling the struggles and trying to catch up. These burdens eventually pushed me to a limit where I was hiding and crying at every moment awake, and physically unable to get up from bed, constantly trying to put myself to sleep because…well, dreams were better than reality. I didn’t want to wake up and deal with the consequences, only to be reminded by others how irresponsible and unreasonable I was being. I find their reminders laughable.
Eventually, I called my parents, telling them I needed to “leave this place.” My parents, being worried like any parents would be, gave me the freedom to make any decisions I needed, even though initially trying very hard to persuade me to stay.
So I went home. Just up and left.
That was perhaps one of the best decisions I’ve ever made — to do nothing at home and simply exist. It was hard at first because it felt like a waste of time, and having nothing to do while battling depression is, in case it’s unfamiliar, one of the most difficult things because you’re forced to sit down with it and confront it.
However, after a duration of just existing for the sake of it…I learned that everything was okay. The “real world” was much slower than CMU, and there are so many more ways out than the little bottleneck that CMU shows us that everyone’s trying to squeeze through. The world was so much bigger than CMU; there’s so much more to life than work, and it’s okay to be a slacker sometimes. Life is SO much more.
During this time, I traveled to so many places, spent time with family without thinking about anything pressing and actually got to know the relatives I’d never come to know. I also learned that my family loved me more than I ever imagined, immediate family and distant relatives alike. I learned how blessed I am, truly.
Of course, some have heard my testimony and how I came to find my faith back in Christianity during this time, but that’s not the point of this anecdote. I’m not trying to convert anyone.
Sometimes I wonder if CMU being the tech-savvy school it is, treats us as if we’re robots. Sometimes I wonder if CMU forgets that we are humans that have emotions and needs that need to be addressed.
Perhaps there are those with thicker skin. But does that mean those who don’t should just be ignored, and left to “suck it up” and just “deal with it”? What happened to designing for the 1%? And there’s no way that there’s only 1% of us.
Let’s try to change this.
—end —
Some issues that could be addressed:
- unnecessary fear of expressing anxieties / struggles
- breaking narrow perception of “ways out” caused by CMU culture
- accountability for each other — building a community that takes care of each other
/ 03.31.16 / Speed-Dating Session
We used the time in class today to quickly run through a speed-dating session, with each team divided into two parts: interviewers (1 person from the team) and interviewees (1–2 people from the team). The interviewees rotated to meet with different interviewers and respond to questions each team came up with in brief 5-minute sessions (with a grand total of 7 sessions). Faith and Lily were our designated interviewees, while I played the role as the interviewer.
The interview questions our team came up with are as the follows:
- Would you feel more comfortable with the administration or student-run organizations?
2. How do you define happiness / how do you find fulfillment?
3. What methods do you take to alleviate stress?
4. If you are unable to find a good work / life balance, what’s preventing you from doing so?
5. What engages you in a visual piece / what do you enjoy in a poster?
6. Who do you perceive as the most stressed student group on campus?
7. Where do you expect to see interesting posters?
Our interviews are recorded here:
General Findings:
- definition of happiness is personal; there is no one hard definition
- many people found peace/a sense of rest tied to their happiness
- their sense of fulfillment is attained through reaching goals
- goals changed / shaped by social atmosphere + gaining social acceptance
- feelings of guilt arise when spending personal time outside work
- consensus that student-run orgs are trusted more than admin
Direction: focus should be on finding balance between life and work, emphasizing the importance of having fun outside of work (moving away from stress culture)
/ 04.02.16 / Audience, Context, Constraints, Assumptions
Today was a happy, productive meeting. Even though I’ve only had one meeting with my team so far, I’m really excited to work with Faith and Lily and see how we can make a change that has a potential to make a positive change to impact campus.
We decided to initiate our approach with affinity clustering, by grouping certain findings from interviewing our classmates.
—
A breakdown of each section:
I was really happy to see how many things we came up with for this section.
