3 Sketches and 10 Ideas

The Design Process

Since Noah has been not feeling well these days, three of us had brainstorming process based on what we learned from the stakeholder map that includes staff, faculty and students at Emerson College. We conclude that students at Emerson feel there are barriers among different programs and student groups, in which case students don’t have a lot of connections across different disciplines because geographical separation and lack of channels. The initial idea is to create things that help students overcome barriers and get them more connected to each other. We have a lot of discussions about how to motivate people to engage in the things we design, and how we could design to create more interactions and conversations among students.

We started with five ideas each. In the first brainstorming meeting, we three discussed 18 ideas. First, we presented our own ideas individually. Then we discussed it as a whole, removing four that had little to do with sparking collaboration. Then we found that Linhui and Ken each had a similar idea in content, but in a different form, and we integrated the two ideas together as a game. The rest of the ideas are similar or can be borrowed from each other, and then we complement and integrate each idea. Finally, considering the diversity of media, we chose apps, documentaries, games, offline activities and other media to form our final ten ideas.

In our brainstorming process, we came up with the idea of creating a game which create a narrative for students to engage. In the game, there would be different tasks for students to do and their choices decide what would happen in the next task. However, we don’t think this idea works because by joining this game, people’s problems such as lack of connection and collaboration did not really get solved, instead, it’s more about getting people to realize the problem. So later we gave up that idea. Another idea we came up with was making a series of comics. By creating characters in the comic narrative, we write stories about people like those who we met in the interviews for the stakeholder map. But we finally abandoned that idea because it would be too difficult to create narratives that connects stories of different people at Emerson, and it was also about bringing this issue up but not solving the problem.  

In the discussion, we first thought that the three ideas about making documentary films were very interesting but not feasible. We think the focus of this project is how to spark collaboration in a creative way. So we chose three of the most creative ideas out of ten. Ken's idea of  “Lunch with others” App is one that everyone likes. Because he focused on his design concept during his presentation, which is to allow people to make a connection in real life in addition to virtual space. Lava’s skill sharing application is also recognized as an interesting way to spark collaboration. Linhui's ideas focus on specific groups, and she believes that some people may have barriers to direct or face to face communication. Therefore, her design is anonymous, which can better stimulate the participation of this group.

In terms of choices of media in our sketches, there are two digital apps, one digital art installation and one documentary. We feel that digital media platforms is one of the most frequently used media in the society nowadays and it maybe more convenient for people to communicate as a tool. On the other hand, the idea of the public wall and digital screens is about creating an immersive environment for people to engage where people are less distracted by social media. And then we had a discussion about the media platforms we chose for our sketches, and we all agreed with the outcomes.

In our stakeholder research, we found the barrier that blocks the Emerson students from collaboration. So in order to spark the collaboration among them, we want to help them to find the connection first, we want to build bridges to connect different groups at Emerson.

3 Sketches and 10 Ideas

1. "Lunch with Others" app (Sketch 1)

The first sketch we want to share is a “Lunch with Others” app, the users are all Emerson students. Each of them will do a survey or test when he or she register, to identify which group he or she belongs to. After the App know the groups of the user, it will match another user who isn’t in that group, and then it will arrange a place in the middle of their physical distance (or it can be a DIY choice) for them to exchange their lunch boxes or buy each other a lunch. More conversations are encouraged but not mandatory. There will be a “tell me something I don’t know” part, they’ll tell each other something they think the other don’t know about their groups, then they can post this part on the Lunch Stories section, like an Instagram, but it must be finished by the two users together. Their stories can be seen by all the users, they can have their “likes”. And the most 20 likes stories users can get their lunch paid by the system (App) the next time.

And consider the platform is similar to Lava’s, it can also be changed like a restaurant event once a week. In each Friday, you can have lunch with a user from different groups from Emerson in the dining hall, if you do that, you can get this lunch for free.

The opening of the app

The opening of the app

The persona process

The task function

Motivation and reward

2. An Art Installation (Sketch 2)

The open art installation provides a platform for Emerson students to write their needs, problems, complaints, feelings or wishes. The wall is consisted by hundreds of digital screens where people can touch by fingers and write by digital pens. Students don’t need to write their personal information such as names. It is displayed in a dark room at Emerson with some lights on the digital screens, in the hope of providing audience an immersive experience when watching. People at Emerson can walk in the room, look at the screens and choose what they would like to answer by writing down short answers. By touching screens, people will get different answers. The installation aims at creating a comfortable distance and space of communication, where students across disciplines can share things with others and get feedbacks and helps without being embarrassed.

How the digital screens work

3. A Skill Exchange App (Sketch 3)

This program is like a second-hand trading platform, but the items traded on it are the skills of each user. Users can share the skills and knowledge of people in Emerson. When there is a need for help, the user can publish a signal letter based on the semantic matching mechanism, and the signal letter will be sent to the user with the corresponding skill label.

