WEEK ONE
Had an in-depth look at Assessments 1 - 3
We formed a group of 5 who had all chosen the same theme.
WEEK TWO
After getting a better understanding of the briefs, our group discussed whether we wanted to do different sub-themes, or if we wanted to do the same one but branch off and do different projects. We all liked the 2 sub-topics:
- Imbue empathy in your audience by designing experiences for Virtual Reality.
- Tell stories and share narratives through Immersive video and web applications.
We discussed the idea of possibly meshing them together and telling stories and sharing narratives that imbued empathy but upon further discussion, we found that our ideas were centred more around empathy in design rather than the story telling side so we decided to choose the 'empathy' sub-topic.
To make a start on our group research projects, we decided to stop thinking about augmented reality and virtual reality because as a group of mostly interior designers who are not the most tech savvy, it made us nervous and overwhelmed when thinking about how to start incorporating that so we shortened the sub-topic to "How do we imbue empathy in our audience?".
I read through a few scholarly articles and case studies on what empathy in design meant and how it branched off from the regular design thinking. Below are a few important points that I took away.
- Emotional empathy is an instinctive, affective, shared and mirrored experience.
- Empathy in design is cognitive, where one understands how others may experience the world from their point of view (perspective).
- Empathy in design can lead to misunderstandings and subjectivity. How much of empathy someone experiences may reinforce this problem
- In an empathetic design thinking process, all the participants in a design team need to be empathic with the users they are designing for in order to create relevant solutions.
- Acquiring insight into a users needs informs the design process
- Empathy is a tool to design with.
WEEK THREE
We met online today because of the lockdown and worked on our research Miro Board.
We decided that we had built a good research foundation on Empathy in Design and started discussing our individual project ideas to get peer feedback and working on the group element for the presentation. I suggested that for the group presentation we should try and answer the 'what, why, how's' as a segue into our individual presentations. Starting with our research foundation which is the what and why. 'What is empathy in design?, ' Why do we need empathy in design?' then moving into our individual presentations, 'how will our designs imbue empathy?'.
For my individual project, I am thinking of staying in my field of study (interior design) and designing a room for people in Aged Care Facilities. I have done quite a bit of research on the depression rates in Aged Care Facilities and experienced my own grandparents struggling in nursing homes. I want to possibly use an existing room as a comparison, and show through a 360 video the difference between a small, contained, barely furnished room with something of my own design that will cater to the audience. I also want to create a space that will facilitate visitation because lack of human contact is another big factor that contributes to the depression rates in the elderly.
WEEK FOUR
Assessment One
I am feeling really overwhelmed by the amount of information and articles there are on the depression rates of the elderly in aged care and I am not feeling as connected with this project as I had hoped. I want to get a better, more refined idea of what the issues in aged care are and what the external risk factors are that I can address with my project.
I went to the Coffee Club in Helensvale and some people from the older demographic if they were happy to chat about Aged Care homes and their experiences and thoughts on them.
CONSENT FORMS
ASSESSMENT ONE PRESENTATION
My project concept is to use empathy in my design thinking process to create an aged care home for the elderly in response to their issues and pain points raised through interviews, research and observation. Empathy can be summed up as the act of understanding, being aware, experiencing and feeling the thoughts and experiences of another person without having to experience them themselves.
To use this in my design thinking process, I have spent a bit of time interacting with the elderly, getting to know them in order to understand them on both a psychological and emotional level.
In order to put aside my own biases, I chose people at random, approaching strangers at coffee shops and on the street so I had no presumption on what their response would be or what their stance would be on the current state of aged care homes.
Upon conducting numerous interviews with the elderly, the most common response when I asked my first question “What is your first thought when you think of an aged care home” was “I would rather die before going into a nursing home”... that’s really sad isn’t it...
The common presumption about nursing homes are that they are “hospital-like“, “prisons”, “impersonal, “depressing, and “businesses, not places to live”.
Through my project, I would like to address some of the issues with my final design such as the size of the rooms, the accessibility and functionality of communal rooms, the lack of privacy, the lack of individual personalisation in the rooms, and make the facility as a whole a more enjoyable and comfortable place to not only live, but also for friends and family to visit
WEEK FIVE
I've created a brief timeline to follow so that I can make sure I'm staying on track for the next 6-7 weeks.
My goal for this week is to have a defined topic or concept by the end of the week, using the feedback that received from Danny and from my group last week in the Live Crits. I am also going to make a to-do list to make sure I am covering all aspects of the assignment. I am still really confused about how to integrate VR into this assignment...
WEEK SIX
I made a mood board inspired by the colour palette that I think of when I see old photos from the 50s
I decided to change my idea...
Still staying with the same theme and concept, but executing it a little bit differently. Last week I had the idea of creating an entire aged care facility and designing it in a way that facilitates relationship and connection within, but after reflecting and researching, I noticed that a common theme in aged care homes is trying to get more visitors IN rather than facilitating the elderly residents in getting OUT. I want to create a space partially attached to the aged care home where it is easy enough for the residents to access and also completely open and accessible to the public. I think this will make the residents feel like they are more integrated and involved in the community that they live in, and will hopefully dispel the stigma around aged care homes being "hospital-like" for the general public.
I did some bubble diagrams to figure out spacing of the floorplan. This is to determine how to make the space most functional for flow of traffic.
