Post 10: Reframing my Stance

A Pivotal Refinement

When discussing my draft proposition with my colleague, they pointed out that I didn’t have a focused problem statement. Whilst I had identified that I wanted to talk about Generation Y’s perceived inability to attain the Great Australian Dream of home ownership, this was still quite a broad intent. The impact, function and usefulness of my proposed design was not yet clearly articulated.

My colleague encouraged me to vocalise the parts of my research that had really stood out to me. This forced me to synthesise my research, interests and opinions, in the hopes that I might identify a more specific direction for my proposition. I found myself continually talking about how I was frustrated and angered that the ideals of the Great Australian Dream and the quintessential Australian lifestyle I had been brought up with, would be lost as a result of Sydney’s current housing affordability crisis. This was a pivotal exercise as it consolidated where I position myself on the issue. I realised that I firmly oppose major shifts away from the notion of the Great Australian Dream. For example, I do not support the rapid increase of high density living in Sydney’s suburban areas.

This urged me to reframe my proposition. Rather than talking generally about Generation Y’s experiences with attaining the Great Australian Dream, I decided to adopt a slightly more assertive and perhaps aggressive stance on the issue. I realised that the ideals that fuel the Great Australian Dream are something that I want to protect, preserve and celebrate. I want to encourage others who share similar sentiments, in particular members of Generation Y, to also voice their opinions because without conversation our Great Australian Dreams will surely dwindle.

#SaveTheBurbs—a generative design proposition.

The Issue:

‘…we’re not enabling our children to grow up in the areas we grew up in,” (Murphy 2016).

Increasing house prices has led to dwindling hopes for Generation Y Sydney-siders to achieve the Great Australian Dream of home ownership. The dream of owning a detached house on quarter-acre block—with a garden, hills hoist and barbecue, is not about greed or materialism. Home ownership is associated with freedom, family, hospitality and prosperity. The fear of Generation Y’s lack thereof, has the potential to heighten their financial and emotional insecurities. A lack of affordable housing in Sydney’s suburbs, means Generation Y, may have to move further afield to buy their first home or they may have to ditch the Great Australian Dream altogether and live in an alternate dwelling-type.

As Sydney moves towards solutions for it’s housing crisis, it seems that there is a push for more high density housing developments in it’s suburbs, such as apartment blocks or townhouses. This threatens to drastically change Australia’s quintessential suburban lifestyle. For example, high density living has seen Australians trading in backyards for balconies. In attempting to create cheaper, one-size-fits-all housing solutions, important facets of Australia’s national identity are at risk of being forgotten.

The Possible Change:

I want to remind Sydney-siders, in particular those living in the suburbs, of the values associated with the Great Australian Dream—values such as privacy, freedom, recreation, nurture, hospitality, safety, pride and comfort. Doing so highlights the need for these values to be upheld throughout future urban planning. I want to adopt a nostalgic approach to protest against sacrificing the Great Australian Dream in order to solve the housing crisis.

Design Action to Support Change:

Part 1: #SaveTheBurbs Archive

I want to invite suburban Sydney-siders who have experienced living the Great Australian Dream to share a photograph and caption that depicts what they cherish most about the home they grew up in and/or currently live in.

The design will operate on a website platform where users can upload their photographs, add a caption and fill out some basic information about the photographs history. The entries then contribute to a growing archive of anecdotes and images celebrating the values of the Great Australian Dream. The design is thus a generative storytelling archive. Users will be able to filter the archives by suburb, year and specific features and/or rooms. Users will also be able to share entries via social media, with #SaveTheBurbs and a link encouraging others to also get involved. The archive serves to preserve and stand as a testament to the significance of the Great Australian Dream. It also seeks to commemorate and document the dream, particularly in case it does disappear.

Part 2: #SaveTheBurbs Media Kit

Using the data generated by the archive, I intend to create social media content that will enlighten and motivate others to preserve the ideals behind the dream in order to keep it alive. I want to prompt more consideration of the impacts of high-rise residential developments in Sydney’s suburbs on the existing local communities. I also seek to create a publication that can be presented to local councils and the NSW Government that emphasises the importance of improving housing affordability to increase Generation Y’s ability to attain the Great Australian Dream. For example, I want to encourage them to improve policies concerning first home buyers to support young Australians buy their first home. There is also the potential to explore how the ideals behind the Great Australian Dream could be brought into the shifting housing landscape.