We decided to shift our focus to promote well-being (target the root causes of our “stress culture”) instead of attempting to improve CAPS or other psychological services (treating the symptoms).
We share same the sentiment that students should not feel stressed / pressured to the point that they need CAPS, therefore we want to focus on developing methods in preventative measures, which could apply to the general student population, not just those who are extremely stressed out.
/ 04.04.16 / Message, Medium, Assumptions
Today we addressed our medium, message, ideas, and assumptions:
/ 04.05.16 / Visual Language
Today in class, we used different mark-making techniques to generate visual elements/ideas that may help us tie together the three visual pieces together in a visual system.
Our team came up with our own list of adjectives to how we want to represent our deliverables.
My adjectives were inviting, soothing, peaceful, motivating, inspirational.
Notes from our meeting:
We especially wanted to address calling the audience to make habitual changes in taking care of their physical, emotional and social well-being.
Scoping down our project…
“My Life is in more than the work.”
#habitsofhappy
I met up with my housefellow from my dorm this afternoon. Angie Lusk is a lady on the team behind the great work of the Mindfulness room as well as a teacher for the Thrive@CMU course. She shared some insightful thoughts, both from her perspective and from her experience.
Some notable points from our conversation:
- “balance” should be replaced with the word “consistency” or “fulfillment”
- the pacing of patching a road to happiness should not be intimidatingly grand/impractical — take smaller steps (ask each day, “do I feel fulfilled in …?)
- the “balance” of each day will be different — some days weighing more on work, others on life, family,etc.
- the practice of spirituality
Angie was so kind as to offer collaboration with the Mindfulness Room if we saw a need!
Apparently, there’s also someone who’s planning to start a video campaign with the message “My heart is in the…” That’ll be interesting to see.
Angie also mentioned that there’s a project (https://theenergyproject.com/) that deals with exactly the subject matter under scrutiny…will take a more detailed look when I have time.
/ 04.06.16 / Catch, Action, Validation
We also did plenty of mark-making today, which was lots of fun! Just need to keep reminding ourselves to keep it relatively “gender neutral”…
/ 04.07.16 / Approach to Research
I’m still trying to find some time to read a book called “Happier: Learn the Secrets to Daily Joy and Lasting Fulfillment” by a professor from Harvard that teaches positive psychology. My parents had recommended it to me since I was in high school, but I just never had a chance to sit down and fully engage in it — this project gives me the perfect reason to! It’s as relevant as can be.
1000 Awesome Things is also a great book — just to explore the intentions behind creating the book and what it calls the audience to do / cause them to feel.
I’m also participating in a research study regarding happiness through downloading an App on my phone called “Happiness”, which asks me about how I’m feeling at random times. Let’s see if I can learn anything from this!
Physical
We’re drawing inspiration from the Starbucks collectible cards. We want to create an artifact that people find value in keeping and displaying. This way, the audience would often be reminded of the small #habitsofhappy and be motivated to act.
We want to use this opportunity to create fun patterns and designs that people would enjoy collecting, and include simple messages such as “take a walk” or “call mom” to encourage them to take a break from work.
On the other side of the collectible cards, we plan to write a brief validation of why they should take a break…both the benefit of the specific action (micro-validation) and the overarching reason for the #habitsofhappy (maro-validation). We also thought about including this as a question instead of a statement, which may encourage the audience to be more introspective and reflective about the actions they’re taking. This alternative method would be very effective if it would work, as users would be coming up with their own responses given thought instead of being given a statement from an external source.
Digital
Similar to our physical collectible cards, we intend for our digital pieces to contain a short message of call to action (e.g. “take a walk!”). We plan to create the hashtag, “#habitsofhappy” and make an Instagram account that posts a new “challenge” every week or so that encourages people to take photos with the hashtag.
We’re drawing inspiration from Candy Chang’s interactive work as well as Miranda July’s “Learning to Love You More”(www.learningtoloveyoumore.com).
Spatial
Where are places that people would be most unhappy?
Where are places that people are most reflective?
Location: Unexpected, high opportunity of encounter, low barrier for engagement.