That is to say, when each new user signs up, they only need to choose some skills they are good at and want to learn to form a unique label for each person. Rich and perfect skill base, can let the unpopular interest find like-minded playmates, let the popular interest find the right person. The specific operation process of the user is: click send signal letter → input interest and other brief matching conditions → send signal letter → select the appropriate partner in the response → make an appointment offline.

Profile

Check out Emerson students around you

Say Hi!

4. A Career Development App

The app provides a unique experience for Emerson students to develop their careers. It is designed to discuss common problems that almost every Emerson students will face in seeking for their career goals. For example, An Emerson student in Boston would like to apply for a job in California but couldn’t find someone share the same interest as him/her at Emerson College. The digital platform serves as a communication and discussion space for Emerson students to learn from each other and find the groups who are facing similar problems. Students will also be inspired and motivated by questions, opinions and suggestions from Emerson faculty and students. In the app, students can find related questions and answers according to different categories. There are also services for revising things like cover letters, resumes or emails. Students publish their cover letters and get suggestions from others. These cover letters are open to all Emerson students who can also learn from the answers that benefit their career development.

Different categories for job resources and discussions

One page of cover letter revising service

5. A Website for Courses

The website is designed mainly for Emerson students to learn about professors and courses. It is only open to Emerson people and they need to sign in with their Emerson accounts. Imagine that you would like to choose an elective but don’t know much about professors and courses you are interested in. It is a good way to reach out to professors, but sometimes students can also learn from the perspectives of other students who took the courses or who know about the professors. Students can choose professors and courses to see the reviews by other students. People can also choose to reply to comments, upvote or report a problem. The website aims at providing an online forum for students to discuss, interact with each other and share information that people otherwise may not know.

The website for Emerson course reviews

6. An AR Campus App

Like the VR & AR app we saw last Thursday, we can use AR technology to draw a visual campus of virtual reality. Users can interact with the objects in the virtual environment with the help of necessary equipment and influence each other. Users can integrate into the virtual environment and get virtual experience similar to the real world, so as to create an immersive feeling. At the same time, students and teachers can have a comprehensive understanding of the layout of the new options. Also, users can interact in this app.

Identifying the image

The Emerson Map

7. Electronic Screens

Install an electronic screen in every lab in Emerson. Users can write or draw whatever they want on it. Written words or pictures can be placed in a random "bottle" and floated to other electronic screens for others to receive. Whoever receives the bottle can open it, see the contents and reply.

Electronic Screens

8. An Emerson Version X-Change Show

The X-Change Show is a famous Chinese TV show that exchanges a village (poor) teenager and a city teenager’s life for one month. Similarly, we can choose two people from different departments that always feel barrier from each other, totally change their works and their positions, making it a documentary.

The Chinese X-Change Show

9. A Food-exchange Restaurant Event

And consider the platform is similar to Lava’s, it can also be changed like a restaurant event once a week. In each Friday, you can have lunch with a user from different groups from Emerson in the dining hall, if you do that, you can get this lunch for free.

An example of the restaurant

10. A Documentary "The Hidden Truth of Emerson College"

The world of visual media seems to be blending into every aspect of our daily lives. Whether it be the videos we watch or the photos we take, people need to see something in order to process it. That’s why I’m proposing that we create a short documentary to explain the conflicts we have uncovered with our stakeholder map. Rather than just explaining it, we can hear the arguments straight from the horse’s mouth.

There would be the four people we interviewed as the focal point for the project. Each part of the three act would be divided into three questions. 1. What’s the situation? 2. What’s the problem? 3. What’s the resolution? Getting these basic questions would lay out the infrastructure of what our map is trying to explain. Adding things like photos and music can really help us drive the point home, too.

Below is a rough draft of what the title card could look like. It’s important to leave a strong visual somewhere in the film for people to remember your film by. This could be compared to a movie poster trying to advertise the film.

The storyboard of 30-min video

Presentation in the Class

On Monday's class, we did the presentation for our sketches. Here are a few photos of how each member in our team presented their design work. After that, we had 5 minutes Q&A part and got important insights and suggestions from the rest of the cohort.

Ken

Linhui

Lava

Lava

Noah

Conclusion

Finally, after we did presentations in class and learned from the all the suggestions, we feel that it is important for us to look back to our problem statement that is based on the stakeholder map we did before. At present, it seems we do not have a clear vision of the users or audience we are designing for. Our initial idea was to design things that apply to every student at Emerson, but we realize that having a specific focus of user groups helps us to develop implicit ideas for the design work and to find the personas in our participatory design. We had discussions after the presentations about how to develop our ideas for the final prototype. We think that the first thing is to help over the barriers of communication that we found in the stakeholder map. By creating a platform or a space where students are happy to talk to each other or learn from each other, we are helping them to engage more in the Emerson community. In the next step, we will figure out how to facilitate collaboration among students that comes after interactions.