Following on from my previous idea change, I have also decided that I am not going to do just a bedroom but a whole apartment/studio. If the aged care home is filled with 1 bedroom studios than the residents might feel more at home and less like they're in a hospital ward. I have been playing with the idea of what the communal area is going to be and I have narrowed it down to a cafe. I had this idea in Broadbeach while I was grabbing a coffee and had about 20min to kill before my volleyball game. I saw an elderly lady sitting and eating by herself and so I asked if she wanted some company! She said she would love some, so I sat down and we chatted for 20 min. It would have been a great opportunity for me to ask her some questions about my assignment, but I was so wrapped up in the conversation that it didn't even occur to me. She told me that she has just moved here from the Blue Mountains because she has 2 sets of grandkids, 1 set there and 1 set in Pacific Pines, so she has spent the last 5 years with her grandkids in the Blue Mountains, but now it is time for the next 5 years with the second set in the Gold Coast. After I said goodbye and was walking away, I thought how nice it would be if there was a cafe where people could go with the intention of sitting down with a lonely old person and chatting! I decided I wanted to incorporate this idea into my Action Research Project.
WEEK SEVEN
I spent this week compiling a template for my design brief which I will start adding my deliverables to.
WEEK EIGHT
Assessment Two
WEEK NINE
I came up with the name 'Endearahome' for my Aged Care Facility because it incorporates the word Endear and Home in it and I thought it sounded peaceful and friendly. After I ideated for a while, I designed a logo that I thought matched my concept and the name.
Something that I discovered during this process was that the original colour scheme that I had chosen just didn't fit with my brand identity. The brown didn't suit the logo and didn't instil the nurturing and welcoming vibe that I wanted to go for. It almost aligned with 'rotting'... which is exactly the OPPOSITE of what we want to associate with an aged care home...
As a result, I went with this sage green colour and will have to update my mood board and redo my design brief layout.
UPDATED MOODBOARD
Here are a few graphic mockups with my new logo
Some ideation sketches of the cafe. I was thinking about something I read from a case study I was doing research on in Aged Care Interior Design which was talking about having curved edges on the shapes to make sure that old people's frail skin is not caught on them and I wanted to reflect this idea in the form of the cafe.
WEEK TEN
My Revit is going surely but slowly.... I am running parallels on my laptop and it is so slow that it keeps crashing and every command lags... I am dreading the rendering process but I am on track to have it finished early enough to leave plenty of time for rendering.
FLOORPLAN: STUDIO ROOM
FURNITURE PLAN: STUDIO ROOM
I tried rendering an image of the kitchen, but after 3 hours at the highest resolution setting, it still turned out grainy.... I will have to watch some tutorials to see if I am doing something wrong, or if my laptop isn't strong enough. The poor thing's cooling fans where running at full speed.
You can see that I have repeated the sage green colour in the interior of this space.
I have nearly finished the cafe floorplan. I am really struggling to get the curved shape that I wanted because everything keeps coming up with overlapping errors or unjoined elements and I can't seem to figure them out.
WEEK ELEVEN
I have finished the Revit designs and have left adequate time for rendering. I tried to get the logo on the side of my cafe as a decal, but it kept showing up square and the logo is round so the extra space at the corners was showing up black. I spent a lot of time watching youtube tutorials trying to figure out a way around this and I couldn't so I ended up drawing it on with model lines and trying to overwrite their visibility which seemed to work but when I tried to render it disappeared... I am not sure how to troubleshoot this and may just have to keep it off if I can't achieve it.
RENDERS: STUDIO ROOM
RENDERS: CAFE
WEEK TWELVE
Assessment Three
COMPLETED DESIGN BRIEF
EVALUATION:
I didn't get any responses from the local interior designers that I emailed so as a last resort I asked for critical feedback from my group (who are all Interior Design Majors except for 1). Their feedback was that they loved my idea and design, and that with more time I could have possibly made the cafe and studio room more cohesive. I think in my brain they're connected but since they were not created in the same revit file it is hard to show you how they relate. The other feedback that I received was about my video presentation. I had originally used some of my Design Brief slides in my presentation and just read over the top of them. The feedback from my peers told me that it wasn't as engaging as it could be if it wasn't big slabs of text so I redid my video presentation to make it more visual and engaging, moving the descriptive audio over some visuals to make it more cohesive and engaging.
Link to Video Presentation on Youtube:
https://youtu.be/vAV_9TM8hb8
REFERENCES:
https://careerfoundry.com/en/blog/ux-design/what-is-empathy-in-design-thinking/.
https://uxdesign.cc/7-key- approaches-to-meaningful-design-35aff9f65f34.
https://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2016/02/instagram-art-wonder-renwick-rain- room/463173/.
https://uxdesign.cc/the-complete-guide-for-web-vr-and-immersive-experiences-220ce6fbb110
https://medium.com/shapingdesign/the-dilemma-of-designers-empathy-delusions-a61f0663deaf.
https://www.interaction-design.org/literature/article/design-thinking-getting- started-with-empathy.
https://www.dezeen.com/2017/02/22/virtual-reality-empathy-platform-tool-help-architects- create-dementia-friendly-environments-david-burgher-aitken-turnbull-wireframe-immersive/
https://design-milk.com/how-virtual-reality-is-changing-the-world-of-interior-design/.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A0_MFXUw10c.
https://www.hassellstudio.com/conversation/design-for-mental-health.
Video Presenation:
All videos are free stock videos from https://www.pexels.com/
Music is royalty free with the following credits
Juan Sánchez - Now The Silence" is under a Creative Commons (cc-by) license. https://juansanchezmusic.info
Music promoted by BreakingCopyright: https://bit.ly/now-the-silence-song