/ 04.09.16 / Patterns
A collaborative display of all the patterns that Lily, Faith and I came up with during our pattern brainstorming session!
Catch
(what short phrase/question/statement can anchor your system? Might a word or two be changed from piece to piece without breaking the system?)
What habits make you happy?
What’s your favorite habit?
What’s your healthy habit?
Action
(What do you want people to do? How might you incite/encourage action? Think phrase/question statement here too.)
Find your balance.
Get in the habit of happy.
Validation
Blurbs on the back.
(for taking a walk) Give yourself a break — your body will thank you
(for taking a shower) Refresh your mind — the shower is a hub for fresh ideas…
Spatial Idea Brainstorming:
Candy Chang
Dallas Clayton
- Chalkboard idea
2. Digital screen — teeter-totter game on touch-screen
3. Take a Penny, Leave a Penny — swapping habits
4. Physical feeling the balance — teeter-totter of work and life
5. Events that are hosted — e.g. getting ice cream together
/ 04.10.16 / Visual Vocabulary
After brainstorming (seen below) and going through a long process of discussing the suitability of the color palette for the purpose of our message, our group decided on using the color palette circled on the very right in the image below. The palette has an appropriate level of balance and has enough contrast in hue and saturation that they enable each other to pop. They’re offsets of the primary colors, but still preserve the same level of presence.
Our palette seeks to be refreshing, energizing, inviting and fun. The dominating warm colors convey that light touch of energy.
/ 04.11.16 / Playing Around
/ 04.12.16 / Integrating the System
How do we use every piece of the system as a part of the whole?
Right now, we’re at a pretty solid place in terms of identifying our visual vocabulary (of course, still much to polish up, but we’re making good progress!) — but a good question that Danae asked our group was “how can you use the digital piece to bring the audience into a physical space?”
We’re now directing ourselves in using the digital Instagram platform as a way to invite the audience to different social events that may be happening, such as exploring the Schenley trails together or getting ice cream together.
Danae also brought up a good point that our patterns / colors are starting to come off as pretty feminine. That’s a valid point. Men are a large proportion of the neglected population that undergo stress but are often repressed from expression. Therefore, we’re working on adjusting the balance of colors — mainly playing with saturation levels and curves — to attain a palette that doesn’t just target females.
Crit with Stacie:
- small-scale games that may be more practical
- integrate into the environment — how? Where would people find them?
- how to make cards something worth collection — what’s a fun way of finding the cards?
- the act of discovery
- bubbles, chalk, hopscotch, hula hoops, swings
- what is being communicated? — the multiplicity and what is being said about the set?
- using colors as splash, not necessarily using the pattern in its entirety
- simplicity is nice…don’t get overwhelming!
Crit with Robyn:
Look into trendy men patterns…
- Pendleton, Urban Outfitters
- geometric
- less variation in colors
- how to maintain a more gender neutral pattern?
/ 04.17.16 / Preparing for Presentation
We experimented a lot with colour in the physical piece —
Crit from Deniz & Raph:
- coral & teal are stereotypically not associated with masculinity
- wanted more hints of red
- bottom right (last iteration) is effective — contrast between vectorized text and hand quality in background
Spatial
The spatial component of the project has been the most difficult one so far. We’ve scaled it down to set up on-campus events that people can casually stumble upon; events that are low-maintenance and low-commitment, but can bring spontaneous gratification.
Here are some examples of events:
- finger painting
- kickball
- freeze tag
- giant collaborative tarp mural
- four square
- frisbee
- pet puppies
- yoga
- thai chi
- free lemonade
- ice cream bar
- jump rope
- giant jenga
- friendship bracelet making
- karaoke
- bubbles
- water balloons
- tug of war
- tie dye
- hula hoops
- bubble wrap popping
- s’mores in Donner Ditch
- chalk drawing
- “playfair” for upperclassmen
/ 04.18.16 / Anchoring Down Ideas for Spatial Piece
We continued to brainstorm on some possible ideas in the events…We have yet to consider how these events should take place.
