Beginning the journey…part way through
Seeing as I’ve newly transferred over to UX design, this week has been a lot of catching up for me to do.
Monday
Monday I attended my first lecture. This led me to the brainstorming phase for Project 3 in order to catch up with the course. I automatically knew I wanted to do Food/Bev and Eco-warriors, so I considered things they might like to do that are: enjoyable, teaching a new skill, and fulfilling.
Tuesday
Tuesday I started on Project 2. I initially chose Jade Yoga, an e-commerce site for yoga products, and set up a rough site map and an elaborated a site map with photos.
Wednesday
On Wednesday, I quickly realised that Jade was a bit larger than a small to medium enterprise (seeing as they have international sites). So using Tuesdays work as dipping my toes in, I opted to go back and focus on a smaller enterprise: Atwin, a local store focused on sustainable clothing, jewelry, homewares and more, located in The Lanes. This too would bring me more fulfillment, as it’s allowing me to focus in locally for my first project. I simplified my goal (while still retaining some constraints) as well. After that, I brainstormed more specifics around Project 3 and decided I would do a Permaculture/Natural Wine Vineyard hybrid based on work-aways that my friends had done in the past. I don’t know much about permaculture besides that it is a closed system looking to produce zero waste (even using “greywater” to water non-edibles). I know a fair amount about Natural Wine (I was meant to go work on a farm earlier this autumn, but alas, no go). I know about the processes but I don’t know much about the actual sustainability from a statistic point of view.
Plus, a little bonus project around pronouns that sprung up into my head after going to the talk by Greg Quinton.
Thursday
Thursday was our Project 4 briefing and crit time. I really enjoyed getting together as a group to discuss ideas of sustainability: how we all approached it similarly or differently, topics I hadn’t thought about or the differences across cultures. (On a non-project note, I find the classmates I interacted with to be really charming and kind.) From attending a protest earlier in the week, I had a design idea pop up in my mind; Thursday was when I realised it could easily be applied for Project 4. My interests are currently tied up in larger scales: for a plethora of concerns, how can we as citizens have noticeable and direct impact on changing standing laws/actions/decisions of our governing body? Especially operating in (what is supposed to be) a democracy, how can we influence the higher powers to change their actions to reflect the wants for the people?
I continued research for Project 3, making a table around the experience, the customizable aspects and more in Miro.
Friday + the weekend
Friday/Saturday was spent completely devoted to Project 3. I continued research: finding websites that I enjoyed aspects of (mostly unrelated to booking something) and thinking about a visual identity. I made a basic site map, some sketches for an initial wireframe and mocked a lo-fi version up in Miro.
I realised Saturday that I was trying too much to “fast forward” and get to where I thought other students would be with their progress. So I took Sunday to step back, review the brief, and work my way from beginning to where I could as throughly as possible. This encouraged me to do more research about the subjects and then explore a visual identity for who I plan my audience to specifically be.
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