Murphy, D. 2016, ‘Crisis point for affordable housing’, The Sydney Morning Herald, 13-14 August, p. 12.

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Post 10: Hope and determination

By Erland Howden

Design proposition

Title: Hope & determination

Practice: Data visualisation and generative design

Issue: Asylum seekers and refugees

Possible change: Targeted at changing Australian attitudes toward asylum seekers and demonstrating to decision-makers, such as the Immigration Minister, that significant support exists in the Australian community for a change to more welcoming and compassionate policies around asylum seeker claims and resettlement of refugees.

Design action: A poster series to be distributed to local pro-refugee organisations that highlights one person or family each who has resettled or is claiming asylum in Australia. The posters would display an image representing the asylum seeker and an aspect of the person’s story chosen to engender compassion and empathy in the audience, with a clear message advocating a change in asylum seeker policy.

The scholarly research I conducted has strongly influenced this design proposal. One paper in particular investigated determinants of attitudes to asylum seekers and suggested that, “encouraging people to adopt a macro justice perspective may be a useful addition to community interventions.” (Anderson et al 2015) With this in mind, the policy change messages for the poster series would be designed to prompt a macro justice perspective. For example, they might include phrases along the lines of, ‘everyone deserves a chance to live in safety.’

The posters fit into the emergent practice of data visualisation in that they apply designerly thinking to visualise the data of asylum seeker stories, which have been collected by organisations such as the Asylum Seeker Resource Centre and GetUp, or published by news organisations such as The Guardian. Further to this, there is another element to my proposal that brings in an aspect of generative design – the poster series would also incorporate a template design that local pro-refugee organisations could use to highlight the stories of refugees and asylum seekers they are directly working with. In this way, the design proposition becomes something that applies research to create communications more likely to change attitudes, while being localised and as relevant as possible to the audience.

Feedback

In discussing this proposal, the key feedback I received was around fleshing out the generative aspect of the proposal. Originally, I just wanted to create a strict template and guidelines for the poster, but since discussing the proposal with my group, I’ve been exploring ways to make the generative aspect more open and able to accommodate more diverse outcomes. For example, rather than creating a strict guide for photographic portraits, I was thinking that space could be created for a variety of images that might represent the person whose story is being told, like an artwork they created or an alternative photographic treatment. Additionally, rather than a strict print poster series, which might have limited uptake from under-resourced community organisations, I’ve been considering a digital template which could be used on websites and social media that delivers the same outcome in different media.

 

Featured image: US Department of Defense 1975, ‘South China Sea’, US National Archives / Flickr, viewed 27 September 2016, <https://www.flickr.com/photos/usnationalarchives/23123589306 >.

Anderson, J.R., Stuart, A. & Rossen, I. 2015, ‘Not all negative: Macro justice principles predict positive attitudes towards asylum seekers in Australia’, Australian Journal of Psychology, vol. 67, no. 4, pp. 207-213.

Post 10: Changing the Face of Homelessness : Urban Directory for the Homeless

– Maria Yanovsky 2016

Reflection

There were several key insights I gained from asking my peers to review my draft proposition. On a positive note, the collaborative process between both human actors (non homeless people and homeless people) facilitated the creation of “solidarity to each-other” as picked up by my Tutor, Simone, which is an important aspect of my concept. However, several students and even the tutor picked up on how complex the process is, which would over complicate the effectiveness of the overall message being communicated. There are a few things I need to work on to narrow down the complexity of my proposal.

Firstly, I proposed that participants would receive a bundle of stories that demonstrate a breadth of emotional stories sourced from homeless experiences. It was noted that this experience would dull the experience and make the interaction feel almost chore like which would not encourage people to contribute to the experience.

Secondly it was noted that receiving a blank space of paper (especially at the size I was proposing), is too daunting for anyone, even creative practitioners, which is another barrier to the success of the proposal. It was suggested that I set up more parameters. After re-evaluating the brief, I believe it is possible to create some sort of manual generative illustration system to facilitate simple creative practice. However this is a critical point as members of my audience may not perceive themselves as creative practitioners.

Thirdly, it was mentioned that getting my participants to send back the paste-up posters takes the experience out of their hands and that it might be more interesting and fun for them if they got to paste up their work in the streets themselves. This piece of feedback reminded me of the (failed) Kony project which also sent out Guerilla Campaign packs to interested (paying) participants.

