Introduction and Mapping the Territory
January 13th 2020 IxD Studio 2 Index Project Challenge Designing for A Better Life
Today was an exciting day in the studio. After coming back from a month-long break, we were introduced to our studio project teams and brief. Watching Enough White Teacups, the class was excited to hear about how our class will be able to participate with the Index Problem Challenge.
The Index Problem Challenge is based in Copenhagen. They focus on sustainability and improving life with design. This brings us to the brief Design for a Better Life. How can design be a catalyst for change in our day to day? How can simple touchpoints change the way we operate in different aspects of our lives like
Home
Body
Play
Community
After learning about our topic we were then introduced to our teams. The team is MYSSA
Michelle Cedeno I am generally calm in manner and temperament. I can get along socially with most people. I am understanding and like to see all sides of a problem. I work well in the mornings and get a little cloudy and slow at night after 11:30 pm. I like to socialize but need time alone. I really like thinking outside the box and speculating ideas/ futuring scenarios. I like facilitation and team cohesion. I love being creative and sketching ideas.
Yiwei Huang I like being playful and creative from time to time. I like short-time sprint working and brainstorm ideas. I usually think visually, in material and shapes. I’m flexible about time management and am willing to reschedule according to changing future prospects. I feel good after helping and supporting people when they are in need.
Sanika I am a strong introvert (but trained extrovert) and over the course of this project am learning to take on a more “Show don’t tell” or “talk less do more” philosophy to work, because I often tend to talk, but not follow up with action. I believe that my team encourages me to push myself, so I look to them/you to give my 100%.
Stefania I am very energetic and like to bring a positive attitude to the team, so normally I take care of team dynamics but I don’t mind sharing or yielding the leadership to someone else in the team, actually I prefer for a more organized person to be in charge of documenting the process. I love to have group meetings to share ideas and assigning tasks to work individually after. I have flexible time frames for working so I don’t mind working early in the morning or late in the night but let’s keep this in human time please! We’re not robots!
Anuparitha I have never in my career had a hard time in team settings. I always manage to understand every team member and accommodate my working style to get the best project outcome. I tend to lose confidence when I’m even slightly unsure of something. I prefer working in the mornings; however, I have managed to pull off all-nighters when required as well.
After class, we all met as a group for the first time to really understand who we are. As a team, we identified our strengths and weaknesses. We talked about our priorities and how we want to handle conflict and communication. WE talked about what we want on our portfolios and the types of jobs we are looking for. This was a productive firs introduction as it set the tone for how we want to move forward with many delegations and teamwork aspects for this massive assignment.
We furthered this discussion over some great Thai food. We had a lot of laughs and conversations that lead to a very transparent view of our goals this semester.
January 15th, 2020: Introduction to Territory Mapping
After our first meeting and group outing, we worked on the modules and our team contract seen below.
We then learned our deliverables for next Wednesday and jumped straight into a conversation about our interest and what we think LIFE is and how design can be an impact on this topic.
We realized quickly that our interests are varied. We did a great job of bringing about personal experiences in the conversation. Topics we covered ranged from finances, policy, sex, women’s health, literacy, city infrastructure, and identity. These discussions lasted hours and it was just fun to hear us collaborate and discuss as a group. WE definitely learned what we valued on an individual level and how to transform that to a group effort was fun.
This day was just dedicated to ideation. We have a lot of interests and were not ready to land on one just yet. So we decided to leave the conversation open and regroup later to see how our interests converge.
January 16th 2020 Narrowing concept
We met very briefly to narrow some of our concepts to a more manageable scale. Like the picture above shows we landed on a few areas of interest, channels, audience, and trends that we wanted to stick to and see how they connect. This was a process to see if we can see how these areas can connect.
January 18th, 2020 IxD Studio 2 Visualizing our Interests
We met virtually to really see how these topics connect. Above is a very rough connecting map to see how our ideas converge. A lot of vast topics came up but it was interesting to see how they are all connected in some way.
Migrant population
EducationFinancial Literacy,
Taxes
International Students/immigrant
Health Literacy
Linguistic Diversity
Linguistic Diversity
Civic Intelligence
Family and Parenthood
Life Transitions
Students who just graduated
Starter’s pack into social
Circular Economy
Packaging
Quality Standards Sustainability Literacy
Teenagers
Clean Energy and
Consumer Products
non-human centric design Birds in Cities
We decided after this meeting to focus on how we can keep the circular economy at the forefront. We all are interested in this topic and saw how it can connect to a lot of fields. We did individual research on the topics so we can come back the next day to see how to really focus on what area of circular economy we want to tackle.
January 19th, 2020 IxD First Pass at Mapping
Meeting in person was great to really see how our connections can become a focus for our project. We white boarded our research and individual interest for the circular economy.
After voting and finding an area we liked we realized that our categories include Play and Learning and the Body/ Wellness. WE are determined to see how these fields bridge on top of each other and we saw how this was happening within the first pass of our territory map.
