Team Workbook Link

http://georgiahannahfarrenwellbeing.blogspot.co.nz

Final Reflections

The biggest learning that I took from this paper was how valuable user testing and gaining understanding of the audience first-hand and not just secondary research is. Before this I had not done anything that resembled experience design, but this project really showed me how an idea that might start off feeling purely anthropological and experiential with no room for design can actually be supported and strengthened by different design platforms.

In terms of our project, I am most happy with the way we stepped out of the classroom and into the real world and actually tested our ideas on our true target audience. I feel like this gave us massive ideas for our project and I truely don't think we would have produced anything nearly as realistic and tangible as we did without doing this. The insights we gained from these 'prototyping' sessions were invaluable and really made us think about every little thing we were doing, why we were doing it, and how changing that could impact the result.

If we had to push our idea further we could imagine developing a series of 7-10 second long promo videos for social media platforms, that could go viral and spread awareness of Hi-Five Week and the issue we are combating to an even greater extent. We spent so much time researching, testing, and polishing our idea down to a gem that we didn't actually start designing until the end of week 10, meaning that some ideas like this one were left our of our final campaign proposal.

Final Presentation

Today we had our final presentation! We got to uni early to set up our two foam hand installations in The Pit and also get in lots of practices of our speech and timing with our video before class.

I was feeling quite confident for the presentation (although my nervous tummy thought otherwise) because we had had time to practice and I knew that I would have the support of my team members. One fantastic insight about being in a team as that when it comes time to speak in presentations the script has been divided into three. This means you only have to say a line or two at a time, which gives you a small break between speaking making you less likely to trip up, and also before you know it you're on your last cue card. We got lots of laughs and smiles at our video and we were nearly perfect with our timing, except for one small part where Hannah accidentally rushed through her lines and then we had to wait for a beat or two for the clip to change. This didn't seem to effect the overall tone of our presentation at all though so all in all we were very pleased.

We did have one moment of uncertainty after we finished our presentation and the lecturers made a comment about us being under time, but this would have only been by about 8 seconds (as we know our video is about 8 seconds shorter than 4 minutes and we were speaking to our video). We think it probably just surprised them as every other group who had presented so far that morning was about a minute or more over time!

Dossier

I came up with the idea of making our dossier as a video because the best and most convincing part of our project is all of the video documentation we have of us prototyping on Lambton Quay. I also think that by occupying the viewer with video and photos on the screen, they will be more likely to actually absorb everything that we are saying/we think is important for them to know - instead of just flicking through a document and not reading it thoroughly.

I wrote a script for our dossier and then we used Hannah's microphone to create a voice-over on
top of the video. The video came together quite easily as I only needed to grab documentation photos off of our blog and search for the best clips from our prototyping/user testing outings.

W12S1 Class & 'Shark Tank' Critique

Today we practiced our presentation draft to a few of our peers and Donald, and then we entered the 'Shark Tank' to get feedback from Tristam and Mark as well. This was a great session and although I had had to stay up very late writing the script and finishing the presentation video it was worth it as we could get a clear idea of what was working and what needed looking at again. This also gave us a change to start learning our script.

Touchpoint Development

We created a promo video to generate awareness of Hi-Five Week and to notify people about the reason branded ambassadors will be on the street hi-fiving. I like the upbeat, fun music we used for our video and the contrast of short, quick cuts and longer shots. I feel like the video does a good job of introducing people to the idea of Hi-Five Week.

This video will direct viewers to the campaign website we have created which contains information to help the audience understand our key messages and inspire them to participate in Hi-Five Week. We developed our website into a long scrollable webpage with hover elements to make it more interactive. We chose a scrolling webpage to keep the user's journey through the site simple and easy. We alternated between orange and white panels to break up the website into sections and to make it more visually interesting. The website contains information about the campaign, the issue, five ways to wellbeing, our street event, supportive campaign merchandise, proposed sponsors, and the poster collection.

We developed this series of six posters for our Hi-Five Week campaign, one for each of the ways to wellbeing, to help promote mindfulness and create conversation around mental health. We were originally not going to produce posters as we didn't want to create yet another poster advertising an event, but I believe the way that we are using these posters is more impactful, interesting and purposeful. The posters aren't only applicable during the actual Hi-Five Week.