This leaves me with a few interesting avenues I can go along. Taking into consideration my audience, I can move any written content into an online platform such as a website which the user may choose to visit. I feel as if this would round off the service design aspect  of my proposal.

 

Design Proposition

Community Collaboration – “It’s people helping people. Human being working with other human beings to build trust, to find the root problem of their and develop specialised individualised plans for that person. Its people respecting people, acknowledging that we are equals.”- J.Hunt, 2014

Project Title:  Changing the Face of Homelessness : Urban Directory

Emergent Practice: Hybrid of Generative Practice and Service Design

The Issue: Within contemporary society, homelessness is a “swept under the carpet” concept despite how common this problem is becoming. Extensive stigmas and negative perceptions are large inhibitors for creating positive change, as interactions between non homeless and homeless residents is often met with negativity, hostility and most in concern, invisibility. To a struggling, marginalised group who are already experiencing a plethora of issues, further marginalisation can entrap a sense of hopelessness and a decreased sense of self worth. This is one of the largest barriers to entrenched homelessness. which does not help to engender a sense of hope within homeless community.

Proposition:

To create a sense of hope, understanding and community collaboration through a service design based Guerrilla Street art project in the form of a mailable package where participants will receive a designed poster which they can colour and populate Sydney’s Urban landscape themselves supported with a campaign website. Colour, can go a long way in creating positive tone and emotions, through creating vibrancy and friendliness which are core themes at the heart of this project.

Generative Design/ Collaborative Component

Participants will be sent a Paste Up package, which will include 1 A2 Paste up sheet (design included) and a small booklet that will explain the collaboration, how to make wheat paste, and how to paste up participant creations. The branding will be strictly black and white typographic and vector illustrations, to allow all colour and any form of expression to be generated by the participant. The design of the poster content will be based off experimental drawing styles so that members of the homeless community do not feel exploited through clear expressions of recognizbale personalities, this also provides a prescriptive guideline for participants to interact with that removes the daunting nature of a blank sheet of paper. There is no set colour palette or colouring style, all of that will be left to the pleasure of the participant. The project aims to act upon the misconception that homeless means “living on the street” through the incursion of the posters into the urban setting. The ephemeral nature of Street Art will also assist in the generation of new content, as the posters decay, the campaign can be updated with more illustrations, more contributions more stories. Keeping the project relevant.

The Service

The entire campaign aims to tie in generative design practices for Guerrilla styled advertising of service related hashtags which will be pasted into Sydney Urban landscape. The project aims to directly bring a directory of useful hashtags to anyone within the extensive homeless community an array of useful hashtags in which they may seek further assistance on their own accord. These posters will also aim to capture the curiosity of any passers by so they may to, curiously research the project and the hash tags generating further understanding, empathy and down the line, a greater sense of hope from increased participation in the project and testimonials from members who have benefited from the campaign. To ensure that early participants gain some sort of understanding, the service will be tied in with a website which will provide stories sourced from interviews, blogs, forums and Talks which match the initial design. The website will also explain the campaign, provide testimonials, provide additional downloadables in the event printed packages are lost as well as provide a project aim.

This design response targets several patterns of behaviour, it targets viral trends where especially within the target audience, digital media is easily accessed and exploited through social media such as Facebook and Twitter, where hashtags run rampant as a promotional tool. It targets the current fad of adult, therapeutic colouring in books and it targets the search of social services for the homeless. The most important important behaviour this interaction considers is the need for privacy among both of the human actors, who may not always want to make their motives or issues known to everybody for judgement especially at face value.

For the non homeless actors, this contribution will aim to develop a greater understanding on the concept of homelessness as well as a sense of creative charity hopefully making the actor feel comfortable that they don’t have to make a financial or face to face contribution to help out a marginalised group within Sydney. For the homeless actors, this contribution will aim to create a sense of cheer and hope through the artistic expressions being pasted up in their “un-homely spaces”. The design proposal thus aims to give non direct assistance to homeless people. The use of bright vibrant images generated by non homeless is to provide “the catchy hook” so that attention is drawn to the supporting hashtag directory of social services that homeless people in Sydney can use.
For non homeless actors. there is no linear direction of touch points. A non homeless person can be informed of this service by simply walking in the street and seeing examples, or when they perusing online where initial examples can be used to promote the service. Facebook, Instagram and twitter are effective tools for quickly communicating the existence of any ephemeral material. Another key touchpoint is the website, which will feature the crux of the design project. It will contain stories, paste up instructions, and generative design instructions as well as a downloadable version of the printout that will be mailed. It will also feature details about the project to well inform any member of the human actors of the significance of this project. The final touchpoint, is the paste up kit that will be sent to participants. This will include a full scale, ready to use paste up, a booklet with generative design instructions, and paste up instructions (including how to make environmentally safe wheat paste) in a branded envelope.