Checkpoint Presentation:
Feedback:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1njDcGv_PMQncdy9I-7A5HinTcbnCvBDED07dIKjFaEI/edit
/ 04.19.16 / Reflections
- the audience could be narrowed down — vague & previously targeted
- color works — could try brightening colours
- how do we define “working too hard,” “healthy,” “balance?
- solidify spacial…how will you get people to go to the events?
- how do we make sure that people keep the cards?
- how do we encourage people to keep the cards with them?
/ 04.20.16 / Cards + Colours + Prototypes
Initial prototyping of stickers:
Some iterations of the physical prototype:
Physical prototypes in context:
/ 04.21.16 / One System vs. Variation in Parts
We’ve been working a lot on prototyping these past few days. What we really need to start working on though now, is how to tie together the pieces into one coherent system but still allow enough variation within the system to have variation.
/ 04.24.16 /
/ 04.24.16 / Hexagons!
Today, the meeting revolved around making more concrete decisions for the visual language. Instead of just keeping the consistency of the colour palette, we decided to narrow down the pattern of the visual language to purely hexagons.
This decisions enabled us to use hexagons to directly connote the deliverance of #habitsofhappy. Therefore, for the spatial component of our project, we will be using hexagonal mats to indicate the happenings of the events that we initially planned. Instead of large scale social events, we would have small, self-initialized events (e.g. bubbles, painting) by providing the audience with the necessary tools to enable these activities and placing them on the hexagonal mats.
We also worked on developing some iterations for the digital component of the system:
How do we make the composition look like it’s one piece instead of separate elements?
/ 04.25.16 / Prototyping the Instagram Posts
Today I was working on making the laptop stickers that will be used to publicize the campaign, as well as the logo for the Instagram account that we’ll be making.
Reflection:
- we liked the colour-pop drop shadow (second last to bottom right), but they don’t really exist elsewhere
- stacked text has a strange look / strange connotation
- be careful not to make it look too much like soccer balls
- being careful with legibility in restricted scale (e.g. Instagram logo)
- ** note for future: make sure the art board is at an appropriate size so file size isn’t enormous as is it right now ***
For some reason, I really want to make this into pattern on a roll of tape. So here it is above!
Spatial
In context:
Physical
Digital: Instagram Logo
In context:
/ 04.26.16 / Post-It Crit
We had a crit with Stacie today as well, in which we got great feedback on our visual system. Even though we were pretty happy with what we came up with (especially now narrowing down to the hexagonal pattern), Stacie brought up a pretty good point;
The heavy digital editing defeats the initial organic, imperfect handmade style.
We’re thinking about keeping all components of the system consistent by using ragged cutouts of hexagon edges instead of creating perfect hexagons in the Instagram posts and place mats.
The feedback we got from the post-its session was also quite helpful. Angee’s suggestion was particularly insightful, as she commented that she’d want to keep the cards more if we’d have recommendations for how to enable the activity/habit. For example, for “Read a Book”, we could provide a list of good reads, and for “Learn a New Recipe”, we could include a recipe / links.
(Post-its Feedback: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1u1j4BQmK77bwTH9VTkMSzf34-cRmUcwQaSvapACne_w/edit)
Some things we need to work on:
- visual system — fix it by reintegrating some more organic elements
- brainstorm list of suggestions
- figure out shape/form of spatial piece
- phone sleeve can try flush edges
To-Do
Today:
- The pattern
- Figure out bowl shape?
Tomorrow:
- Revise visual elements
- Add back to cards
- Create sleeve
- Bowl — start prototyping
I’m going to be working on providing recommendations / suggestions of what to do on the back side of the cards. First thought that came to mind was a list that provides a series of suggestions (3–5?). However, I’m now contemplating just putting one suggestion for each card (or one main one, a few sub-suggestions) so that there is less deliberation to be done making decisions of which suggestion to take.