As well as imagining having branded ambassadors in our t-shirts, we also have foam hands that would be installed on the sidewalk. People can hit the hands for stress release, but they also have the added benefit of acting as unusual, eye-catching promotion for the campaign. I know I certainly like to hit the foam hands, and through our user testing we found that other people do too, so I would like to think they would actually be super effective on the city streets.

Final Session Filming On Lambton Quay

We got our t-shirt designs screen printed on Monday to wear filming on Tuesday. We wanted to have proper branded shirts on to film our promo video and some footage for our presentation.

As we were now truely embodying our campaign we gained some new interesting insights. For example: on a few occasions when we offered people a hi-five they swiftly declined saying 'I don't have time sorry'. This was quite humorous as a hi-five is one of the quickest interactions we could have had with them. We thought that the only reason that someone would say they don't have time is if they thought we were going to want to talk to them or ask for donations. Another interesting type of interaction was that lots of people came up to us for directions as they obviously thought because we looked like an organisation we would know the area. A few people also stopped to ask us about our cause which was great. 

It was yet another successful day down on Lambton Quay; seeing how our hi-fives improved people's days and made them smile!

Campaign T-Shirt

We designed a t-shirt using the slogan that we decided on after the last interim critique session. We had an initial idea for the logo that we would use on the chest of the t-shirt, but we had to edit it as we realised the hands were in an awkward, inappropriate place considering we are all female! It was hard to find the right combination of size (for legibility) and interesting design. We iterated the design many times until we found a placement we were happy with.

Interim Critique/Prototyping 2

Today we set up two different foam hand prototypes to test which installation people would interact with more; handing from above or jutting out from the side. We also made one hand single thickness of the foam we are using and one double thickness to see which one people liked high-fiving more/which withstood the high-fiving better.

We met with Tim to get a different opinion on our project from someone who has not heard of our idea or seen anything we have been working on. He was initially critical of whether our concept was actually practical, but once he saw the videos of all of the user testing we have been doing and how our target audience is actually willing to engage with our idea, he was excited by our project. His one big critique was that he thought that our logo was too aggressive and needed to be more of a celebratory message. He also thinks we are promising that we can do too much; we just need to say exactly what we are doing/hoping to achieve. He also suggested that, "the brand should put a smile on your face".

We used the rest of class time to develop better slogan ideas based on Tim's critique. We went around the north end of class and asked our peer's opinions on six slogans, then refined down to two slogans based on their comments and asked the south end of class which was the best. Donald told us that the two slogans we had narrowed down to were both ok but still weren't quite saying exactly what he feels is the essence of our campaign, so we re-worked the slogan that everyone liked best into a final slogan that we are happy with.

Initial Webpage Research & Ideation

I looked at some websites to gain inspiration and then thumbnailed some initial ideas. I took my favourite bits from those rough sketches and mocked up three webpage layouts in Photoshop. I then combined the elements that were working the best from each of them into one layout to move forward with and develop.

Prototyping On Lambton Quay 2

We brought second hand t-shirts from Save Mart and wrote on them with vivid to prototype whether people would react differently to us being branded and asking for high-fives.

We found that the t-shirt seemed to help people know that they could approach us for a high-five. I know it also made me feel a lot more comfortable and confident approaching people as we were embodying the brand rather than embodying ourselves. Something that was really cool was that because of our branded t-shirts we became recognisable and people started to talk about us. Also, quite a few people who high-fived us asked what we were high-fiving for. This is a good outcome in terms of our campaign as our idea relies on creating conversation.

Another outcome of our branding was that people came up to us out of their own volition and asked for a high-five. Also, because people could read our shirts and prepare, lots of people who might not have high-fived us last time we prototyped shuffled their bags into their other hands, made eye contact and got their hands out and ready. Even if people didn't high-five us, they often smiled and observed others high-fiving us - so their mood was improved even if they didn't get directly involved.

Another insight we gained from today was that when we tried standing in one place, with one of us on either side of the sidewalk, and offered high-fives we received the most engagement. We had previously decided against this technique as we didn't want to look like people who were asking for money or wanting people to stop and talk to us. We wonder if we received the best participation because people could see us, read our t-shirts, see others participating, process the idea and then prepare for a high-five before they reached us.