 

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(Image Sequence, Design Proposal Mocks. Yanovsky,M. 2016)

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Hunt, J.  Published on Oct 04, 2014, ‘How Can I bring Dignity to the Homeless?”, Viewed September 2016, <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-g3x_cuK5SM&gt;.

Post 10 – Reflection and Proposition

By Vicky Lam

Reflection: original draft design proposition

I presented to my colleague and tutor of my draft design proposition, namely “Reduction in Australian livestock greenhouse gas emissions”, with a view to address to the issue of the need to reduce carbon emissions in the livestock industry, which is the second biggest emitter after the energy sector and its emission level is very close to transport sector in Australia, by the livestock farmers and the red meat/diary product consumers as they are the key stakeholders with respect to the emissions. To achieve this, I proposed to raise a campaign by means of a set of creative posters mainly through data-driven visualization to draw the awareness of the impact of climate change and livestock industry on each other and to appeal to the livestock farmers to adopt carbon farming and to the consumers to consume less red meat and dairy products and create less food waste as far as possible. Here below are some sketches of my design: –

One major feedback received is that posters per se are less engaging to viewers as passers-by and less effective for the target audience of young generation in the age range of 18 to 25. As a campaign, one of the suggestions is to make the message follow the stakeholders – in this case, the consumers including the young generations – such as by combining art and data to generate the eye-catching key messages on the issue with some forms of creative data-driven visualization as part of the information packaging or the infographic packaging for meat and dairy products in order to engage the viewers and try to encourage them to change their diets of consuming less red meat / dairy products (which may also good for health) and to reduce food waste.

 

Development: revised draft design proposition

After obtaining the feedback, I did further researches on the topic of information packaging / infographic packaging, and find this approach is feasible for putting infographics on the product packaging, and some relevant illustrative examples as sought on the internet are shown below: –

 

(Source: McMahon, T., Paper shopping bag, published 9 July 2012, Maclean’s, viewed 20 September 2016, <http://www.macleans.ca/society/life/is-local-food-bad-for-the-economy/ >)

 

(Source: Warriner G., Infographic milk packaging, Pinterest, viewed 20 September 2016, <https://au.pinterest.com/pin/471259548489189665/ >)

 

(Source: Kamal R., Fast food potato chip packaging, published 5 November 2013, viewed 20 September 2016, VISUALOOP, <http://visualoop.com/blog/15200/straight-to-the-point-with-infographics >)

 

Incorporating the art of infographics as part of the packaging design could creatively depict information and data visualization that people do not tend to engage with if presented in a traditional way of plain data or charts. If used properly and effectively, it is pretty good for information or storytelling, and could raise awareness of the issue and engage the consumers and promote a global passion for the need to change in response to the posed problem or issue.

So, I changed my design proposition as follows: –

Project title:
“Save our Earth, Shape our diet, Less red meat”

Practice type:
Data-driven visualization in form of infographics as part of packaging design for meat products

The issue being addressed:
Livestock sector is the second greenhouse gas emitter in Australia after energy sector and its emission level is very close to transport sector, and red meat consumption per capita in Australia still ranks high in the world

Expected possible change to achieve:
Diet change of consuming less red meat (beef, veal and mutton) or more poultry meat / pork in lieu; and treasuring our food and reducing food waste

Design action to support the change:
By means of putting infographics on the front of the plastic packages as the visual system, for a set of four meat product packaging design (for cattle, mutton, pork and chicken meat) with short key words of different relevant messages and data-driven visualization, which may work alone or work in conjunction with similar relevant messages and data visualization printed on reusable shopping bags. Such messages and data visualizations relate to beef consumption, cattle/sheep populations and/or GHG emissions. The design would focus on data and let the data speak for itself as far as possible supplemented with some key words and possibly with some illustrative pictograms instead of using conventional narrative media, whose familiarity and realism is often desensitizing (especially to the young generations), to tell the distressing problem or issue. To achieve the design outcome, minimalistic infographics can be displayed on the product packages in order to fit the package sizes and more complicated data-driven visualization with the sharp appealing message can be printed on reusable shopping bags.