Another concern which arose to me just now is the differentiation between the activities suggested by the Instagram posts as opposed to the ones suggested by the cards. While Instagram activities are more small activities based (short-term), the cards recommend long term habits. However, sometimes it’s pretty hard to determine the different between the two. For example, while “read a book” should be a habit people develop, as a short activity, it could be discouraging in that it seems like a pretty daunting task to read an entire book. Perhaps it would be helpful to break down “read a book” to “read a chapter from a book” for the Instagram post just for a small activity, so that it seems feasible.
I do think we need to think more carefully about the scale and scope of each of the pieces and make sure that the Instagram posts with small break time activities are bite-size so people can digest them without feeling intimidated by the scale of the task.
/ 04.27.16 / New Patterns! Cards — Recommendations on the Back
New Visual Language
Physical: Collectible Cards
Notes:
- some colours are wrong, need to inverse the colours of back of cards
- colour values are off for some card backings
- not sure about light weight & italics on hierarchy for back of cards — inconsistent with rest of system
Digital: Instagram
Notes:
- Visual language ties the piece together relatively well
- white hexagon in center still feels too dominant and artificial in comparison with organic form of pattern
Spatial: Small-Scale “Take a Break” Events
/ 04.28.16 / Critique + Final Scheduling
Critique:
- colored bowl? white tablecloth?
- colored squares not working
- add organic feel/hexagons to squares
- hexagon also pulling it away
- do we need the white border hexagon shape?
- integrate multi-colored hexagons into everything else
- colored cards not as fun
- looks cheap w color pairings — bring back organic feel
- images don’t integrate on the Instagram
- graphic element has richness and multiple colors
Weekend Schedule:
- FRIDAY: play with individual pieces, go shopping, take some photos of actual spatial piece environment (Gates, Hunt, Wean, etc.)
- SATURDAY: finishing touch on pieces — 1. instagram; 2. cards (front & back); 3. spatial (bowl & placemat); 4. stickers; 5. snapchat filter!
- SUNDAY: final touches & print
/ 04.29.16 / Individual Play + Fix-ups
Notes:
- front of cards are still being modified — instead of hexagons with one colour, we’ll try applying the colourful hexagon patterns on all of the cards to keep it fun & systemic
- back of cards may need modification based on that
Got the fun stuff!
/ 04.30.16 / Let’s Get Down to Business!
Cards are in the process of being modified to a consistent collection with the coloured pattern… It’s coming along!
Physical
Spatial
Lily and Faith are (so diligently) working on getting things done for the spatial, and made fine progress in figuring out how to make the hexagonal bowls so that they have sides that are large enough & spread enough to touch the tabletop.
All the process…
They’re looking good!
Here are all the finalized cards:
Notes:
- should “do yoga” be aligned optically or consistent with all the others?
- scale them down to fit other phone sizes
To-Do List:
- stickers — packaging, laptop (white with coloured text)
- packaging the goodies for spatial — (w/ stickers, rubber bands)
- editing cards — w/ Instagram (@habits_of_happy)
Front & back of cards:
/ 05.01.16 / Printing…
Physical
We later realized that we wanted to print the cards front and back, which meant that the placing of the cards on the paper would have to be reflected.
Digital: Instagram Logo
Faith worked on the Instagram animations so they look like rising balloons! (will update).
@habits_of_happy is live!
Spatial
Spatial is going well — we just finished printing out the individual pieces for the bowls and are waiting on putting the final pieces together. All that’s left is putting on the final touches!
Schedule for tonight/tomorrow:
- Lucy: cut out stickers + cards (45 min), visual vocab sheet (1 hr)
- Lily: put together bowls, make sleeves
- Faith: Instagram, system poster
- 8pm studio photo shooting (1.5 hrs)
….nevermind. Seems like the prints have gone wrong — precisely, shrunk — and now the printed patterned sides no longer fit the bowl models anymore. Aghhhh!!!!
oooookay. We’re reprinting. Aghhhhh 110………….
