Week 4 begins…

So far this week time has been spent looking at user requirements in further detail. Yesterday,  8th February in our project management module we looked into a critical path analysis in further detail,  as well  as as doing a level 1 analysis work breakdown structure. This diagram is what I will be using to help with develop requirements this project’s website.

FYP_WBS

Image: ‘I am Away’ Initial Work Breakdown Structure of requirements.

 

Today we looked at bootstrapping sites and the advantages and disadvantages to using one. This tutorial walks through the initial stages of laying out the css folders and linking. It is available here on tutorial republic’s website

Later on time was spent using css do develop a grid system with snap points. This is an option that may be used for this project. Although an account was created (ahem 19 days ago…) today was the first time it was installed locally on the PC in college so the code can be pushed  – this is the link to the first repository This tool needs to be investigated further to see if it is being used correctly!

pull request-For-Blog

Image of the first ‘push’ to Git Hub

 

 

Third week’s progress…

calm

This week was spent focusing on the research report, the app to be developed is to help relax at work, its aim: to encourage creativity. The report covers these areas:

  • Internet of Things
  • How relaxing and having down time can help make more creative connections – this video of Jonah Lehrer speaking on the subject, here he is presenting on TED Talks  It is well worth watching.
  • Ideas that promote creativity .
  • Edward de Bono and lateral thinking.
  • Other Apps in the market that promote motivation for business.
  • Apps in the market that aid in meditation and track progress.
  • User Requirements.
  • Personas of possible users.
  • Task Analysis of existing products.
  • Questionnaires from possible users.
  • Initial Site Map.
  • Initial Moodboard.
    Initial Site Map
    Initial Site Map

    The result from this week is this: tools for the corporate world are motivational  reward driven with a lot of training thrown in. On the other end of the scale are meditation apps for the general public (mostly available on iTunes) that are results driven also. My question is ‘How can you truly relax if you are looking at the final result/number/minutes/high score?

    Perhaps the key is to create something that is more novel and fun based and somewhere in between. To design a product that is open ended an facilitates exploring to nowhere. William Gaver is a great believer in the value of play, daydreaming and asking questions around non-task oriented explorative design. His is credited with the term ‘Lucic design’ abd how important play is in our everyday lives, this is a great podcast of him fleshing out ideas here.

    Ludic Interview2

     

     

     

    The next step is to finish the toolkit / business part of the RSA toolkit workshop to fulfill that part of the brief. The official website and guidelines for this project are here: RSA Student Design Awards  The past week has helped me with concept development and direction for the overall work.  I will be looking at marketing this project to HR departments and larger companies who could benefit from this experience based design.

    The next part of the project is to start on a data base (figure out tables etc.) and to figure if this will be build using breaking points in CSS to help with screen display. Come back soon for an update!

Second Phase of Research

I have chosen to complete my final project under the RSA student briefs 2015-2016 01 Creative Conditions. My project will persuade a change in behaviour at work to encourage new ways to work.

‘inAWay’ will be an interactive website to aid in relaxation techniques at work. I The past few days has led me to evidence that when people are not focused on a task or a problem it usually comes to them. My idea is to support the idea of doing nothing, to relax for no particular reason. This is supported by the researcher Johnan Lehrer in this video. Below is an image of the toolkit supporting links from the RSA website:

rsa toolkit2

 

My target audience are employees in all sized companies.  For my research I have interviewed persons over the weekend and on Monday, who work at small-medium and medium-large sized for profit companies. My questionnaires for individuals included 14 questions regarding how often participants leave their desks and if they would be open to having some free time during the day.  I sat with each person as I allowed them to fill out the questions.

Yesterday I worked on research such as who is the target audience further by putting together personas. Personas are important parts of the initial stages to get an unpersonalised view of who could be using the product. This process was

I also worked on competitors and existing technologies. In the market place I looked for ‘Creativity Tools’ and ‘Productivity Tools’ on the internet. ‘This was interesting because there are a lot of products out there to help with stress and anxiety and some corporate tools to aid with rewarding employees and one good tool to help with training personnel. But my search came up thin on creativity tools – there are many articles that reiterate the same tips over and over but not a specific app to encourage the key points that are agreed help with creativity.

Mind Tools  requires a subscription to use all of the features but a lot of their site is based on traditional techniques such as team building. Again refering back to Johnan Lehrer’s video creativity is not a condition that one can induce or formulate but a way of making connections between a series of events that come together to solve the problem.

‘inAWay’ will try to support the idea of one of these links, to allow the individual(s) to relax and have downtime.  Another feature of  inAWay is that it will have  no reward system per say, free time itself will be the reward.

Some task analysis were also done of existing apps for sale on the itunes store. I looked at Self-help for Anxiety Management (SAM) which incidently is produced by the University of West England and not a traditional company.

My next task is to finish an initial design and start on user requirements to identify the key points I need for the application to be effective.

 

 

 

 

Research, research, research!

I have spent the past two days scouring the internet for evidence in three key areas that pertain to my final project: creativity (broad subject), motivation and reward systems and applications that are deigned to reward employees. I was then led to ideas of what I want to design and for who and when I went to look at market competitors I found that there is a lot out there on

http://www.healthline.com/health/anxiety/top-iphone-android-apps#2

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/03/04/creativity-habits_n_4859769.html

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/04/120419102317.htm

http://journal.frontiersin.org/article/10.3389/fpsyg.2012.00116/full#

Project/Idea Approval….

Today I received approval for my project idea. The next thing to do is start my research phase of the project and tighten up the tasks and furthur orgnise the work flow. The next milestone is next Monday, 1st February when a research report is due.

Next week there is a ‘dead’ day on the 3rd February so this will throw the overall project out by a week unless the instructors are willing to see us in lieu on Tuesday or Thursday.

I had a brief chat about my second idea but that was discarded for my first original idea. My final project will be a space to have downtime within working hours. This will be monitored by issuing virtual tokens. After a period of time a company could analyse each participant to see if this extra downtime has a positive impact or not on productivity. The users will be able to choose avatars and choose from a panel of engaging or not activities. One constraint is that employees will not be able to use this downtime to do or run personal errands. The idea is to promote switching off by doing yoga or a game and to see if this impact is worthwhile for companies.

Tumbleweeds…

After deciding what to do for my final year project – I got a great idea I did not ask for. A great idea for a changing world. Poetry for teenagers – a dojo for poetry and words if you will. A place where teens could visit and safely meet others with a similar interest and creatively explore the English Language. Although some would say poetry is in decline there is a strong presence of its growth on the internet as this article from The Telegraph suggests: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/books/3560735/Poetrys-popularity-soars-online.html

English and use of language is ever changing as it is in use everyday – speaking, texting, posting to media sites. But what if there was a way to improve communication and grow a language, organize some new skills? After viewing a  video yesterday I was inspired by a statistic that stated that there are 540,000 words in the English language. About 5 times as many words as there were in Shakspeare’s time!  Shakespeare

Continue reading Tumbleweeds…

Final Project 2016

I started this blog last week here on: GitHub:Link to First Post on Git Hub

However, I have decided that GitHub is better for uploading and sharing code: Click here to view code on GitHub

This will be used to track my project and post all aspects of the project I am working on to date. This project was started on 20th January 2016 & will be finishing on 13th April 2016.