Here below shows some illustrating sketches and mockups of my design ideas: –

 

 

 

blog 10- Reflection and Proposition

By Marcella K. Handoko Kwee

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Draft Proposal Feedback

Here are a couple of feedbacks given on service design ideas I have mentioned in the draft proposal. Based on feedbacks my peer has given me, all of my ideas does not really cover up the direction I want to achieve in this assignment, which is service design because my ideas do not involve a person with another person (two interactions or more) but a person with object. She suggested me to look up at examples of service design from lecture notes. Although I did so. I also looked up at the readings in UTS online. I take that service design based app and text message are common ones. However I wanted to make something different therefore, I came up with the idea of phone charger, meditation box and landscape app. I still believe that my ideas can be included as part of service design as well although they might require one-sided interaction only. According to Wikipedia, “service design is a form of conceptual design that involves the activity of planning and organizing people, infrastructure, communication and material components of a service in order to improve its quality and the interaction between the service provider and its customers.” My ideas could be really used to serve people and fulfill their needs by motivating them to change their bad habits, providing effectiveness, and promoting body and mind health.

To continue with the feedback, she also told me that perhaps the second idea could have been a good idea if the meditation box was made for public rather than individual. It means that the meditation box should be made more approachable from or accessible to public. Furthermore, the idea would have worked if it was made high-technologically: designed with earphone to listen to nature’s sounds, visual screen to see the nature images.

Apart from the ideas provided in the draft proposal, she suggested me a mute functionality touch button for mobile phone. She enthusiastically told me that she watched a Youtube video about an innovation of mute touch screen button. However in order to do that, the mobile phone users need to download an app that links to the device. The users are able to turn off the notification sounds even when the device is in sound mode whenever they touch the point button. Lastly, she mentioned about an app specialies in reducing the mental health issue. This app allows the users to share about what is bothering them to their social media friends, such as status. The aim is to put the sufferers at ease. Given that some people might be concerned about their names and mental health statuses spreading throughout the platform, users will be given 2 choices: named or anonymous. In this app, whoever suffers the most severe mental issue will appear at the highest position of timeline page, following by some colors to indicate their status of mental health. The top users should be getting the most helps.

The tutor on the other hand, considered all of my ideas was good. She wanted me to look at how excessive usage of gadgets and social media (factor of mental issue found throughout mindmaping session) in association with mental health stigma (main topic of reseach). At first, tutor thought the first idea was good however, she concerned it would cause more problems if phone users were restricted to use mobile phones at night, which means they cannot use their mobile phones even for emergency purposes because the device is made to be chargeable during night hours. Therefore, unrecommended. Last thing is she wanted me to spend some time researching on stress, mental health and social media for 3 poster designs.

Refined Proposition

Faith Brings Positive Change

My research is on mental health issue, particularly on stigma on mental health. However in this task, I would like to work more on particular issue, which is stress and anxiety caused by excessive used of social media. I want to encourage people to get familiar with apps, certain objects and colors that will give them sense of relaxation by being imaginative and putting them into a state of mindfulness.

I can relate the mental health stigma with stress and anxiety caused by excessive used of social media. Nowadays, social media users tend to share contents which mostly they are disagree about. In this modern world, social media users have developed habits of being judgemental in something they have lack of knoweldge about (e.g mental health). Considering that media is a powerful tool and if the media agencies are being irresponsible in their news contents (e.g news headlines: mentally-ill nurse should not be allowed to work in children hospital), the adults or parents social media users would get angry or disappointed then they would share the news to social media platforms full of student and young users who might read their posts and get influenced by. Stereotyping will keep passing down generation to generation. Stereotypes and negative perceptions cause fear in general population and people with mental issue. This fear results in stress and anxiety.

In the case of stigma, the missing point is the lack contents about positive personal experiences dealing with mental issue in media and social media platforms. Public needs to hear accurate information on mental health and it can only come from the experts in the field and people with mental issue themselves.

I have came up with an idea of service design, an entertainment app as well as social media associated stigma, and stress and anxiety. It suits the needs of modern society with a little bit of touch of nature aspects. The aim is to build community supports. This app allows you to build your own imagination of landscape using drag point to position certain elements of nature into the page to share about in where or what environments they wish to be (imaginations of a better world), to post current mental status and feelings, to give advices on others posts, and to share their honest personal experiences dealing with mental issue. They are free to link their account with their social media in order to gain public’s understanding and reduce stigma.