We distributed the tasks pretty well amongst ourselves; Lily assembled the bowls and sleeves (mainly things associated with the spatial piece); Faith worked on gifs for the digital piece and putting the Instagram account together; I printed and cut out the physical pieces, and made hexagon patterns for colouring.
/ 05.02.16 / Documentation in the Photo Studio
We finally got everything together — prints, bowls, digital…
Spatial, Physical, Digital!
Physical
Spatial
We chose three of our possible events to document — blowing bubbles, free kitkats, and colouring hexagons!
Digital
In Context
Behind the Scene!
We had fun taking photos in the studio and in Hunt.
Systems Poster
Lily and Faith put together our system into a comprehensive poster, which emphasized the interactivity and playfulness of the piece.
Visual Vocabulary
Our system, broken down & explained.
/ 05.03.16 / Presentation Day
I was pretty happy with how the project turned out; it’s not perfect, but I learned a lot from the process of developing a designed visual system and also in terms of working with others. I’m really grateful for my fantastic teammates, who were exceptionally encouraging and diligent, and who kept me as on task as I’ve been this whole semester.
Final Show
A few of my guy friends came over to our table and expressed how much they liked the visual design — we successfully diverted from creating overly feminine patterns, phew! They liked that the patterns were playful and childish, but in a good way. My friend Derek said, “just looking at it makes me feel…happy.”
Melissa really liked our project and how we’ve integrated the saturated bright colours, which are attention-grabbing.
Terry brought up an interesting point of challenge; she pointed out that while our project was a nice concept of intervening in the long durations of work hours for students and strives to provide stress relief for them, sugar (the kitkats) and bad diet was a huge contributor to the amount of stress experienced on campus. She asked if we could provide fruit and healthy snacks instead. That would bring in a lot of complications regarding the freshness and maintenance of the perishable foods, the material of the bowls, etc. But her point is very valid, and I’m sure many students can relate. Sugar is a temporary relief that contributes to the root of the problem.
Stacie, as our teacher for this project who’s seen the transformations our project has undergone, still wished to see us push the project further. The patterns we ended up with were a little resemblant of…skittles. I guess that makes sense. All those saturated rainbow-y colours could be a little skittle-looking. I’ve also had friends tell me that the patterns remind them of Google. Legos. Maybe cutting back the saturation a little bit on those patterns could’ve helped.
Reflection
I really enjoyed working on this project with my team. The topic was particularly relevant given the timing and atmosphere of our campus (after the suicides). It really gave our project a backbone in its importance.
Developing a consistent visual system was quite difficult, as we started off with really female-directed patterns and had a hard time steering away. But as we progressed, and eventually settled on a gender neutral hexagon and a primary-heavy palette to tie our visual piece together, things started to fall into place. I learned how effective symbols and signs are in tying a system together — they’re quick and easy to recognize, and simple to tack onto existing pieces (although integration is a whole different story).
There were many considerations that we had to make in terms of scale, particularly for the physical and spatial pieces. The sleeves and cards took a bit of playing around with, as we had to ensure they were small enough to fit most phones, but also large enough to hold the content we included without compromising legibility.
We also learned to balance dynamic colours with white, and vice versa — to be bold with our saturated colours (not something I’m typically comfortable doing.) Experimenting and trying things out — just making iteration after iteration with feedback — was a very effective way of testing whether something is working or not.
I really like how our system turned out in the end: the physical piece encouraged people to develop habits (long-term), the spatial piece granted immediate gratification (short-term) by providing a short break on the spot, and the digital piece tied together the two, while also encouraging the formation of long-term habits with Instagram reposts. Of course, as always, there are modifications that we could make to improve cohesion of the system, as well as taking in consideration of how these pieces would need to be managed if they were actually implemented, but I’m still really proud of our team for how far we’ve come!
Epilogue:
It was a pleasure working with Lily and Faith, whose work ethics are incredible and continue to teach me to balance out life and work — on the other end of the spectrum! Yay team #habitsofhappy — Don’t forget to take a break! :)
