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 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.
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!
